Jordan Wood, candidate for Congress from Maine, was busy last week switching gears from a crowded field challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) for her Senate seat to becoming the presumptive frontrunner to represent Maines 2nd congressional district.He brings over $1 million to the fight from his Senate campaign. Related Parents demanded that a trans child be banned from sports. The town rejected their request. Woods departure leaves Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) and Marine Corps veteran Graham Platner, under fire recently for a series of provocative posts using racist and homophobic language, in the race for Collins seat.The first-time candidate one half of a gay Washington power couple with husband Jake Lipsett, co-founder of the Democratic fundraising machine Mothership Strategies spoke from the couples home in Bristol, Maine, where they welcomed a baby daughter earlier this year. Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more. Subscribe to our Newsletter today LGBTQ Nation: Why switch from your Senate race to running for the House?Jordan Wood: I think our country is in a moment of crisis and that the future of our democracy is at stake.I just thought long and hard about whether it was the best use of the campaign that weve built to continue on in a competitive primary for the Senate or go and make sure that we have a fully viable, contested campaign to hold the Second Congressional District, which is one of the most competitive in the country. It was meeting the moment.Who are you endorsing for U.S. Senator from Maine, Gov. Janet Mills or Graham Platner?I will 100% support the Democratic nominee against Susan Collins.Platner has made an impression on Mainers, for sure, with many likening his politics and the enthusiasm for them to Zohran Mamdani and his election as mayor of New York City. There are also comparisons to Trump, that a focus on working-class concerns and grievances is a winner. Do you agree that Platners message is inspiring Maine Democrats, and who will you be appealing to in your run for Maines second congressional district?Yeah, you know, I think Grahams campaign has really resonated with a lot of folks, really across the political spectrum in the state. My campaign for the House is going to be focused on two issues that voters tell me are priorities, and that is the need to fix the corrupt, rigged political system designed to enrich the wealthiest and corporations, and the second is affordability. These two issues are what resonate with voters in more urban areas of the district, like Bangor and Lewiston, and the most rural areas, as well.If you win the Democratic nomination for Congress, you likely go up against Republican former Gov. Paul LePage. For those unfamiliar with Gov. LePages antics in office in the 2010s, what are some of his greatest hits?Wow. He told Barack Obama to go to hell. He threatened to blow up the Portland Press Herald, which is the largest newspaper in the state. Hes called himself Trump before Trump. And theres some others that are almost too crude to say out loud. What has bothered me the most about his past is the fact that he stood in the way of expanding healthcare access to thousands of Mainers when he opposed Medicaid expansion in our state, just because of ideological, partisan antipathy towards Barack Obama and Obamacare. He also opposed the minimum wage increase in Maine.Will LePages opposition to marriage equality come back to haunt him, or do you think hes evolved along with the American people on the issue?I think that will be a problem for him, unless hes evolved on the issue, and we always welcome peoples evolution on that issue.Gov. Mills has been a champion for LGBTQ+ rights in Maine, including a very public confrontation with Donald Trump in the White House over trans student-athletes. Shell also be the same age if she takes a seat in the Senate as Joe Biden was when he entered the White House. Youre 36. Is it time for a new generation to take up the fight Mills has waged for LGBTQ+ Mainers? And what would that look like if youre a U.S. rep?Interestingly, I think Paul LePage is also the same age as Gov. Mills.I absolutely think that it is time for the next generation to stand up and lead, and thats something that Ive heard from voters throughout this campaign all year. It is not just about the fact that were in this new crisis in our country with so much at stake, and politicians of the past have really failed to prevent this from coming about. New leaders have lived [through] the affordability crisis and know why its a priority for voters.I talk about what that means to me as someone who graduated college with $100,000 in student loan debt. My mom had to go back to work when my twin brother and I were three because my dad, whos a pastor, couldnt afford to provide the family with health insurance anymore, so she got a union job to provide for our family. These issues that my family dealt with around affordability, they have just persisted while people like Janet Mills and Paul LePage and Joe Biden, frankly have been power.And how about those issues that Mills has been fighting on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community? I fully support Gov. Mills and her leadership on those issues, and said so when she stood up to Donald Trump in the White House, for not just the trans kids in our state of Maine, but lots of marginalized groups of people, including myself as a gay man. That was, in some ways, inspiration for me to run for office.While you and Platner were competing for the Senate nomination, you called on him to drop out of the race for his use of words like f*g and gay in a series of Reddit posts. Youve read them. Would you call his use of those words, in those posts, hateful, and do you still think he should drop out of the race, despite his obvious appeal to Mainers in general and his support for the LGBTQ+ community in particular?I personally found it disqualifying, not just the use of the f-slur, but also comments that were made about sexual