(L-R) Florida Reps. Michele Raynor, Carlos Guillermo Smith and Anna V. Eskamani will be featured during the “Out of the Closet, Into the Seat” virtual training. (Image from Maven’s Facebook)
ORLANDO | Maven Leadership Collective is partnering with Contigo Fund to bring a virtual training session to Central Florida’s LGBTQ community with a focus to empower queer people of color to run for political office.
“Out of the Closet, Into the Seat” is a four-hour virtual training that will be held Aug. 21 from 10a.m. to 2 p.m. and will be an “abbreviated version of the how, the why and the where of running for office,” says Jasmen Rogers, founder of Folding Chair Consulting and the training’s facilitator.
Rogers, who uses she/her pronouns, has worked in the Florida Legislature for nearly the past five years in various capacities, building relationships with several legislators and even made a run for the Florida House of Representatives – District 95 in 2020.
The training, Rogers says, is to provide LGBTQ individuals of color in Central Florida an opportunity to explore and set a foundation for running for office.
“We’re looking for folks that maybe have some leadership in the community, maybe have thought about or are getting ready to run and they want some tips to build the strongest campaign possible,” she says. “I’ve attended so many types of intro running for office trainings, even before I was a candidate, and I felt like part of what was missing was a level of authenticity for candidates that are not white and heterosexual. So this is going to be a training that’s going to get them to think about how they want to run and run authentically as LGBTQ folks of color while being uncompromising in the things they believe and who they are.”
There are currently 29 elected openly LGBTQ officials across varying levels of government in Florida. While Rogers would love to see that number much higher, she also wants this training to get potential candidates to think about why they want to run.
“There’s so many people that run for office just because a few people have told them ‘you sound really good at this protest’ or ‘you sounded really good in that commission meeting,’ and when I do trainings, when I facilitate and when I talk strategy with people, I always get down to why are you running?” she says. “At the end of the training, I’m hoping that they come out of it with a written vision statement about who they are, how they want to show up and why they want to run for office that can either push them further in the direction of running or let them think a little bit more deeply about is this where I’m needed the most or should I be doing something else?”
The potential future legislators attending the training will also get a chance to hear from some of the most progressive voices currently serving in the Florida House as Rogers will be chatting with state Reps. Carlos Guillermo Smith, Anna V. Eskamani and Michele Raynor during the course.
“I want to ask them the hard questions about what are the high points, what are the low points of running?” Rogers says. “What is it like to govern? Because that’s another thing that people don’t talk about. Everyone talks about your campaign and getting you to finish line, but there are very few people that prepare you to actually govern and what that looks like. I’m hoping they can give just a little bit of insight, vulnerability and realness to the space as people are considering whether or not they want to run.”
“Out of the Closet, Into the Seat,” facilitated by Jasmen Rogers, will take place virtually Aug. 21 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The training is free and open to anyone who wants to attend but will focus primarily on LGBTQ people of color that are in the Central Florida area. To RSVP go to Bit.ly/outofthecloset2021.
You must be logged in to post a comment.