THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

"That sounds like a wonderful growth, and we've reached a tipping point in our society with awareness of our issues—but there are 50,000 elected officials in this country, so 450 is just a small fraction," said Moodie-Mills, who is based in Washington, D.C., during a recent trip to Chicago. She manages a staff of 18 and a budget of about $4 million.

Victory Fund is a political action committee dedicated to helping elect more elected officials who are openly LGBT. Moodie-Mills explained that the organization's mission is even more critical now that marriage equality is the law of the land.

"There are still 28 states in this country where LGBTs have no protections from discrimination," she said. "Those 28 states are what we call 'low-equality states.' … What we know to be true is that every state that has passed, through their legislature, some kind of same-sex marriage recognition—or some kind of major LGBT equality measure—in its statehouse has only done so after it's elected an actual gay person to that statehouse. When LGBT persons are elected to office, they are driving the policies that impact our lives."

Victory Fund's next step is "amassing political power" to secure the community's gains and prevent conservatives from rolling those achievements back.

"We're interested in diversifying the pipeline of [LGBT] leadership," Moodie-Mills added. "You look around the country, and we don't have many people of color or many trans candidates running for office, so we try to focus on that [part of the] pipeline, and that helps us spot critical races that would be what we call game-changers."

Victory Fund is currently endorsing about 70 candidates across the country. Thirteen of those are what the organization calls "spotlight candidates," upon whom the organization focuses its resources and energy. Moodie-Mills explained, "We have a lesbian who could be the mayor of Salt Lake City Utah. We also have a trans woman who won a primary for the race of city council in Midvale City, Utah. We have another queer woman who is running to be mayor of Charleston, South Carolina—that would be a game-changer."

Moodie-Mills, who was appointed in March 2015, is the first woman, the first lesbian and the first person of color to head a national LGBT-rights organization. She's focused many of her energies on ensuring that Victory Fund-sponsored candidates are aware of intersectionality, and can speak on LGBT rights as they overlap with other issues affecting the community, such as racism or poverty. After a mass shooting took place in a Charleston church in June, Ginny Deerin, the openly bisexual mayoral candidate whom Victory Fund was endorsing, was able to address the related issues head-on in her campaign.

"The way that we do our work has evolved, but the core of our mission is just as relevant as it's ever been," Moodie-Mills said.