(Photo by Eric Elofson/Harris for President)
Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Perry, Florida Sept. 26. It became the deadliest mainland hurricane since 2005, killing over 200 people across the Southeast.
The day prior, Congress approved a temporary measure to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund. Republicans, including 11 Florida representatives, supplied the only no votes in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
In response to the storm, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — also the 2024 Democratic nominee for president — led a coordinated response to help Americans in need. Major disaster declarations were approved, federal workers were deployed and FEMA began to offer financial assistance.
Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, used his platform as the 2024 Republican presidential nominee to spread disinformation. He charged that FEMA funds were used for “illegal migrants” and that the Biden-Harris administration was “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”
These claims have been refuted by the agency as well as elected officials of both major parties — and as the discourse unfolded, Floridians braced for Hurricane Milton. The storm made landfall in Siesta Key Oct. 9 as a Category 3 storm, devastating many Florida communities already impacted by Helene.
Both the president and Harris have condemned Trump’s rhetoric as Americans work to rebuild. Playing “politics with people’s heart break … is unconscionable,” the vice president shared Oct. 13. “Now is not a time to incite fear. It is not right to make people feel alone. That is not what leaders, as we know, do in crisis.”
The Republican and Democratic response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and climate change in general, is emblematic of the larger divide between the nation’s two major political parties.
It’s also why Watermark is proud to endorse Kamala Harris for President of the United States, for these reasons and more:
PROJECT 2025
Organized by The Heritage Foundation — an anti-LGBTQ+, right-wing “think tank” — Project 2025 is a presidential transition project. Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, the vice president’s running mate and another longtime LGBTQ+ ally, both oppose it.
Its “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” was drafted by individuals who worked in or alongside Trump’s first administration. While the former president has said he hasn’t read it, many of its policy proposals align with the positions of his campaign.
Trump’s running mate U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, who like him has a history of supporting anti-LGBTQ+ policies and laws, also has close ties to the foundation’s founder. Their nearly 1,000-page playbook outlines how a conservative administration can “bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.”
“The threat that Project 2025 poses to America is especially sinister for LGBTQ+ people and our rights,” warns the Human Rights Campaign, which endorsed Harris in July. The group says it “would take a wrecking ball to our rights, freedoms, democracy and future.”
“It is the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, and if enacted, it would be a takeover of our government by the most conservative and radical wings of the country, threatening our rights, our freedoms and our democracy,” HRC explains. “For LGBTQ+ people, the agenda would roll back the gains we’ve made toward full equality in nearly every area of our lives — from marriage to health care, to education and the workplace.”
On page 284 of the document, Project 2025 calls on a reversal of the Biden-Harris administration’s focus on “LGBTQ+ equity.” On page 481, it advocates for enacting “a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”
The plan would also remove nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans from every federal regulation. Page 584 calls on the next president to “direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc.”
Project 2025 would restrict implementation of LGBTQ+ civil rights protections in the workplace as well, detailed on page 584, and would impact adoption and foster care services for potential LGBTQ+ parents. On LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools, it calls on adopting federal laws or policies mirroring Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law.
HRC also notes that Project 2025 “would withdraw financial support for medically necessary health care for transgender Americans through multiple funding streams, impacting HIV/AIDS programs, public health research, health benefits for servicemembers and their families, and more.”
“As harmful as the first Trump presidency was for LGBTQ+ Americans, the Trump-Vance Project 2025 agenda makes it seem quaint,” HRC Senior Director of Legal Policy Cathryn Oakley has said. “It would give Trump unprecedented powers to dismantle our rights and undo many of the protections the LGBTQ+ community have spent decades fighting to gain.”
The Harris-Walz campaign envisions another path forward.
“Vice President Harris has spent her career fighting for the rights and freedoms of the American people, including LGBTQ+ Americans,” says Michael Womack, the campaign’s statewide press secretary for Florida.
“As Vice President, she helped pass the Respect for Marriage Act and, as President, she’ll fight to pass the Equality Act to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans into law,” he continues. “While Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s extreme Project 2025 agenda would strip back our rights and drag us back into the past, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are fighting for a new way forward and will protect our families, our communities and our future.”
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
Project 2025 would also build upon the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion. In a 5-4 vote, the body’s conservative majority — including three justices appointed by Trump — overturned nearly 50 years of American precedent in 2022.
It’s something the former president has boasted about since. “After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,” Trump said in 2023.
Abortion policies and reproductive rights reverted to each state after the ruling, a number of which have expanded access in the years since. Voters defeated anti-abortion ballot measures in Kansas, Kentucky and Montana and have approved constitutional amendments in Ohio, Michigan, California and Vermont to expand access.
This November, similar measures will appear on ballots in 10 states — including Florida, which currently bans abortion after about six weeks. According to the reproductive rights group Floridians Protecting Freedom, voting yes on the state’s Amendment 4 “is the only way to stop Florida’s dangerous abortion ban and limit government interference in important medical decisions.”
