Brian Sims is the Ultimate Election Warrior

“I’m not in elected office right now, but I’m the happiest I have ever been.”

Brian Sims is reflecting on his life path outside of politics following an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor, including his engagement to fiancé Alex Drakos and his current role as CEO of the pro-LGBTQ political action committee Agenda PAC.

“Being in office was not a pathway to happiness at all,” the former Pennsylvania State Representative says during an hour-long interview with Metro Weekly. “It was a very hard job. It was a very dangerous job. I was in a bulletproof vest for a lot of years due to that job.

“Now, I’m in a place in my life where I get to spend every day fighting for the values that I believe the most in, and the ways that I have learned how to do that from a lot of different life experiences, and I get to do it with somebody by side that I am just deeply in love with. That’s a win I wish on everybody.”

Despite being out of office since January 2023, Sims, who last sat with Metro Weekly for a cover interview in 2019, remains a recognizable, yet sometimes controversial figure, both within the LGBTQ community and on the national political scene.

Never one to mince words or engage in what left-leaning activists deride as “respectability politics,” Sims has always been outspoken, blunt, even crude at times, flipping the bird to former Vice President Mike Pence, verbally confronting pro-life protesters outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in his Philadelphia Center City neighborhood, and sparring with his former Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives on everything from their refusal to consider pro-LGBTQ bills to their flouting of COVID-19 masking protocols.

Sims has even found himself in the crosshairs of Mark Segal, the politically influential publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, who penned at least two separate editorials in 2020 and 2022 in which he eviscerated Sims for the Philadelphia Democrat’s at-times abrasive personality and his failure to work with Republicans to pass a comprehensive LGBTQ nondiscrimination bill during his 10 years as a state representative.

Segal accused Sims of using his public profile to build a “national brand” for himself at the expense of building the relationships needed to achieve political progress for LGBTQ people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Of course, Sims, who made history after becoming Pennsylvania’s first out gay legislator upon being sworn into office in 2013, has invariably developed a national brand, becoming somewhat of a celebrity in gay circles, especially in East Coast cities.

That’s due, in part, to the historic nature of his win, his visible profile on social media, complete with eye-catching tweets and Instagram videos, and his striking male physique (courtesy of his time as a Division II linebacker at Bloomsburg University), scruffy visage, and piercing blue eyes. Those physical attributes prompted some of his thirstier gay followers to objectify the former lawmaker in comments left on his social media accounts. But Sims is perfectly content in his current relationship, and plans to marry Drakos in September of next year.

“I find that my fiancé’s approach to life and to other people — and to being a good sport about things, his empathy — are deeply attractive to me, and are emblematic of the kinds of things and people that I want in my life,” says the 46-year-old. “Doing this work is hard. Doing it in love is a little less hard. He’s not just somebody that supports me, he believes deeply in the issues that I spend my time fighting for, and that he fights for, in his own ways.”

Sims was tapped to lead Agenda PAC in September. As head of a nationally-focused pro-LGBTQ organization, he is mindful of the fact that the current political atmosphere –- and particularly the rhetoric employed by right-wingers in the culture wars — has become much more toxic as it pertains to LGBTQ people.

So-called “anti-woke” conservatives now regularly, and gleefully, accuse LGBTQ advocates of “grooming” children, spreading disease, harming the family unit, leading to the disintegration of society, or being the cause of any number of social ills — with some figures even accusing them of bringing down God’s wrath on humanity in the form of natural disasters and pandemics, or calling for the executions of LGBTQ people.

“I think a lot of that rhetoric is coming back, in large part, because it was successful the first time around in the short term, in recruiting people and galvanizing people and creating fear,” Sims says. “But one of the things that history teaches us is that those strategies fail in the long term. I don’t lend one ounce of credence to a lot of those tropes because I know better. Does it mean we don’t have to address them? Sometimes we have to address them, but a failed strategy is a failed strategy, and they’re welcome to employ one.”

What gives Sims hope about the resilience of the LGBTQ community is its ability to fight back against the slanderous lies and rhetoric of anti-LGBTQ politicians. That’s why, as CEO of Agenda PAC, he’s particularly enthusiastic about using the political process to target some of the most vehemently anti-LGBTQ — but also electorally vulnerable –- elected officials throughout the United States. To that end, Agenda PAC has compiled a list of 10 Republican politicians dubbed “The Hate Squad” that the organization is targeting for defeat this cycle.

