Michele Rayner is running for Congress.
After making history as one of the first openly queer, Black lawmakers ever to serve in Florida’s legislature, Rayner announced her candidacy for the House of Representatives on Monday. She’s one of three Democrats seeking current representative Charlie Crist’s seat in the 13th Congressional District, after the incumbent announced in May that he would be stepping down to run for governor.
“I didn’t run for office just to make history,” she said in a video announcing her candidacy. “I ran because I wanted to make a difference for people.”
The District 70 representative has an extensive track record of making a difference throughout Florida, even prior to entering politics. She served as a public defender in HIllsborough County and represented the family of Markeis McGlockton, a 28-year old Black man, who was shot in 2018. McGlockton’s killer was found guilty.
That verdict made clear to Rayner that “running for the legislature could help her do more to fight unjust laws like Stand Your Ground and prevent future tragedies from occurring,” according to her website.
As a state lawmaker, the 39-year-old sponsored a bill that would symbolically repeal Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage, but according to Politico, it was never heard in committee. She also worked to push for a $370,000 allotment in the state budget for an urban youth farm, only to have the project vetoed by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
Even more controversially, DeSantis nixed mental health funding for survivors of the Pulse nightclub and a transitional center for homeless LGBTQ+ youth on the second day of Pride month.
Currently, Rayner is just one of two Black, LGBTQ+ members of the Florida legislature, along with State Senator Shevrin Jones (D-35th District), and the only queer woman of color serving at the statewide level. If she were to win Crist’s seat in the 2022 midterms, she would be the first Black, queer woman to ever serve in Congress.
But Rayner maintains that she’s not out to be a historic candidate. In a Monday speech to a group of supporters that included her own grandparents, she said Washington, D.C. is where she believes she “can do the most good for the community.”
“We need representatives in Congress who understand that politics is a calling to public service, not self-service,” she said, per the Tampa news station Bay News 9.
Rayner told the Tampa Bay Times that she is hoping to effect federal change that positively impacts her community by taking “the lead on a lot of things that our state is unwilling to do.” She sparred extensively with the GOP-controlled legislature over numerous discriminatory bills introduced this year, including an anti-trans sports bill that was ultimately signed into law.
These fights could carry over into 2022. Last week, DeSantis indicated his support for a ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors after Arkansas and Tennessee passed laws limiting health care for trans youth. This is despite the fact that such procedures are notoriously difficult — and usually impossible — for young people to access.
Although she admitted 2021 was “challenging,” Rayner told the Times these battles “reinvigorated” her. “[They] really deepened my commitment to making sure that the people that I am privileged to serve know they have an advocate in me,” she said.
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