ABOVE: Jennifer Webb served HD-69 for two years and is the first openly LGBTQ woman elected to the Florida Legislature. Photo by Dylan Todd.
ST. PETERSBURG | Jennifer Webb lost her re-election bid Nov. 3, but the former state representative isn’t finished fighting for the constituents of House District 69 (HD-69) or for Floridians at large.
Webb made history in 2018 by becoming the first openly LGBTQ woman elected to serve in the Florida Legislature. She served for two years in HD-69, which includes 12 cities throughout the greater St. Petersburg area and is considered a swing district, electing representatives from both major parties.
The Democrat served until her loss this year to Republican challenger Linda Chaney. According to official results from the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections published Nov. 17, Webb received 47.54% of the vote to Chaney’s 52.46% – or 46,572 votes to Chaney’s 51,400.
The county as a whole favored President-elect Joe Biden over incumbent Donald Trump, 49.44% to 49.22%. The presidential race prompted both parties to spend massively on marketing throughout the state, which Trump ultimately won, financially impacting races down the ballot like Webb’s.
She says she was outspent five to one but that she’s proud of the campaign she ran and term she served. “I feel like I left it all on the table,” Webb reflects. “From the beginning, I strove to restore people’s faith in government and in our representative Republic, and to do that I talked to people throughout the district to find out what unites us all.”
That led to a number of priorities throughout Webb’s two sessions, during which she served as the Democratic Deputy Whip and on a number of key committees. Her assignments included the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee, of which she was the ranking Democratic member, as well as the Commerce Committee, Criminal Justice Subcommittee, Gaming Control Subcommittee and more.
“60% of the policy that I wrote became law,” Webb says. “Not all of it passed in my name but that’s no small thing.”
Among her proudest moments in the Democratic minority, Webb cites working to increase the number of teachers who would receive salary increases in Florida and halting progress on a Republican-led bill that would have criminalized treatment for transgender youth. “Our caucus and the community came together to really give a face to how damaging that was,” she recalls.
“We were able to show how harmful it would be to put political points on the backs of the most vulnerable part of our community,” she continues. “Parents showed up with their transgender children, testified and we stopped it. That was a really great point of pride.”
Webb also co-sponsored the Florida Competitive Workforce Act (FCWA), which since 2009 has sought to extend statewide civil rights protections to LGBTQ Floridians. Despite widespread support, the Republican-controlled legislature has failed to advance the measure.
“Passing it was one of my ideals, it was my wish legislation,” Webb says. “I knew that it probably wouldn’t get done while I carried it, so the metric that I set was, ‘Can I get more co-sponsors than ever before?’ and we did that.”
The FCWA failed to receive a hearing after its latest introduction, despite bipartisan sponsorship from the majority of each legislative chamber. Webb says it “speaks to how our legislature fails to actually do the people’s business. 60% of Florida is covered by some form of LGBTQ+ protection, so our cities and counties are far more progressive than our legislators will allow our state to be.”
She still believes Florida Legislature can make a difference, however, particularly as it continues making strides in LGBTQ representation. In addition to the re-election of Orlando Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, St. Petersburg Rep. Michele Rayner became the first Black, openly LGBTQ woman elected and Sen. Shevrin Jones made history by becoming the Florida Senate’s first openly LGBTQ member.
“That gives me hope,” she says. “As a community we don’t have to start from scratch.”
As for what’s next, Webb says her purpose hasn’t changed. “It has always been to serve our community and to make life a little bit easier for folks,” she says. “I don’t have a failure of imagination when it comes to how to serve the people of Florida.”