“You generally only hear about your own elected officials from those same officials, touting their own accomplishments,” Sims says, lamenting the dearth of local political coverage and the American public’s general ignorance of (and avoidance of) news and current events. “Constituents, by and large, don’t know about their representatives’ awful records. So what we do is come in, we analyze the records of these terrible incumbents, and we point to the issues that their voters don’t know about that we think are most likely to get people to vote against them.”

For instance, one of Agenda PAC’s targets is U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, a Republican based in Riverside County, California, whose latest district, post-redistricting, now includes Democratic-leaning territory, including the heavily LGBTQ city of Palm Springs.

Despite amassing a generally anti-LGBTQ record since being sworn into Congress in 1993, Calvert — who during his 1994 reelection campaign, ran ads “outing” then-challenger Mark Takano (who has since been elected to Congress in his own right) — has more recently moderated his stances on some gay rights-related issues, downplaying his earlier opposition to marriage equality and voting in favor of some pro-LGBTQ bills.

LGBTQ advocates have criticized the change as politically motivated and largely superficial. Sims also notes that, two decades ago, Calvert was named one of the “Most Corrupt Members of Congress” for four straight years in a row by the government watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — a designation that the congressman’s Democratic opponent, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Rollins, who is seeking a rematch from his 2022 narrow loss to Calvert, has attempted to highlight in his campaign.

“When the process for identifying who these most beatable bigots happens, figuring out who the most anti-LGBTQ elected officials are in the country isn’t all that hard,” Sims says. “Calvert certainly stands out as one of the most anti-LGBTQ. Even though he hasn’t led some of the charges, he has been one of the longest, most consistent anti-LGBTQ voices in all of Congress. What he’s trying to do now is literally have a complete sea change, a 30-plus year change in who he is and what he is, and it’s too late.”

With respect to the presidential election, Sims, who identifies as a Progressive, is aware of the dissatisfaction with the Biden administration — and by extension, Vice President Kamala Harris — within left-leaning circles, particularly with respect to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, but also with regard to economic issues like inflation, stagnating wages, soaring housing prices, the failure of Congress to rein in price-gouging, and the elimination of progressive priorities from Democratic-backed legislation. But Sims says his support of Harris is much more practical and urges others on the Left to follow suit.

“The root of being a progressive is progress,” he says. “How and where and when do we move things forward? I’m a progressive not because of what I believe, but because of what I want to put into action. And I believe having Kamala Harris as the president, having Tim Walz as the vice president, is obviously, without question, the most clear path to being able to advocate for progressive policies, having ears and eyes within a White House, and within a federal government that will be conducive to lobbying, conducive to advocacy.”

Sims says Trump not only opposes progressive policies, but the mechanisms that progressives have historically used to achieve their goals, whereas disagreements with Harris are generally more nuanced and rooted in strategy or the scope of proposed policies, rather than outright opposition on principle.

“Kamala Harris is someone that believes deeply in so many of the issues that I believe in — not all of the issues that I believe in — but what she has shown is an absolute ability to understand that our system is designed. And on those issues where we don’t agree, I have opportunities to change her mind,” he says.

“As a progressive, that is the single most important thing to me. How can I move forward and progress on women’s and reproductive rights, racial and ethnic justice, LGBTQ civil rights, the environment, and the lives of immigrants? And I can have someone who disagrees with all progress on those things and disagrees with my ability to advocate for them. Or I can have somebody that agrees with me on lots of them that has disagreements on nuance, but fully supports my ability to try to change her mind. That’s what I want.”

METRO WEEKLY: You’re working for Agenda PAC, but you used to be in politics as an elected official. What’s it like being on the other side of the aisle as a person doing activism and fundraising?

BRIAN SIMS: My end game has always been the same. My goal in life is civil rights, right? If you asked me at 25, at 35, at 45 or now at 46 years old, what do I want in this world? I want civil rights, and I want them for all people. And I have used my time as a legislator, my time as an attorney, my time working with the nonprofit public interest sector and my time working with enterprise and Fortune 100 companies to find ways of moving us a step closer to equality. So how does it feel? It feels like a different way for me to use the skills I built in the legislature to bring together people and impact policy who might not have been doing it otherwise. And that feels really good.

