Innis came in second with 40 percent of the vote against Frank Guinta, who secured 49 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, incumbent Rep. John Tierney was defeated as well last night in the Democrat primary in Massachusetts’ Sixth District. “I look forward to contrasting our vision with that of Richard Tisei’s,” Moulton said. In late March, Richard Tisei, a Republican candidate for Congress in Massachusetts, took an unusual step for a politician in a close race: He boycotted his own party’s convention. While Tisei, who ran unopposed, celebrated his win as the Republican nominee for Massachusetts’s 6th Congressional District, his race in the general election grew more difficult. Dan Innis, a former dean of the business school at the University of New Hampshire, is running in New Hampshire’s 1st District; his primary is also Tuesday. Tisei and Innis were both endorsed by the nonpartisan Victory Fund, although the organization has not endorsed DeMaio, who served on the San Diego City Council and is seeking to unseat Democratic Rep. Scott Peters in California’s 52nd Congressional District. No openly gay Republican has ever been elected to Congress, although two Republicans — former Reps. Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin and Jim Kolbe of Arizona — have come out while serving in Congress. The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a nonpartisan group that boosts openly gay candidates for office, has endorsed Innis and Tisei. Many credited the win by a vulnerable Tierney, whose wife was mired in a federal tax scandal, to President Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren being at the top of the 2012 ballot. With Innis’s defeat, that leaves two vying to become the first openly gay Republican elected to the House: Richard Tisei in Massachusetts and Carl DeMaio in California. “Our issues have been on the back burner for too long and need to be placed front and center in Washington.
– Two openly gay GOP candidates are still alive in the midterm congressional elections. One is Richard Tisei of Massachusetts, who ran unopposed in his primary last night and hopes to join the six current LGBT members of the House, all Democrats, reports Mother Jones. No openly gay GOP candidate has ever been elected to Congress, notes Metro Weekly. "Opinions do evolve," says Tisei. "What I could do is be a catalyst to help bring about a change within the Republican caucus." The second gay GOP candidate is California's Carl DeMaio, who won his primary in June. A third, New Hampshire's Dan Innis, lost his primary yesterday. All three made history of sorts by becoming the first candidates for federal office to feature their same-sex spouses in campaign ads, writes Patrick Caldwell of MJ. (His article spells out some of the friction they face as gay candidates from within their own party.) In other races, Democrat Maura Healey of Massachusetts won her primary last night and is expected to become the nation's first openly gay attorney general in November. In the same state, Democrat Stephen Kerrigan, also gay, won the primary to be his party's candidate for lieutenant governor.