Fairness Celebrates Election of KY's 1st Openly-LGBTQ State Representative Keturah Herron in a Landslide

(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) The Fairness Campaign celebrates the election of Keturah Herron in tonight's Special Election for Kentucky House District 42. Endorsed by the Fairness Campaign's political action committee C-FAIR and the national Victory Fund, Representative-Elect Keturah Herron will become Kentucky's first openly-LGBTQ state representative.

With all precincts reporting 90 minutes after polls closed, Herron had amassed a landslide victory with 1,950 votes to her opponent's 119 votes.

"We couldn't be more excited about tonight's historic election of Kentucky's first openly-LGBTQ state representative, Keturah Herron," shared Fairness Campaign Executive Director Chris Hartman. "Representative-Elect Herron will fill a nearly 15-year gap in LGBTQ representation in the Kentucky General Assembly, and we need her now more than ever before. With the Kentucky House poised to vote on an anti-trans sports bill in the next several days, Representative-Elect Herron will fight fiercely for transgender kids and all LGBTQ Kentuckians in this critical time."

While Herron will be the first openly--LGBTQ member of the Kentucky House, in 2003 former Lexington State Senator Ernesto Scorsone made history as the first openly LGBTQ member of the Kentucky General Assembly when he came out in a speech at Governor Paul Patton's Equal Employment Opportunity Conference. Since Scorsone was appointed judge in 2008, there has been no openly LGBTQ member of the Kentucky General Assembly.

Founded in 1991, the Fairness Campaign is Kentucky's broad-based community effort dedicated to equal rights for LGBTQ people. Its primary goal is comprehensive civil rights legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and to dismantle systemic racism.