MW: Let’s talk about Agenda PAC and its main purpose, as well as some of the races you’re targeting.

SIMS: I was not involved when Agenda PAC was founded about two-and-a-half years ago. It was a group of campaign professionals and political scientists who were utilizing the advancements in sunshine laws and what we could learn about elected officials through their co-sponsorship memos, their prime sponsorship memos, their own words, and whatnot.

What we could learn about them has changed pretty dramatically over the last several years as machine learning has increased, as the ability to really analyze very large data sets and overlay data sets has increased. [But] this group wanted to use that kind of an approach to identifying not just the worst of the worst elected officials for LGBTQ+ equality in the country, but those that sat on a very particular margin, where they could lose in any given election cycle with the right challenger. Essentially, they wanted to identify the most beatable bigots in every election cycle.

Last year, what Agenda PAC identified as their top targets were the Moms for Liberty, and they beat 14 of the 15 Moms for Liberty candidates. But this year, before I was there, they decided to take a different approach, to turn that lens as national as possible and look at all levels of races that they could. And what they did was they overlaid that group of the worst anti-LGBTQ elected officials in the country and those that they believed could be beaten in the upcoming election cycle. And they found the crossover. And they labeled that “The Hate Squad.” It is the 10 most beatable bigots in the United States right now in elected office. It’s one person in Congress and nine in state legislatures.

These are the races we believe where intervention from our PAC [can] teach local voters about the terrible records of these hateful, bigoted elected officials. And not even on the issues of equality sometimes. Our targeting is about finding the issues that will move voters in those elected officials’ districts. It’s not always equality, but using what we know about their anti-equality record to fuel our research to look into what issues will most motivate their own voters. I think we’re going to beat 10 out of 10 candidates this year or be involved in 10 out of 10 winning campaigns.

MW: I want to visit the current election landscape. In terms of the fundamentals, what’s going on with the presidential election and who’s favored?

SIMS: As we’re recording this conversation, we are 15 days out from the election. And if asked, I would rather be us than them for a couple of key reasons. First, our resources. The over a billion dollars that the Harris campaign has now raised is unprecedented. When people ask if she can do what others have done, nobody has ever done what she has done in this regard. She’s the greatest of all time with respect to fundraising, but we all know from recent memory that fundraising doesn’t mean you win elections. It’s largely what you do with it.

What I see from the Harris campaign is two things, a very disciplined, a very well coordinated strategy that includes all of the swing states and then some. And I think that “and then some” is really important. There are places that we’re seeing now, maybe not in play, but are important in ways that they weren’t earlier. And I think we’re seeing almost an entire other model of support that’s almost independent of the Harris-Walz campaign. The “Left-Handers for Harris,” the “Musicians for Harris,” the “Writers for Harris,” “Dog Owners for Harris,” all those things matter. People are turning their book clubs into “Readers for Harris” clubs, and they’re turning their movie night into “Postcards for Harris” nights. And I don’t see that from the Trump campaign.

What I see from the Trump campaign is this reliance on those big banners off the backs of trucks, the homemade signs, the stuff that probably wasn’t bought from the actual campaign itself, thinking that that is somehow going to push them over the edge. And what I know about politics is that retail politics matter, how many times you’re in somebody’s doorway. There are literally hundreds of thousands of doors being knocked each day in America on behalf of the Harris campaign, hundreds of thousands of phone calls that are happening each day, because of the Harris campaign. Those things combined tell me that the ground game is working.

We’re seeing polls, as you just pointed out, polls don’t mean a whole lot to me anymore. There’s going to be a revolution hopefully in polling, where we start to see them match up to what we see in elections. But, right now, I am seeing the fundraising, the discipline, the messaging, the communication, and the ground game really match up and coordinate very, very well on the Harris-Walz campaign. And I’m not seeing that from the Trump campaign.

