Voters in Lexington, Kentucky on
Tuesday gave the OK for the city's openly gay vice-mayor to become
Lexington's first openly gay mayor, the Washington Post reported.
Jim Gray, president and CEO of Gray
Construction Company – a nationally ranked engineering, design and
construction company – defeated incumbent Jim Newberry in a
non-partisan contest.
The 57-year-old Gray enjoyed the
endorsement of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a nationwide group
that supports openly gay elected officials.
According to his Victory Fund bio, Gray
came out publicly in 2005, before being elected vice-mayor the next
year. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. He's served as a
trustee on the Board of Berea College and the KET Fund for
Excellence, and in 1997 he was appointed a Loeb Fellow at Harvard
University to study urban planning.
Gray told supporters that he'll fight
for every citizen of Lexington: “I am here for my mother's
generation, I am here for my generation and for your generation, and
we are here for the next generation.”