The Human Rights Campaign Foundation and UCLA are teaming up to host a forum in October for Democratic presidential candidates focused on LGBTQ issues.
The event will take place on Oct. 10 in UCLA’s Royce Hall, and will be part of UCLA’s Luskin Lecture Series from the university’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. National Coming Out Day is Oct. 11.
Candidates will qualify for the forum by receiving 1% or more of the vote in three separate national polls, or by receiving donations from 65,000 different people in 20 different states. The Democratic National Committee has a similar threshold for their primary debates, which will begin in June.
“If any LGBTQ person were to take a cross-country drive from HRC headquarters in Washington, D.C., to UCLA’s campus, their rights and protections under the law would change dozens of times at every city line and state border,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. “Millions of LGBTQ people will have their rights on the ballot in 2020, but today we are also a powerful voting bloc that will help determine the outcome.”
HRC last hosted a presidential candidates forum in 2008 in Hollywood, drawing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mike Gravel, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, and Dennis Kucinich.