On the Trump side, I know they are obviously having major fundraising issues. They raised maybe a quarter of what the Harris team raised in September. I know that at some point, the RNC, under Lara Trump’s leadership, announced that if candidates wanted to include Trump on their literature, that they also had to pay to the campaign. And I think that stopped a lot of people from including Trump in their literature.

We’re not hearing where campaign offices from the Trump campaign are in a lot of these states, and I think that smoke and mirrors is both reminiscent of what we saw in 2020, and that’s why they probably feel okay about it. But for me, it is also an indication that they don’t have the resources to have a ground game and to be doing a lot of the work on a large scale that we’re seeing from the Harris campaign.

MW: Looking at down-ticket races, in addition to the presidential race, we’re seeing a lot of anti-transgender rhetoric, where Republicans have really leaned into ads about trans women in sports and, to a lesser extent, some bans on gender-affirming care. To that end, we’ve seen Democrats like Colin Allred and Sherrod Brown distancing themselves from transgender issues as if they’re somehow not going to be tied to them just by having a “D” next to their name. What do you think of that tactic, and how should Democrats be responding to fear-mongering over transgender issues?

SIMS: I think that one of the things that we need to understand, first and foremost, is that part of the rationale for these anti-trans bills is because trans people have always been at the forefront, the leadership of LGBTQ+ advancement. This is as much about targeting our leaders as it is about our future. Going after young trans people is about targeting the future of LGBTQ+ equality and civil rights.

This isn’t about just finding a part of our community that they can pick off and when they’re done with them, they will move on to other groups. It’s more insidious than that. This is really targeted at going after our leadership and our future because that’s what the history of our movement looks like.

To your point, though. Abandoning trans people, in any way, in policy, right now as Republicans are attacking them, is a mistake. But it is also the job of cis queer people to be leading that response. It is cowardice for us to always require the trans leaders in our community to have to be the loudest in combating transphobia, which is what this is. Right now, the definition of allyship is what our trans brothers, sisters, neighbors need from us. They need cis queer people to say to other cis people, “You are wrong, and here is why.”

The messaging here is insidious. More Republican men in Congress have been arrested for sexual misconduct in bathrooms than all trans people in American history. And yet the bathroom issue is what drove this at one time. And now this is the issue that they’re trying to shift the focus toward, with zero evidence, anywhere in the United States, to back up these assertions that girls or women are somehow at risk of boys or men entering their secure spaces to do anything to them, or to rob them of experiences in sport. [This tactic] is about trying to use machismo and fear and a lack of understanding about trans people to target our leadership, to target our future. And when we let it slide, it’s only cowardice to force trans people to have to address it. We’re hurting our own interests, and we know, categorically, that we are better off when we are all standing together. It is in everyone’s best interest for us to address those things head on.

MW: What do you think about Elon Musk and his recent ploy to get people to support Trump by giving away $1 million a day to registered voters who sign his political action committee’s petition supporting the First and Second Amendments?

SIMS: I think it is illegal. That is an illegal gambling operation running in Pennsylvania. That is a violation of Pennsylvania law. I think that the Pennsylvania Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney General, and the Department of Justice should be involved. I think what he’s doing is such a clear, obvious bastardization of our political process.

MW: How effective do you think that’s going to be?

SIMS: Is it going to be effective? It is. It is. It’s just like targeting anti-trans people will make some people come out and vote on that issue, and they do know that. And these are issues that are tested, with millions of dollars being spent determining that these are the right issues to lean on. Do I think it will work? Yes, I do think Elon Musk will get a certain percentage of the population to vote. I don’t know what that percentage is. It’s impossible for us to know, but also, knowing it [is happening] means that we’ve got to do something about it.

I think it’s part of the reason that there is such an all-hands-on-deck moment happening with Pennsylvania, for example. Right now, people with Pennsylvania heritage are coming back from all over the country, going back to their old neighborhoods, to their families and campaigning very hard, like their rights depend on it — because obviously they do.

MW: You’re from Pennsylvania. What are some indicators, if any, that you’re seeing of engagement by the center-left and left-leaning voter coalition in Pennsylvania?

