Sheila Kuehl
Kuehl was elected to the California State Assembly in 1994, becoming the first openly gay person elected to the California legislature. While running for office Kuehl found she was able to offset some negative stereotypes people had about lesbians thanks to their familiarity with her role as Zelda. She told an interviewer "When people know gay people personally, they tend to feel differently about the whole community. And all of a sudden, here's a person that they knew very well that they found out was lesbian."
Doug Jones (politician)
Jones is the first Democrat to win statewide office in Alabama since Lucy Baxley was elected President of the Alabama Public Service Commission in 2008. Democrats had not represented Alabama in the U.S. Senate since 1997, when Howell Heflin left office. Richard Shelby had been elected to the Senate as a Democrat in 1992 but switched to the Republican Party in 1994 following the Republican Revolution in which the party won a majority of seats in both chambers of Congress; Shelby had been the last Democrat to win a statewide federal election in Alabama until Jones' victory.