Gay Pennsylvania representative Malcolm Kenyatta announces Senate run, kisses fiancé in ad
On Thursday, openly gay Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta announced that he is now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, according to Out Magazine.
Kenyatta visited ReidOut with Joy Reid on MSNBC to make the announcement. “There is nothing written on a tablet somewhere that says America has to succeed,” he explained on the show. “You know, America succeeds because every generation steps up to protect and expand the promise of America.”
Kenyatta, who has been a state representative in Pennsylvania for two terms, will be seeking to fill the senate seat currently held by Republican Pat Toomey. Toomey has announced that he won’t be seeking reelection in 2022 when his term is up.
Kenyatta will be running against two other Democratic candidates: John Fetterman, who is currently the state’s Lieutenant Governor, and John McGuigan. Openly gay Pennsylvania representative Brian Sims announced last week that he would be running for Fetterman’s seat as Lieutenant Governor.
When speaking to Reid about the promise of American opportunity and how it has been denied to working families and those struggling for too long, Kenyatta expressed that he sees his candidacy as an opportunity “expand on that promise, to make sure we that we have a country that doesn’t just talk about justice and fairness for all but that actually makes it real.” He goes on to say that he announced his candidacy “with faith in that mission and joy in my heart.”
As one of the Democratic party’s rising stars, Kenyatta made history as one of the first queer party members invited to speak at the virtual Democratic National Convention last year. “When I wanted to marry the man I loved, Joe Biden was the first national figure to support me and my family,” he stated during his speech to the DNC.
In the video that Kenyatta released to announce his candidacy, he is shown walking out of his front door and kissing his fiance, Matthew Miller, who he proposed to in July.
“Government hasn’t worked for working families like mine,” he says at the top of the video, before speaking about his family’s struggles and having to get a job when he was 12-years-old. “I know what it’s like to see an eviction notice, to work a minimum wage job.”
He goes on to say: “Pennsylvania and America are at a crossroads. After four years of division, and just over a month after a failed coup at the United States Capitol, we face a question of who we want to be as a country. But we also face a recognition; what’s been broken has been broken for more than four years. We have to answer the question at the heart of every campaign: Who should the government work for?”
If Kenyatta is successful, he would be not only the first out gay male in the U.S. Senate, but also the first Black out LGBTQ+ member of that governing body.
