After Gina Genovese won election to the Long Hill Township Committee in 2004, homophobes lashed out.

Dozens of flyers were strewn about Town Hall in this conservative Morris County municipality falsely alleging that the openly gay Genovese made sexual advances to a minor. In a separate incident, a man slapped an anti-gay sticker on her car.

The opposition did not stop Genovese's committee colleagues from appointing her mayor in 2006, which made her New Jersey’s first out mayor. This in a town where voters gave George W. Bush 60 percent of their vote over John Kerry.

Genovese, 60, likens her committee tenure to a fire she survived.

“When you’re out there for the first time in a small community, people react,” she said. “And the world was totally different in 2005 and 2006 than it is now. The world has completely changed.”

Fifteen years after Genovese’s election, the landscape has shifted for elected officials who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. New Jersey has eight openly gay mayors, the U.S. Congress has 10 out members and Pete Buttigieg, the gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is polling in the top five of the 23 Democratic presidential hopefuls.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that served as a catalyst for the LGBT rights movement, NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey spoke to gay elected officials about how the campaign trail is different now from how it was for Genovese, what it’s like as an out candidate to ask President DonaldTrump supporters for their vote and why party bosses stand in the way of more LGBT people winning elections.

‘It matters’

The Victory Fund, which raises money for queer candidates for public office, refers to the rising number of out elected officials as the “rainbow wave.”

“A lot of people have stepped up and said: I think I can do this now,” said Sean Meloy, its senior political director. “It’s not a deal breaker to be LGBT.”

American voters first elected an openly gay person to office in 1974 — not San Francisco’s Harvey Milk, but the lesser-known Kathy Kozachenko. Shewas elected to the Ann Arbor City Council in Michigan. A New York Times story that year called her a “self‐proclaimed Lesbian.”

Forty-five years later, about 700 of the nation’s roughly 500,000 elected officials are members of the LGBT community, according to the Victory Fund. That includes two governors, 10 members of Congress, seven statewide officials, about three dozen mayors, nearly 150 state lawmakers, more than100 judges and about 400 local officials.

There are an estimated 11,000 elected officials in New Jersey, according to John Weingart, associate director at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. At least 41 of them identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer.

“I think it matters that you have people of color in elected office, it’s important to have women in elected office, it’s important to have LGBT people in office,” said Bloomfield Township Councilwoman Wartyna “Nina” Davis, 54, one of New Jersey’s few out black officials. “They bring different perspectives and sensitivities, and that makes for better governing."

Tim Eustace, 62, an ex-assemblyman who made history as the first out gay person New Jersey voters elected mayor, said that if you count the number of closeted gay people serving in elective office, the count of 41 would double.

“People are afraid,” said Eustace, who was elected Maywood's mayor in 2007. “There are communities in New Jersey, believe it or not, that are not very gay-friendly.”

Running gay in GOP towns

Americans have become more accepting of gay people, but many remain hostile to key LGBT issues.

Only 37% of Republicans approve of same-sex marriage, according to a March 2019 Pew Research Center poll. Support among Democrats is 71%. A 2017 Pew poll found that 57% of Republicans think society has gone too far in accepting transgender people, compared with 12% of Democrats.

Still, even in towns with deeply conservative residents, voters have elected out people to local office. Successful candidates said their strategy didn’t differ from that of their straight rivals: They focused on local issues, highlighted their similarities with voters instead of their differences and never kept their personal lives a secret. Unlike Genovese, they said their opposition did not target them because of their identity.

Voters in Interlaken, a leafy, affluent borough of 800 people just north of Asbury Park, went for George W. Bush over Al Gore and John Kerry, John McCain and Mitt Romney over Barack Obama and Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Voters there also elected five gay people to its six-person council and a gay Republican mayor, Mike Nohilly.

“Gay and Republican … you don’t really find those two qualities in one person,” Nohilly joked.

As he readies to run for a third term in November with no Democratic opposition, Nohilly, 55, said being gay has "certainly never been a hindrance in Interlaken."

Hasbrouck Heights Councilman Chris Hillmann, 38, and Rochelle Park Committeeman Michael Warren, 40, both Democrats in Republican-leaning towns, said they probably had a harder time winning because of their party than because they are married to men.