SIMS: There’s Philadelphia County and the counties that surround Philadelphia County. Those counties are storied politically, both nationally and locally. They often reflect what’s happening in national politics, and often have a major impact on what happens in state politics. So Bucks County, Berks County, Chester County, Delaware County, Montgomery County. I’m going to be paying a lot of attention to the ground game in those counties. There are many suburban white women, which are unfortunately still very much of a toss-up group in this election, but there are also a lot of college-educated people in those counties. There’s a lot of people that believe in equality. Almost all of those counties have LGBTQ+ equality built into their local laws. And so they know what it’s like to live in places with civil rights, and I hope that’s very motivating for them.

I’m looking at Pittsburgh, no question. Allegheny County, and what’s been happening with the leadership in Allegheny County with their county executive and their mayor has been really fantastic. They are growing the base of Democratic voters out there.

The thing that is most scary right now, and the reason that a lot of the eyes are on Pennsylvania, is that in 2020, when Joe Biden won Pennsylvania, he won by just about 80,000 votes. And the problem with that is that there were 650,000 more registered Democrats in Pennsylvania at that time. Democrats had a 650,000 vote registration lead, and we only won by 80,000 votes. Republicans in those four years have cut that registration lead in half to 335,000 votes. And so what does that mean for votes? What does that mean for Election Day votes? The early returns give me a lot of hope. We’re seeing a lot more Democrats voting in early returns, but Republicans historically are more likely to vote on Election Day.

We should be focusing on Pennsylvania because in almost all competitions, you can identify a few things that are going to be the real deciders. And Pennsylvania is in that spotlight right now [as a crucial battleground state] in this election. We know what it takes to get votes. We know what we need to do. And so, again, I come back to I’d rather be us than them.

MW: How have you seen politics as having changed over the years?

SIMS: I’d say I’ve seen it change in two ways. One, the optics of politics and our politicians. In the time that I have been in office, the rise of social media, and how that first started with young people and then it moved on to people in the media, and then people with very visible careers, and then to politicians.

After the 2008 presidential campaign, we were never going to go back. Social media was always going to be a part of campaigns, but it has largely become a part of governing as well, where people can micro-target their supporters and send messages to only the people in their circles who agree with them. And so I think a lot of politicians have learned to do the triage and now have the digital capacity to do the triage of deciding if messages are populist in general or just populist to their district or populist to their donors or their voters. And they’re able to say “F all” to everyone else that isn’t someone that is going to get them a vote or get them resources to win votes. And I think a lot less politicians who serve in collaborative bodies, for example, think about the impact of their policies on the whole body. They tend to now really focus exclusively on how something’s going to impact their own district.

The other thing is misinformation. There is just no question about it that the adherence to the mechanisms of disinformation and misinformation that the political right is utilizing in droves right now is shocking. It’s almost immeasurable the impact that it is having on all of us in terms of discourse. And when we do break free from this cycle and we do begin to put in place stopgaps to fix this, we’re going to take a real deep sigh of relief and look back and realize how deeply manipulated so many people that we love have been and how manipulated all of us have been in these cycles. That is not something I think I could’ve predicted.

MW: Do you feel politicians are making more appeals to culture-war issues than policy?

SIMS: I think we’re all more approachable for one another now. I think a lot of the basic instincts of human beings to relate to one another are kicking in, but in some bad ways. There used to be distance between us and politicians. What they looked like was a lot less important to us. Now, with some very obvious examples of that being not true, by and large, once someone made it into office, what they looked like didn’t matter to us. And so the way to relate to them was on issues, on policies, and you had some policies that you knew about that they supported.

But now that we can see these people up close, now that you can comment on the things that they’re doing, now that you can have, in many cases, a discourse with them, finding out who they are, what they look like, what they do in their spare time, what their families are like, and what their communities are like has become a lot more important to people, because those are often the ties that bind.

Those are very relatable things, whereas someone’s policy on insurance may not be as important as that their kids go to your school or that they also like to hunt or that they’re also a jogger. Those things have suddenly started to matter because those are how we relate to one another. And that can be really good for Democrats and it can be really bad for Democrats. And we see that every day in politics.

MW: Do you miss your time in office?

SIMS: I certainly miss some of the people that I worked with. The teams that I had this privilege of working with will forever be some of the greatest teams that I ever got to work with, and I got to help assemble. There are moments with my colleagues that are part of my core memories and formed who I am. There are also parts of my time [in Harrisburg] that were very dangerous, that made me feel very unsafe, that made me question why I was there and what I was accomplishing. And I don’t miss those moments.

