FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

This November, New Jersey voters are tasked at the polls with making a choice between Senator Bob Menendez and pharmaceutical company Chairman Bob Hugin.  For LGBTQ and LGBTQ-allied voters, the choice is clear. We must support Senator Menendez.

Bob Hugin claims to embrace Progressive values in his campaigning, but his actions do not match up with his words.  In an attempt to win over traditionally Democratic-voting LGBTQ voters, Hugin states in recent television ads,  “I am pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, and strongly support equal pay for equal work. Politicians would rather point fingers. I will be different.”  However, Hugin’s actions tell a different story:  He has donated over a half-million dollars to individuals and organizations that support a specifically anti-LGBTQ platform, most notably the Heritage Foundation.  In his time as a student in Princeton, Hugin led a campaign of a different sort:  a petition drive to stop the University from including LGBTQ protections in its anti-discrimination policy.

Senator Menendez has a proven record of standing for LGBTQ rights and equality in New Jersey and nationally.  Senator Menendez is a co-sponsor of the Equality Act and of the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, which aimed to prevent harmful “conversion therapy”-type treatments. Under the provisions of the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, the FTC would be charged with enforcing existing penalties against practitioners advertising and performing these fraudulent treatments.  While the Trump administration aimed to disqualify trans persons for military service, Senator Menendez joined 44 other US Senators in authoring a letter to the administration in vociferous disagreement with the proposed policy.

We believe and we know that Bob Hugin, a Trump delegate and major donor, would stand in line with the anti-LGBTQ sentiment perpetrated by the Trump administration, in which noted anti-LGBTQ policymaker Mike Pence serves as second-in-command.

This November, New Jersey voters are ready to send the message that our values include equality, equity and safety for our LGBTQ community, and that Bob Menendez is the only choice to ensure them.

Lauren Albrecht, Chair

David Grant, Vice-Chair