With less than 30 days until Election Day, Kelley Robinson is less interested in who turns out than in what nobody answered last time.
Robinson is president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ political organization, and the first queer Black woman to lead it. Her diagnosis of 2024 is not about money or enthusiasm. It is about silence.
“When your opposition is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a lie, you have to address it,” she said. “That, to me, was the core failure of 2024: was the lack of direct response.”
Her organization has put $15 million into mobilizing more than 25 million LGBTQ voters, 12 percent of the country’s adult population.
She raises Representative Don Davis of North Carolina, a Democrat who ran anti-trans campaign ads. Trading away part of a coalition to win a seat is, in her view, both wrong and unnecessary.
“You don’t have to sacrifice any member of our community to win in these races to have a message that resonates with voters,” she said.
Her case for Black and queer voters moving together is about how the other side sorts people.
“Whether you’re Black, brown, or queer, the opposition sees us all as the same, and there’s an opportunity to unite forces,” she said.
Four weeks out, she is arguing that the losing move is the one that looks safest: letting a lie stand and hoping the subject changes.