Brick Township Councilwoman Marianna Pontoriero, 45, said her friends discouraged her from running for office in 2013, because residents of her conservative Ocean County municipality were not ready for a lesbian councilwoman. She ran anyway, won and is now serving her second term.

Voters are "smarter than we give them credit for," Pontoriero said.

“If you are just the person that you are, and are doing this for the right reasons, and are legitimate, they can see that, and I think they’ll embrace you,"she said. "Or at least accept you.”

There are political calculations when a town’s voters lean right.

Hasbrouck Heights is not flying a pride flag this month, and Hillmann did not push the issue. He called the pride flag important for gay visibility, but said it should be borough residents who press for it to be flown.

Hillmann, who is running for mayor in November, also did not want to give his political rivals an opening to accuse him of advancing a personal agenda.

"I didn’t run for office to raise the pride flag," he said. "That’s not why I ran. It’s not going to be the hill I die on.”

Underrepresented

Even with the so-called rainbow wave, LGBT elected officials comprise less than 1% of officeholders nationwide, the Victory Fund says. Nearly 5% of the population identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to a 2018 Gallup poll.

In New Jersey, the dominance of political bosses is one of the reasons for this underrepresentation, LGBT advocates say.

In areas of the state under one-party control, party bosses provide the funding, endorsements and prominent ballot position that often guarantee a victory at the polls. If the party doesn’t endorse an out person, that person usually won’t win.

"These county political parties in New Jersey, they anoint their candidates in advance; they vet them for the voters," said liberal, gay activist Jay Lassiter. "Until they start shortlisting and choosing more LGBT people to run for these positions, this won't change."

June’s Democratic primary for General Assembly in the 32nd Legislative District, which includes parts of Bergen and Hudson counties, had one out candidate, North Bergen’s Roger Quesada. He challenged party-backed incumbents Angelica Jimenez and Pedro Mejia, allies of the district’s powerful state senator, Nicholas Sacco. Quesada lost by more than 5,000 votes.

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Even with few out candidates, the New Jersey Democratic Party is committed to "inclusion, representation, diversity, visibility," said Lauren Albrecht, chairwoman of the party's LGBT caucus.

“Can I tell you we’re going to run 10 LGBTQ people for Assembly in two years? No,” she said. “But I do believe we’re headed in the right direction.”

The state Legislature has no LGBT members.

This November, there are two out people running for Assembly, both underdogs. Democrat Eileen Della Volle is running in Ocean County’s 10th Legislative District, where a Democrat hasn’t won since 1989. Republican Jen Williams will be on the ballot in the 15th District, which includes Hunterdon and Mercer counties. Republicans last won an Assembly seat there in 1991.

Looking ahead

Amy Quinn is an out woman elected to the Asbury Park City Council in 2013 and is now the city’s deputy mayor. Quinn, 42, said that if she knows of an LGBT person who wants to run for office, she meets with them.

“I absolutely feel a responsibility to support LGBTQ candidates, particularly trans people,” Quinn said. “Come hell or high water, I’ll take time to take them through the process.”

This November voters across New Jersey will have their pick of more than a dozen LGBT candidates. Out candidates are running for mayor in Hasbrouck Heights, Interlaken, Neptune City, Roselle, South Bound Brook and Toms River, for council in Bloomfield, Hoboken, Interlaken, Neptune City, Rochelle Park and Vernon, for freeholder in Bergen, Monmouth, Morris and Passaic counties and for school board in Jersey City.

PRIDE MONTH:Here are the North Jersey towns that will fly rainbow flags for Pride Month

SCHOOLS:Hackensack school board member under fire for emails targeting LGBT curriculum

BRUCE LOWRY:Rainbows are glorious, even if more clouds gather

Hoboken’s council race features two out candidates facing off — Councilman Mike DeFusco, the city's first out elected official, and challenger Migdalia Pagan-Milano — potentially the only such battle in New Jersey this year.

"Growing up in New Jersey, I never imagined being so comfortably gay in a professional and a political way," said DeFusco, 36. "New Jersey wasn’t always this accepting."

More than a dozen years after her historic appointment as mayor, Genovese called the subsequent rise in political power by LGBT people “tremendous.” She sees only a rise ahead, as more and more gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender candidates realize that the barriers that once existed have been broken down.

“The people that came before me went through more than I went through, and the people after me went through much less than I went through,” Genovese said. “And that’s progress.”

Email: mcdonaldt@northjersey.com