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."
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 .