President-elect Joe Biden has officially lined up the first LGBTQ+ appointment of his new administration.
As President Donald Trump signals he will cooperate with the transition, the incoming POTUS announced on Friday that Carlos Elizondo would step into the role of White House Social Secretary. Elizondo served in a similar role during the Obama administration: For eight years, Elizondo coordinated the schedules of Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, as the vice presidential office’s residence manager and social secretary, in addition to planning the couple’s events and public engagements.
The appointment makes Elizondo, who is married and lives in Washington, D.C., the first Latinx person and second gay man to serve as White House Social Secretary, wherein he will oversee all official White House events. Jeremy Bernard held the post from 2011 to 2015 during Obama’s presidency.
In a statement, Biden claimed that bringing individuals like Elizondo into the new administration “will help deliver the change America needs in these difficult times.”
“Their dedication to overcoming the challenges facing our country today are rooted in their diverse backgrounds and experiences,” he said in comments posted to his transition team’s website. “They will serve the American people and help build back better, creating a more just, equitable, and united nation.”
Elizondo is also just one component of the administration’s pledge to appoint a Cabinet that “looks like America,” in the words of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of color to be seated in the Oval Office. Early picks include Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latinx person and first immigrant to be named Secretary of Homeland Security, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who will be the second Black woman to serve as ambassador to the United Nations after Susan Rice.
Biden has yet to appoint an LGBTQ+ person to the 15-member Cabinet, but former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has been widely tipped for a number of positions in the White House, including Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The South Bend, Indiana mayor is an Iraq War veteran and, if selected, would be the first LGBTQ+ official to serve in the post.
Meanwhile, the LGBTQ+ political action group Victory Fund has proposed names like Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s health secretary, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services or U.S. Surgeon General’s Office and Raphael Bostick, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, to head up the Treasury Department. Levine would be the first transgender Cabinet member, while Bostick would be its first gay, Black representative.
The latter looks unlikely, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Biden had selected former Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen as his Secretary of the Treasury.
Outside of the Cabinet, however, Harris appointed Karine Jean-Pierre as her chief of staff. Jean-Pierre, who served as regional director in the Office of Political Affairs under Obama, is the first queer woman and queer woman of color to hold the position. (She is believed to be on Biden’s shortlist for press secretary.)
But if Biden hopes to increase LGBTQ+ inclusion in the White House, he has a great deal of work ahead of him. According to the Victory Fund, the Obama administration named 250 queer and transgender people to official posts within the executive branch of the administration. This included Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, the first person to serve as the White House’s primary liaison to the LGBTQ+ community; she was also the first trans woman to work full-time in the White House.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for them.’s weekly newsletter here.
