The Victor: Q&A with Victory Fund’s Chuck Wolfe

WOLFE: In both cases you mean an out president or out Supreme Court justice, because in both cases there’s certainly speculation we’ve accomplished both already. I have said before that I think it’s within 20 years to have a viable LGBT candidate for president or vice president. That is five four-year cycles from now, so I think that’s possible. Viable meaning they have a distinguished public service career already or a distinguished career in something, business or public service, even academia, I suppose. They are considered by all to be a real candidate and they enter the primary system and do well in those primaries and hopefully win them. By most measures you would look at their candidacy as an ongoing concern, that it would be something they’d get behind and they would conduct themselves as a candidate trying to win the election — not a message candidate, if you will.

MW: And a Supreme Court justice?

WOLFE: I’m not enough of a Supreme Court justice [expert] to know what the average tenure — if there is such a thing — is and when those vacancies are going to come up, so the timeframe on when there would be a open and honest justice — that’s a harder one for me to predict.

MW: Is there ever a point where you think Victory Fund won’t be necessary anymore?

WOLFE: Well you’re using the word “Fund” in your question, so will the political action committee work of Victory change in the future? Wouldn’t that be great, that we no longer have to pay attention to supporting members of our community because they’re just getting elected everywhere and it’s not relevant. History would tell us that that doesn’t go away. Hasn’t gone away for the African-American community, hasn’t gone away for women, so I would say it’s unlikely that it will truly go away. The overall work of Victory is absolutely here to stay. The preparing of leaders, training them, supporting them in leadership roles. All of those programs we run for them to be better public servants or enter public service, those programs are both robust today and will be even more robust in the future.

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MW: Can you explain why Victory Fund only endorses pro-choice candidates?

WOLFE: When our community started earning our rights or being recognized as having some rights, they were based on the right to privacy. If you’ll remember, most of the decisions that are protecting women’s reproductive freedom were based on a right to privacy, as either written or interpreted in state courts and then by the Supreme Court. Those same decisions and that same right is what our community started gaining its rights from. So any erosion in that right of privacy would be an erosion in LGBT rights. Subsequent to that, there have been many different channels and many different decisions based on other things, equal protection among them, but since our founding we have always held the position that there should be no diminution in a woman’s right to reproductive freedom.

MW: Do you think there is a need to focus on states where it’s a lot more difficult for an out person to get elected?

WOLFE: I think there’s a need to increase resources to those states. Remember, we’ve been electing people in the south — Texas in 1991 all the way to Alabama in 2006. We have been active in southern states since our founding. Are the resources we put in there enough? We don’t think so. We want to put more in. In fact, the board has just approved a brand new strategic plan that kicks off January 1 and in that plan it calls for even more resources to be devoted to states that do not have an out state legislator — and there are about 10 of those states, predominantly in the south and midwest.

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MW: Would you be shifting resources from other states?

WOLFE: We hope not. The thing about resources and predicting where they’re going to be spent is not just what your intent is, but it’s also how the candidates are doing in their races. So you can have an intent to go into a certain place and spend a lot of money and you have a lot of hope in that candidate and a number of things can happen. The candidate can end up drawing no opposition — well, then you don’t really need to spend anymore money. Or their opposition is weak and they win their primary easily and it’s really a primary battle and you don’t have to spend any money in the general election.

MW: We seem to be seeing more transgender candidates as well, but transgender candidates also seem to have a more difficult time.

WOLFE: That’s what people said about lesbian and gay candidates 20 years ago. The more people are aware, the more they become comfortable. And it’s been true for gays, it’s been true for lesbians, and it is true for the transgender community. We’ve had a lot of transgender people go through our training, we will see more and more transgender candidates running for office, being endorsed by Victory. And we’ll see more and more victories. We came so close this year. We were 22 votes short for a transgender candidate in Oklahoma to take a seat in the Oklahoma Legislature. That’s so close. It would have been fantastic. This is an area that I think is exciting.

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I mentioned the new strategic plan, it is another specific area in the plan as we double down on our trainings, especially in these legislative horizon states, we are initiating specific training for trans people and people of color in 2015, so that will be rolling forward with specific outreach and specific programs meant to address these questions.

MW: Are there any candidates you’re particularly excited about?

WOLFE: That’s like asking a parent to choose their favorite child.

MW: What’s next for you?

WOLFE: Some time off. I’m committed to not making a decision about what I’m going to do next until I’ve had time to get through the finish line at Victory and then spend some time on the beach and clear my head. I’ve been blessed with some interesting options but I don’t want to make any decisions, and I’ve been pretty clear to everybody that I’m not going to make any decisions.

MW: Have you ever thought about running for office?

WOLFE: I get asked that question a lot. And my normal joke is I would run for mayor of my retirement village. Of course, now I say I’m retiring so I guess the question is, which village I end up in? [Laughs.]

I used to talk about being a United States senator and thinking that was like the coolest job, because I thought it was this place of both action and thought. I’ve since had the opportunity to talk to a number of people who are in the Senate and my ideals as a 10- or 20-year-old have been shattered as a 53-year-old. Especially when you look at the current makeup of the Senate and you see how many of them have such short tenures or came from the U.S. House and brought the culture of the House into the Senate. So what used to be thought of as the most exclusive political club in the world, the United States Senate, because of its deliberation and oration and depth, doesn’t seem to have that same standing today. Offered an appointment into a vacancy in the United States Senate? I would certainly probably never say no. I’d be flattered, but I just don’t fancy myself with that schedule.

For more information on the Victory Fund, visit victoryfund.org.