The matter directly impacts many LGBTQ+ Floridians. The Williams Institute found in 2022 that unplanned pregnancies are more common among cisgender, bisexual women than their heterosexual peers and noted that transgender people assigned female at birth can become pregnant and face difficulties obtaining contraception and other reproductive health services.
Trump has indicated he will vote against Florida’s Amendment 4 while Harris has spoken out against abortion bans across the nation. The vice president has vowed to restore Roe v. Wade should she win the presidency with a Democratic Congress.
“Vice President Harris has traveled America and heard the stories of women hurt by Trump abortion bans … all because doctors are afraid they may go to jail for caring for their patients,” the campaign notes. “As President, she will never allow a national abortion ban to become law. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, she will sign it.”
DOWN BALLOT SUPPORT
Harris has raised a record amount of money since joining the presidential race in July, including $81 million in her first 24 hours as a candidate. That momentum hasn’t slowed.
According to Federal Election Commission filings released Oct. 15, the Harris Victory Fund and Harris Action Fund — joint fundraising efforts between the Harris-Walz campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic Party committees — raised $652 million between July 1 and Sept. 30.
That almost doubles the funds raised by the Trump 47 Committee and Trump National Committee in the same period, and Harris and her affiliated committees have raised over $1 billion in total since entering the race.
The vice president has utilized these gains to help Democrats down the ballot. Last month, the campaign and DNC announced they were sending nearly $25 million to support Democrats nationwide.
The unprecedented investment includes races in Florida, where the DNC made a $400,000 contribution to the state party. Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said Sept. 30 that the “investment shows the party’s commitment of fighting for Florida,” noting that “Democrats all across the country will now have the resources to compete.”
“The vice president believes that this race is about mobilizing the entire country, in races at every level, to fight for our freedoms and our economic opportunity,” Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon also shared. “That’s why the vice president has made the decision to invest a historic sum into electing Democrats up and down the ballot.”
The funds could help shift Florida’s political landscape. Critical congressional races include a U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Rick Scott, who has long supported anti-LGBTQ+ measures. He faces Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who was endorsed by HRC in February.
“Florida has been ground zero for attacks on democracy and equal rights, but instead of doing what’s right for our communities, Rick Scott proudly stands with the radical state legislators launching these vile attacks and terrorizing our LGBTQ+ residents,” she said at the time. “I will never stop fighting for our LGBTQ+ community and for Floridians’ fundamental freedoms.”
In the U.S. House, ally Maxwell Alejandro Frost hopes to retain his District 10 Central Florida seat as he faces off against Republican Willie J. Montague. He spoke out against Project 2025 and more with Watermark in August, vowing to fight for LGBTQ+ Floridians in another term.
“I’ve learned how our LGBTQ+ family is disproportionately impacted by every issue under the sun,” he said. “I am committed to fighting for equality, justice, and the protection of all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, full stop.”
Democrat Whitney Fox’s race has also made headlines. The LGBTQ+ ally hopes to unseat Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who was among the Florida Republicans to vote against funding FEMA, to represent Tampa Bay’s District 13.
“Throughout my career in Pinellas County, I have stood up as a strong ally to the LGBTQ+ community and will continue to do so in D.C.,” she’s told Watermark. “I will advocate for the Equality Act and expansion of federal civil rights laws to include protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Florida Democrats also hope to end the state legislature’s Republican supermajority, which has passed a record amount of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation supported by Governor Ron DeSantis. Laws include SB 254, which bans gender-affirming care for transgender minors and restricts it for adults.
Equality Florida believes the party has a chance. The group’s political action committee has supported LGBTQ+ candidates like state Sen.-elect Carlos Guillermo Smith, who will represent Central Florida’s District 17 after winning his election in June and is working to send the state’s first transgender legislator to the Florida House this November.
Democrat Ashley Brundage is running to represent District 65 and Democrat Nathan Bruemmer is running to represent the region’s District 61. Equality Florida has endorsed each of them.
“We believe Florida is in play,” EQFL Deputy Director Stratton Pollitzer said when the group endorsed Harris for president last month. “Floridians are turning against the failed, extremist policies of DeSantis and Trump.
“Millions of Floridians successfully placed abortion access on the November ballot, which will drive turnout among new and younger voters eager for change,” he continued. “A rainbow wave of fired up, pro-equality voters for Kamala Harris is building, and it’s set to crash down on Trump in November.”
The general election is Nov. 5 and early voting is underway through Nov. 3. Dates, times and locations vary, visit MyFloridaElections.com/Contact-Your-SOE.
Learn more about Kamala Harris and her commitment to LGBTQ+ Americans at KamalaHarris.com/Issues, and view Watermark’s LGBTQ+ Voters’ Guide for more details about local races.
