Gay candidates won two congressional primary elections in Arizona Tuesday, and if elected would make history as the first state with both a bisexual and gays representing their citizens in the House of Representative.
Democrat and former state lawmaker Matt Heinz defeated rival Victoria Steele, and will challenge Republican Martha McSally in November for the 2nd congressional district seat. In the first district, out Republican Paul Babeu knocked out four rivals for the right to take on Democrat Tom O’Halleran. Babeau is a local sheriff who thinks marriage equality should be left up to individual states and has made a crackdown of illegal immigration a major issue in the campaign.
Heinz, a physician, is making his second run for national office after failing to win Gabby Giffords seat. He outlined his campaign agenda for the general election Tuesday night: “Martha McSally has voted multiple times against funding Planned Parenthood, or has voted multiple times against equal pay for women or voted against protecting LGBT people in the workplace,” Heinz said. “Those are not the values that are consistent with Southern Arizona.”
Babeu has some work to do to put controversy behind him. He was publicly linked to Heinz and his boyfriend in a scandalous article about a potential three-way in 2012. That same year a boyfriend from Mexico sued him for $1 million for allegedly threatening to deport him if the boyfriend outed the sheriff.
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It’s been almost four years since Arizona voters sent Kyrsten Sinema to Washington as the nation’s first openly bisexual member of Congress.