The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund today announced it has endorsed 100 openly LGBT political candidates in 2008, making this endorsement slate the group’s largest ever.

“I think reaching this milestone is a testament to a new attitude in our community about how to achieve political change.  We don’t have to accept sitting on the sidelines and hoping others will do the heavy lifting.  We can roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves,” said Chuck Wolfe, president and CEO of the Victory Fund.

Several Victory-endorsed candidates have already won their elections outright or become prohibitive favorites in their races. These candidates include Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams, Falls Church, Va. City Councilman Lawrence Webb and Austin, Texas City Councilwoman Randi Shade.

The Victory Fund also announced its ten highlighted races for the remainder of the election cycle. The candidates are:

• Jason Bartlett—State Representative, Connecticut—Rep. Bartlett came out in 2008 during his current term, making him one of only two openly gay African-American state legislators in the U.S.  His reelection would confirm that serving honestly and openly as LGBT is not a barrier to retaining the trust of constituents.
• Kate Brown—Secretary of State, Oregon—Sen. Kate Brown, who currently serves as the Democratic Leader in the Oregon Senate, would become the first openly LGBT Secretary of State in the U.S.  In Oregon, the office is the second-highest ranking elected post behind the governor.
• Linda Ketner—U.S. Representative, South Carolina—Linda Ketner is a longtime businesswoman, community activist and philanthropist who is seeking to represent South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives.  She faces an entrenched Republican incumbent, but the state’s political press says Ketner’s campaign has made the race competitive.
• Kevin Lee—State Representative, Pennsylvania—Kevin Lee would become the Keystone State’s first out representative, which would be a milestone for Pennsylvania’s substantial LGBT community.  Kevin hopes to represent a swing district in suburban Philadelphia.
• Andrew Martin—State Representative, Nevada—Andrew Martin is seeking a seat in the Nevada Assembly, where he would be the only out state representative.  Current state Rep. David Parks, who is also openly gay, is running for the State Senate.
• Sara Orozco—State Senate, Massachusetts—Sara Orozco would be the only openly LGBT state senator in Massachusetts.  She faces a notoriously anti-gay incumbent.
• John Perez—State Assembly, California—If elected, John Perez would become the first openly LGBT person of color elected to the California legislature.  Perez’ strong support from both the labor and LGBT groups reflects growing alliances between the two communities.
• Jared Polis—U.S. Representative, Colorado—Jared Polis, the former chairman of the Colorado State Board of Education, won a hard-fought Democratic primary to represent the 2nd Congressional District.  If elected, Jared would become the first openly gay man elected to Congress as a non-incumbent.
• Jim Roth—Corporation Commission, Oklahoma—Jim Roth was appointed to this powerful statewide regulatory commission by Gov. Brad Henry after winning two terms on the Oklahoma County Commission.  He is now running to keep the seat.  Roth would become the first openly gay statewide elected official in Oklahoma.
• Lupe Valdez—Sheriff, Dallas County, Texas—Lupe Valdez became the first woman, the first Latina and the first out lesbian ever elected to this post when she won in 2004.  Republicans, still smarting from having lost the seat in 2004, have targeted this county-wide race.

Victory Fund endorsee Linda Ketner, who is running for Congress in South Carolina’s first district, launched a new television ad that criticizes incumbent Rep. Henry Brown’s widely publicized property fire. According to The Post and Courier, Brown paid nearly $4,750 for a March 2004 wind-fed burn on his property that spun out of control and burned part of Francis Marion National Forest.

Support Linda’s campaign by visiting her ActBlue page.

In her bid for re-election as Dallas County sheriff,  supporters of Lupe Valdez, a Victory Fund endorsee, say that she has become the subject of anti-gay political tactics.

Valdez’s gay supporters criticized the Dallas Mornign News for making an issue out of an anonymous questionnaire circulated by the Sheriff’s Department in order to foster a dialogue about cutlural diversity, including sexual orientation.