Like all things, it’s complicated. I was, and remain, completely grateful for how many people in my life that I asked for support to get there, people that I knew, everyone that I knew, and thousands of people I will never meet, in order to do the things that I was sent there to do. And in large part, I was answered with support every single time I asked. And so the gratitude I have from that is so overwhelming some days that there’s nothing to miss.

MW: Do you ever wish you had a Democratic majority in the House?

SIMS: I always wish I’d had a majority, and I’m grateful that they do in the House now. I spent 10 years in one of the great false minorities in state legislative history. My state was one of the great gerrymandered states in America.

I helped write the Marriage Equality Act and the Equal Pay Act and a comprehensive sex ed bill. And the reason those bills didn’t become law while I was there had nothing to do with Pennsylvanians’ support for those issues. It had everything to do with cheating, and Republicans in Pennsylvania gerrymandering and robbing voters of a Democratic majority that they earned and deserve.

MW: Many people, particularly on the political left, are very anxious this cycle. Public polls seem to have varying results and outcomes regarding predictive value, some other election models say it’s a clear victory for one side or another. What is your advice to people who are angsty about this election?

SIMS: My advice is to be worked up, to be anxious. There’s a lot to be worked up about. There’s a lot to be anxious about. Trust your gut, trust your emotional health to be able to handle, over the next couple of weeks, what we have to do to make sure that we win.

The simple fact of the matter is that pretending that we’re way out ahead is a mistake. Pretending that this is anything other than our race to lose is a mistake. To win, it’s going to take a lot of phone banking, a lot of door-knocking, a lot of postcards. Pretty soo, it’s just going to be about who you can get on the phone or whose door you can knock on.

And that’s what I want people to think about. I want people to be nervous. Being nervous is right. Being nervous means that you know what’s at stake, and I hope those nerves catapult you forward, to overcome inertia and take action. Be anxious, be nervous, walk up to the edge of fear, to the point where you can still act, and then act with all of those emotions like we might lose –- because we might lose.

MW: What do you define as the stakes in this election?

SIMS: If Donald Trump wins, we will see the structural changes in government that have been laid out in Project 2025 happen, and they will happen overlaid with the deep MAGA, white nationalist issues and policies laid out in Agenda 47 by the Trump campaign.

We will see the worst combination of a strategic dismantling of the federal government, of the things that support Americans, and a strategic militarizing and arming up of those parts of the federal government that they believe can be used to attack us.

And it will be fed by an ideology that is deeply racist, deeply sexist, deeply transphobic, deeply homophobic, deeply misogynistic, and deeply xenophobic. And there’s just no other way around it.

This will be unlike any other presidency before, including the prior Trump presidency, because the Supreme Court has said that the next president — and the current president — have carte blanche for the most part to do a lot of what they want to do, whether good, bad, or extremely ugly. A second Trump presidency would be structurally and ideologically unlike anything a living American has ever seen.

If [Democrats] win this election, and I think we’re going to, it will be because five, six, seven, eight million Americans voted for the first time, whether those were new people who aged into being able to vote, or people who went out and registered for the first time. And when we win because of it, they are going to see, for the first time, that their vote mattered and that it created some change, and they’re going to want more of it.

Winning this election isn’t just a referendum on the Trump presidency. It is setting the stage for how aggressive we will be going forward and righting the ship and holding people accountable, and making sure stuff like this just doesn’t happen again. And I think that’s one of the things I am most excited for, is to see what these six, seven, eight million people demand from their government, because I’m demanding it with them.

For more information about Agenda PAC, visit agendapac.org. For a list of the politicians dubbed members of “The Hate Squad,” visit agendapac.org/the-hate-squad-2024.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 5, 2024. To check your voter registration status and make a plan to vote, visit the website of the National Association of Secretaries of State at nass.org/can-I-vote. You can also visit the League of Women Voters Education Fund’s “Vote 411” website at vote411.org/make-your-plan.

You can also visit www.vote.org and www.iwillvote.com.

Follow Brian Sims on X at @BrianSimsPA.