Biden campaign looks to mobilize LGBTQ voters with Pride Month media blitz

President Biden’s reelection campaign on Monday announced plans to launch new organizing efforts and a paid media blitz aimed at attracting LGBTQ voters during Pride Month. 

The campaign plans to have a presence at more than 200 Pride events in 23 states, including each of the battleground states that will decide November’s election, according to a news release. The campaign’s LGBTQ voter initiative, Out for Biden-Harris, will work with LGBTQ clubs, caucuses, councils and grassroots networks across the country to mobilize voters and leverage the administration’s relationships with influential LGBTQ rights advocates. 

At the end of the month, Biden and first lady Jill Biden, who kicked off Pride Month with an appearance at Pittsburgh’s annual Pride festival on Sunday, will host an LGBTQ fundraising event in New York City. 

“Thanks to the tireless work of LGBTQ+ organizers, our community has made enormous strides to equality, and thanks to President Biden, we haven’t just undone the harm imposed by Trump, we’ve taken more action than ever to expand rights and freedoms for every single American,” said Sam Alleman, the Biden-Harris campaign’s national LGBTQ+ engagement director. “All of that progress is on the line this November.” 

Biden, who frequently touts himself and his administration as the most pro-LGBTQ in history, expanded during his first term federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people and condemned violence and threats made against the community. In 2022, Biden signed legislation safeguarding marriage equality. 

But the president has fallen short on some promises made to LGBTQ voters, including a pledge to safeguard access to gender-affirming health care as more Republican-led states move to ban treatment for minors. 

On the other hand, former President Trump has promised to enact at least a dozen policies targeting transgender rights if he is reelected, including a nationwide ban on transgender student-athletes competing in accordance with their gender identity and a federal law that recognizes only two genders. He has also vowed to punish health care providers who administer gender-affirming medical care to minors and roll back new transgender student protections “on day one” of his presidency. 

Trump as president barred transgender individuals from serving openly in the military, gutted Obama-era nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people and rejected requests from U.S. embassies to fly rainbow flags during Pride Month. But he’s still been able to rally LGBTQ conservatives to his side: His run in 2020 was endorsed by the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ advocacy group.

Recent polling suggests the former president leads Biden in key battleground states and maintains a slight 1.1 percentage point advantage nationally, based on The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s average of 725 polls pitting the two against each other. Nearly 70 percent of LGBTQ likely voters surveyed in January by the LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD said they preferred Biden over Trump. 

In the same survey, more than half of voters said they would not vote for a candidate that supports restricting transgender rights. 

LGBTQ voters played a key role in Biden’s victory in 2020, a Washington Post analysis found. More than 7 percent of U.S. adults in a March Gallup poll said they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or “something other than heterosexual,” including more than 20 percent of Americans aged 18-25. 

But while LGBTQ voters are more likely to support Democrats in elections, not all of them are set on voting for Biden this year. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, in May committed $15 million to help reelect the president, noting that roughly a third of “equality voters” — who prioritize LGBTQ rights at the ballot box — are at risk of not voting.