The Race for Jeff Flake’s Senate Seat in Arizona Could Be The Gayest Ever

Jeff Flake’s seat is up for grabs, and it might not just turn blue — it might shine every color of the rainbow.

There are 5 Senate seats that are flappable for Democrats in the upcoming 2018 Midterm Elections, Mississippi and it’s 40% black population hold two of them. Nevada, Texas and Arizona are the remaining three. These three states have some of the largest Latinx populations in the US living within their borders, and they also have large pockets of indigenous communities that live in key electoral counties.

Arizona also has something going for it that the other states don’t, though.

The Grand Canyon State may be the first in the nation to elect an openly gay member of the LGBTQ Community to the Senate. If they do, that would officially make the 2018 Arizona Senate Midterm Elections the gayest in the history of the Federal Government. And that would be awesome.

The race for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat is between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema, who CNN is reporting holds a 7-point lead over McSally, has served in the Arizona House and Senate, is ranked as a centrist, and identifies openly as bisexual. McSally is a far-right Republican that currently serves as a state representative, beat the recently pardoned Joe Arpaio in the primaries, and has the full support of the Trump Administration. And while Sinema — who was just recently endorsed by Barack Obama himself — holds a solid lead in the polls, if 2016 has taught us anything, it’s that the polls don’t decide elections — votes do.

Sinema already has a few strikes against her. In a state where the majority of the population is Latino, Kyrsten is a blond haired, blue eyed fair skinned white lady. Strike one. In a border state under attack by ICE, she is a centrist that voted with Trump 59% of the time. Strike Two. She does support Dreamers, though. And Sinema is anti-deportation, pro-healthcare, and openly gay. She can still score big for the Democratic Party.

In the 2016 election, less than 100,000 votes separated Trump from Clinton. John McCain won his Senate seat by only around 70,000 seats. While Arizona has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1976, the gap between red and blue is dangerously thin for the Republican Party.

With over 200,000 of the 250,000 members of the LGBTQ community in Arizona old enough to vote, it could very well be the LGBTQ community that flips Arizona from blue to red. It could be Arizona that elects the nation’s first openly gay Senator. And it could be Arizona that flips it’s Senate seat from Red to Blue — with pride.

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