Black Gay Shevrin Jones Could Win Dade County, Florida, Congressional Seat
‘No one deserves to feel like they are excluded,” says Jones
By Trudy Ring
The first Black LGBTQ+ U.S. representative from the South may well come from Florida in this election cycle. And, in an ironic twist, Democrat Shevrin Jones’ likely victory would be delivered by Dade County voters, reversing a 49-year legacy as the birthplace of “the culture wars” after singer Anita Bryant and Rev. Jerry Falwell’s 1977 “Save the Children” campaign overturned a gay rights ordinance and launched the anti-LGBTQ+ school board-harassing “parental rights” movement.
A gay man who has served in the Florida House and Senate, Jones is running for the seat coming open in the state’s 24th Congressional District, where Rep. Frederica Wilson is retiring after eight terms.
“The moment calls for it right now,” says State Sen. Jones, noting challenges regarding human rights, affordability, and more across the nation.
The Miami-area seat is considered safely Democratic, even after redistricting reduced the number of Democratic-leaning districts from eight to four. The new map, approved by the Republican-led legislature and GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is likely to remain in place for the midterms while it’s being challenged in court. Several other candidates are seeking the 24th district Democratic nomination in the August 18 primary, but Florida media outlets have called Jones the front-runner.
In 2024, Jones, then a member of the Biden-Harris 2024 National Advisory Board, was elected Chair of the troubled Miami-Dade County Democratic Executive Committee (DEC). “I’m committed to learning from past mistakes and working with organizers across the county as we rebuild and register voters, bring disengaged people back into the fold, engage with candidates in every corner of Miami-Dade, and increase Democratic turnout this fall,” Jones said at the time.
(Another Black gay man, Elijah Manley, is running for Florida’s 20th Congressional District Democratic nomination against several others, including current U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was moved into the majority-Black district by the Republicans’ new map. LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters will seek an interview with Manley in the near future.)
Meanwhile, Jones says that if elected to Congress, he will continue fighting for the same causes he has in Florida, including LGBTQ+ equality, human rights in general, reproductive freedom, aid to the needy, a humane immigration policy, education (he’s a former teacher and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership), criminal justice reform, dignity for incarcerated women, and voting rights.
Being open about his identity has helped him put a face on those who suffer racist and homophobic attacks, he says. For instance, on the Florida Senate floor in 2022, he spoke out against the infamous “don’t say gay” bill, which restricted instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. He talked about coming out in his 30s after his divorce from a woman and broke down in tears at one point.
“I don’t think y’all understand how much courage it takes to show up every day,” Jones said at the time. “Imagine living your life for 30 years and you coming to your parents and you talk about who you are. And you’re lying to them about who you are.”
“I had to [speak out against the bill],” he says now, “because that was part of my first term that I was able to tell my story.” His opposition led three Republicans to vote against the bill, he says. It passed, however, and became law, but it was gutted by a 2024 court settlement.
“It’s hard for people to stand against individuals when they can see themselves in that situation, see their child or grandchild,” Jones says, adding, “It would be criminal to be who I was and not speak out.”
Jones grew up in a very conservative, deeply religious family. Of his delay in coming out, he says he did not want “to quote-unquote bring shame to my family,” although many friends knew he was gay. His parents founded the Koinonia Worship Center, a nondenominational Christian church in Pembroke Pines, Fla., and his father, Eric Jones, is senior pastor there.
Jones came out in 2018, but he had known he was gay since childhood. Upon coming out, he said he loved his former wife and his family too much to continue to lie to them, and he noted the death of his older brother Kaneil at age 34 in 2017. Jones realized he could die at a young age without living his truth, and that living his truth would help others.
His relations with his family weren’t always easy; his father wrote a book in which he expressed disappointment that Jones was gay. But things have changed to the point that Jones made his campaign announcement from his parents’ church, and for Father’s Day, he posted on Facebook that his father is the family’s “superhero.”
Jones was already unopposed for reelection to his Florida House seat when he came out, and in 2020 he was elected to the state Senate as its first out LGBTQ+ member.
“I believe that it has allowed me to be empathetic, has taught me to be open-minded,” he says of his identity. “I have really grasped the understanding of allowing people to live their experience uninterrupted. No one deserves to feel like they are excluded. I force myself to learn about other people.”
Another part of his identity is his father’s family roots in the Bahamas. Many members of his father’s extended family still live there, and Jones flew supplies to the Caribbean island nation after it was hit by Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Jones’s district includes many Bahamian-Americans.
Jones is an advocate for immigrants, although not only because of that. He welcomes the announced closure of the Florida immigrant detention facility nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” and known for brutal conditions. “It should never have been opened in the first place,” he says.
“I will continue to speak out on the inhumane ways in which this country has treated immigrants,” he says. “I will look for best way we can secure borders in most humane way possible. No one wants open borders, but we need a policy where humanity is maintained, where dignity is maintained.”
If elected to Congress, Jones says, he would “absolutely” sign on to the Equality Act, which would ban anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination nationwide in employment, housing, public accommodations, and other aspects of life.
On another issue, voting rights, he urges passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The 1965 law was passed to expand voting rights and to fight racial discrimination in voting, but it has been severely weakened by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s attempts to interfere with elections.
“Republicans know their policies are not popular, so they’re trying to move the goal posts in order to win,” says Jones, who has led multiple voter-mobilization initiatives to increase mail-in voting by people of color. “The American people are sick of it.”
Jones says he would fight Donald Trump’s attacks on transgender Americans, people of color, and so many others. Meanwhile, Trump is planning to build his presidential library in Florida—on acreage donated by Miami-Dade College, a public institution, to the state, which in turn donated it to the Trump Library Foundation.
“They can build the presidential library wherever they want,” Jones says, but not on land that had belonged to taxpayers, with the transfer initially approved by college trustees with little public input.
One lawsuit against the land transfer was dismissed after the college gathered more public comment. But historian Marvin Dunn and others have brought a new suit, alleging that it constitutes an illegal financial gift to Trump, as the plans include not just a presidential library but a Trump hotel and other commercial enterprises.
With all the apparent misdeeds of the Trump administration, it’s easy to become depressed. But Jones says that with a fired-up grassroots opposition, it’s possible to turn the situation around. He notes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s comment that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
“The American people are the ones that are doing the bending,” Jones says.