I figured it was just a matter of time before someone wrote a feature story about Mark Phariss’ candidacy for State Senate.
Mark Phariss
The man who sued Texas to overturn the state’s ban on gay marriage will run for Senate as a Democrat, vying for the seat that represents much of Collin County.
Mark Phariss told The Dallas Morning News he decided to run after seeing Democrats win in other Republican strongholds, like Virginia and Alabama.
“When I was accepting the fact that I was gay, there were two things I kind of thought I had to give up: One, getting married, and two, running for political office,” Phariss said Tuesday. “I need to quit assuming what people will think. I need to allow them the choice.”
Phariss, a business attorney based in Plano, and longtime partner Victor Holmes, an Air Force veteran, were two of four plaintiffs who sued Texas in 2013 over its ban on same-sex marriage. Their case was in progress when the U.S. Supreme Court extended the right to marry to all same-sex couples in June 2015.
Phariss and Holmes wed just months later. Between the day the two met and the day they could legally call each other “husband,” 18 years had passed.
Phariss will first face Plano resident and engineer Brian Chaput in the Democratic primary on March 6. Whoever wins that race will proceed to the November general election against either Angela Paxton or Phillip Huffines, who are duking it out for the GOP nomination.
Paxton is the wife of Attorney General Ken Paxton, an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, and Huffines is the twin brother of Don Huffines, a Republican senator who represents Dallas. If Phariss advances to the general election and wins, he’d be Texas’ first openly gay state senator.
Well, not exactly. That’s because Fran Watson is also running for State Senate, in SD17, and as that is a more purple district than SD08, she arguably has the better chance of earning that distinction. But hey, who knows, maybe both of them will be elected. In that case, they can toss a coin or use the random draw for seniority, which is used for office-selection purposes, to determine who the true “first openly gay state senator” is. I’m sure neither of them would mind having that debate.