Cook wins special election, becomes Texas’ 1st LGBTQ state senator
Molly Cook, Texas’ first openly-LGBTQ state senator Texas now has its first openly LGBTQ state senator, thanks to Molly Cook’s victory Saturday in a special election to fill the seat left empty when John Whitmire stepped down from the Senate after winning last year’s Houston mayoral election.
Cook, a registered nurse with a master’s degree in public health policy from Johns Hopkins University, has earned the seat through the end of the year with her 57 percent-to-43 percent win in Saturday’s special election.
She now faces Jarvis Johnson, a Democratic state representative, in a Democratic Primary runoff to see who will hold the senate seat in the 2025-2026 legislative session.
In the March Primary election, Jarvis lead the pack of six candidates with 36 percent of the vote, while Cook placed a distance second with 21 percent.