The Dallas Voice reports:

The questionnaire, distributed to 45 training participants from the sheriff’s department on Sept. 5, asked them to circle “agree” or “disagree” alongside statements including, “Homosexuality is a choice,” and, “The Bible states that homosexuality is immoral.”

The participants were told not to put their names on the questionnaires and were given the option of leaving them blank if they felt uncomfortable, according to representatives from the Resource Center of Dallas, which conducted the training. The questionnaires were then folded, collected, shuffled and redistributed before responses were used as a launching point for discussions about sexual orientation.

The questionnaire, developed by the Resource Center, has been used since at least 2002 in diversity training for other law enforcement agencies, including the Dallas Police Department. This marked the first time the questionnaire had been used at the sheriff’s department and the first time it has generated any complaints, according to representatives from the Resource Center and DPD.

Valdez never saw the questionnaire prior to the training but signed off on the Resource Center’s participation — which was also a first, said sheriff’s department spokeswoman Kim Leach.

On Sept. 19, The Dallas Morning News reported that there had been “several employee complaints” about the questionnaire. The DMN article, which appeared on the front page of the newspaper’s Metro section, quoted only one sheriff’s department employee, who hadn’t been a participant in the training.

Deputy Mike Ramirez, who serves as vice president of a police union that has endorsed

Cannaday, told The Morning News he felt the sheriff’s department was using the questionnaire to “promote the gay lifestyle.”

Valdez’s LGBT supporters uniformly condemned it as an anti-LGBT political attack.

“This sort of low campaigning is exactly what we expect,” said Kirk McPike, Valdez’s campaign manager. “It’s the kind of race that the Republicans have run in the past, and in a lot of ways, the only kind of race they know how to run. We have a lot of faith that Dallas County voters will consider this race based on the real issues of the campaign. They weren’t swayed by that in 2004, and they’re not going to be swayed by it in 2008.”

A spokeswoman for Cannaday’s campaign didn’t return multiple phone calls seeking comment. Cannaday, through his campaign staff, previously has declined a request for a general interview with Dallas Voice.

Outrage!, a gay rights group in the United Kingdom, reports that a leader of the Iraqi gay rights movement has been assassinated.

The leader, identified as a 27-year-old university student named Bashar, was killed in a barber shop.

Militias burst in and sprayed his body with bullets at point blank range.

He was the organiser of the safe houses for gays and lesbians in Baghdad.  His efforts saved the lives of dozens of people.

Bashar was a kind, generous and extremely brave young man – a true hero who put his life on the line to save the lives of others.

My thoughts go out to his loved ones and to the other members of Iraqi LGBT.

Their courage is an inspiration to all people everywhere fighting against injustice.

Before Sen. John McCain selected Aslaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, he had previously wanted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to fill the role.

Page One Q reports that a mid-level member of the Republican National Committee said that McCain and his advisors leaned toward Rice after Democratic nominee Barack Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate.

“[T]hey had this theory that Condi was the perfect candidate to put up against him,” the source said. “She’s tough, conservative and a hawk, not to mention a football fanatic, which would be more than enough for white men.”

Page One Q reports:

McCain’s inner circle argued “furiously” for Rice to be his running mate instead of one-time top contenders Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty. However, according to the RNC source, persistent rumors about Rice’s sexual orientation took her out of the running. “In Washington circles,” the source said, “it’s just assumed Rice is gay and nobody really cares. But in the glare of the media spotlight, those rumors were bound to get magnified a thousandfold and the mainstream media would have had an excuse to reveal the facts that would have caused conniption fits among the Republican base.”

Rice, as Provost of Stanford University long before she was on the Bush cabinet, jointly owned a California house and held a line of credit with documentary filmmaker Randy Bean, with whom Rice has said she bonded over a “mutual love of football.”

“Whether or not her relationship with Bean means Condi is light in the loafers is not the point,” the source added. “It’s hard to prove one way or another. The fact is that by the time the media finished dissecting it, not a Christian conservative in the country would have gone to the polls in November and that’s ultimately what nixed the Rice candidacy.”