Ghazala Hashmi names Equality Virginia executive director to transition team

John Reed, a longtime gay conservative former radio talk show host in Richmond, lost his bid Tuesday as the Republican candidate for Virginia’s lieutenant governor, falling short of becoming the state’s first openly gay man to hold a statewide office.

According to the Virginia State Board of Elections, votes were counted in 129 of the state’s 133 local governments, with Democrat Ghazala F. Hashmi, a Virginia state senator, receiving 55.45 percent of the vote with 1,822,889 votes and Mr. Reed receiving 44.30 percent with 1,456,335 votes.

Results from the Election Commission as of 11:30 p.m. on election day showed that 8,391 write-in votes had been cast in the lieutenant governor’s race, for a vote percentage of 0.26 percent.

While Reed fell short of becoming Virginia’s first LGBTQ statewide representative, Hashmi broke a new barrier by becoming both the state’s and the nation’s first Muslim woman elected to a statewide office.

Progressive Voters Guide reported that Hashmi supports LGBTQ rights as part of a broader progressive agenda that includes public education, reproductive rights, and environmental justice.

Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), a gay and longtime Virginia state senator, told the Washington Blade that he supported Hashmi’s candidacy and recently took her on a campaign tour of Alexandria’s Del Rey neighborhood.

In an interview with the Blade in April, Reed answered a question about what message he would send to Virginia’s LGBTQ voters.

“Well, what I want to say to gay voters who are considering candidates is that I was out of public view as a gay Republican in a very difficult room where people weren’t accepting of gay people, long before Donald Trump said I don’t care about this,” he said.

“So even though I’m a Republican, I know that some people in the LGBT community are reflexively hostile to the Republican Party,” he told the Blade. “I think by taking that step publicly and being true to who I am, I helped change the mindset of a lot of people within the Republican Party and in Central Virginia, which is still a pretty conservative area.”