“Bad-ass women” was the unofficial theme at the 16th annual Victory Fund Women’s Brunch, held at Gossip Grill just before this year’s historic San Diego LGBT Pride parade and march got underway beneath a thunderstorm of epic proportions Saturday.
“Do we have some bad-ass women here today, or what?” newly installed Victory Fund President and CEO, Aisha Moodie-Mills asked a crowd of political and community leaders crowded into Gossip Grill’s fully packed lounge.
Moodie-Mills was joined on stage by other politically powerful women, not least among them California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins from San Diego’s 78th District. Out 3rd District City Councilman Todd Gloria and LGBT-allied Congressman Scott Peters (D-California) also addressed attendees, each noting the accomplishments and challenges of women candidates for public office.
Victory Fund is the largest and arguably the richest national organization dedicated to vetting, grooming, funding, promoting and otherwise promulgating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates for public office.
“Victory Fund is vital to the mission of making sure LGBT candidates have as much of an even playing field possible—and the same resources as their non-LGBT counterparts,” Councilman Gloria told LGBT Weekly. “This event, now in its sixteenth year, was established to ensure lesbian, bi and transgender women have their rightful seat at the table. I think, going forward, there needs to be a focus on doing as we can to support our transgender candidates as well and I’m definitely on board with that.”
Atkins agrees that more can and should be done to support transgender candidates and trans individuals in general. She recently pointed in an op-ed for the Bay Area Reporter to California’s Transgender Bill of Rights as evidence of progress in that direction.
“We created a transgender student bill of rights, which will allow those students in public schools to join sports teams and have access to school facilities such as restrooms according to their gender identity,” Atkins said.
Victory Fund’s current slate of candidates includes Mark Takano of Riverside for the United States House of Representatives, Ginny Coat for mayor of Palm Springs and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, also for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Visit victoryfund.org for a complete list of Victory Fund’s current slate of LGBT candidates.
