Six openly gay candidates are running
for seats in the Connecticut General Assembly as Republicans.
A 2016 Pew Research Center report found
that 83 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual registered voters
identify or lean toward the Democratic Party.
The six candidates – five men and one
woman – are running in districts that lean conservative.
John Scott of Mystic, 48, is running
for the same seat he held in 2014-2016.
“I've always said that Connecticut
Republicans are just a different animal, a different breed of
Republicans,” Scott
told NBC News. “We are fiscally conservative and socially
liberal; we want a state that people can afford to live in and afford
to stay in.”
Scott has been endorsed by the LGBTQ
Victory Fund.
A.J. Kerouac, who founded a
Gay-Straight Alliance club in his high school at 15, agreed with
Scott that Connecticut Republicans were more liberal.
“The majority of our Democrats are a
little more conservative than most Democrats in the country, and most
of our Republicans are a little liberal than most of the Republicans
in our country,” he said. “So we really can find that middle
ground.”
The four other Republican candidates
include Ken Richards of Groton, Mary Fay of West Hartford, Robert
Smedley of New Britain and Shaun Mastroianni of Stonington.
Democrat hold a slim majority in the
Connecticut General Assembly.
Gregory T. Angelo, president of the Log
Cabin Republicans, said that Democrats in the state have used
identity politics to maintain power.
“What the Connecticut GOP has
brilliantly done in aggressively recruiting a full slate of gay
Republicans candidates is cutting Democrats off at their knees,”
Angelo said.