Sheila Kuehl
When Kuehl was elected as a Democrat to the California Assembly in 1994 a Republican majority was seated for the first time in 20 years. This was due largely as an out-flowing of the enthusiasm stoked up by Newt Gingrich's strategy supporting Republicans for the Federal Legislature. Kuehl recalled "The Republican majority was quite a different kind of Republican, not a moderate, not a Rockefeller Republican. They were primarily Bible-thumpers and very right-wing. So it was not the most welcoming Republican group, though they loved Zelda Gilroy, and it was very difficult for them because they already liked me so much…. And to their surprise, we all got along very well. ...The Republicans were pretty horrible about LGBT stuff. They all virtually said stuff like, 'Well, they're all spawn of the devil, oh, but not you, Sheila….'"
Carola Bluhm
The old Socialist Unity Party (""Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands"" / SED), hitherto the ruling party in the East German one-party dictatorship, now embarked on a sometimes uncomfortable relaunch for a democratic future, part of which involved rebranding itself as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Bluhm was one of those who stuck with the party, becoming a PDS member during 1990. The switch to more active involvement in politics happened almost by accident that same year when an elderly longstanding friend from her local district became ill and asked her to attend a party meeting called to select candidates as his representative. She attended and was herself and spontaneously decided to apply for a candidacy on her own account. Her commitment to using the unfolding political changes as a chance to reform the German Democratic Republic from a left wing perspective but embracing emancipation and democracy in ways that, traditionally, the SED had not. There was talk of a "third way". Her ideas caught the mood of the meeting and she found herself selected as a PDS candidate for the city centre electoral district of East Berlin in the forthcoming city council elections - the first such elections to be held on a free and fair basis. The party's lead candidate was a man called Hans Luft, but Bluhm's second place on the party list turned out to be sufficient to ensure her election to the .