assault and women, and racist comments. This was also in the wake of the tattoo disclosure. Im married to a Jewish man, and LGBTQ people and Jewish people were two of the groups that were exterminated in death camps, which this tattoo symbolized. I have since talked to him at length about it, and I do think he does have an understanding of that mistake and how hurtful it was, and hes apologized. And I am a deep believer in second chances and being a better person and learning from mistakes. I dont think that hell use that language again.While youre running for the House and not the Senate now, Sen. Collins is still going to figure in your campaign. What accounts for Susan Collins longevity in the Senate, and are there elements of her appeal to Mainers that you would take to Washington?Shes the longest-serving senator in our states history, and one reason she has been successful is that a lot of folks in Maine do trust her in bringing federal dollars back to fund projects and communities and towns across the state that have helped bring jobs and improve communities. My frustration and opposition to Sen. Collins is I think shes not meeting this moment against Donald Trump. Shes in a position of real power, where she could have had the courage to stand up to him a number of times, and failed to.Trump has cast transgender Americans as the they in his attacks on the left. How do you recast trans people as just another thread in the fabric of American society?Trump is a bully. And I think Paul LePage also is a bully. They identify the people they see as weak and marginalized and different and pick on them and make fun of them to build themselves up, and thats exactly what we do not need from a politician. We need them to be leaders that are standing up to bullies for the rest of us, and thats what Ill do every day in Congress.Where do you come down on pronouns? Are they a sign of respect for a marginalized community, or a burdensome tool of social engineering? I just have always thought about pronouns in a more practical way.You know, my name is Jordan, and most kids that I grew up with, there were more Jordans that were female than male. So, in emails, professionally, going back years, Ive had pronouns in them because it was very normal for someone to accidentally mispronoun me. If you want to make sure that certain pronouns are used and youre worried about being mispronouned and you have them in your email signature, it shouldnt bother anybody.But also, I dont know that we need to be too heavy-handed about it. That has sometimes had a negative effect we dont want it to have.As we discussed, Graham Platner had a lot of bad press a few weeks ago, and so did your former boss, one-time representative from California and current candidate for governor, Katie Porter (D-CA), whom you served as chief of staff. Did Katie Porter ever ream you out in public, and what did you do wrong?(Laughing) Ummm. So Im just thinking. No, never in public.This is what Ill say about Katie every day. Shes a friend, shes a mentor. Theres an intensity about her, which is something that I think has been fundamental to her success and popularity, grilling CEOs and lots of Trump officials in committee hearings. That intensity is very much rooted in how important she views the work.Everyone has bad days, and it shouldnt be a measure of who you are as a person. Shes somebody whos really in it for the right reasons and deeply committed to serving the constituents who elect her. How did you meet your husband, and who proposed to whom?In 2015, I was the finance director for Raul Ruiz (D-CA), whos still the congressman from the Coachella Valley, and Jake was a senior in college at USC, and he started a company with two other guys in his frat house or whatever that they built into a large, successful digital company that does online advertising and fundraising for Democratic campaigns and progressive groups. And I hired them to do our online digital fundraising for Congressman Ruiz. So, we met over email, and just sort of developed a friendship, and eventually we both ended up in D.C., and we started dating.I proposed to him in 2017 in Scotland. Were both big Harry Potter fans, and it was where they filmed part of Harry Potter, and then we were married exactly a year later in Washington. This is your first run for elected office, after time with Porter and in management with orgs like democracyFIRST and End Citizens United. A couple of those jobs were heading up PACs created by Mothership Strategies, the political fundraising firm cofounded by your husband, Jake Lipsett. You were endorsed in your Senate run by two Mothership clients, Progressive Turnout Project and Defend the Vote. Is that a conflict of interest?Well, Jake and I have always, since we started dating, maintained a strict separation between our personal and professional lives. Ive never directed business to his company. Ive never worked at Mothership. They do not work on our campaign. Jake is actually stepping away from the company to just be a volunteer to support me on this effort.You know, inevitably, having worked for years in Democratic politics, with a husband who runs a large company, theres some overlap, but I dont see theres a conflict of interest. These endorsements were earned very legitimately. Last question: this week, Ken Burns The American Revolution starts its six-night run on PBS. Will you be watching, and what lessons can be drawn from the War of Independence then for defending American democracy now?I will absolutely be watching, Im very excited about it. Im a big Ken Burns fan.Our history overall is just a very important thing to learn from, because it reminds us that weve had many moments in our country of deep political division. How we overcame them was remembering the shared values and ideals we have about democracy and creating a more equal society. Our country is best when we are bound together by those ideals, and thats what we need to be remembering in moments of crisis like this one.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.