In the late ’70s, Tim Drake, a moderate Republican political activist, publicly came out as a direct result of Anita Bryant’s crusade, becoming a key local and national activist until “retiring from the frontline” in the early ’90s. He is the first openly gay Chicagoan to win an election ( as a delegate for presidential candidate John Anderson in 1980 ) , but is proudest of the role he played as Legislative Director and spokesperson for the non-partisan Illinois Gay & Lesbian Task Force, countering right-wing St. Representative Penny Pullen on the nightly news during the Legislature’s AIDS panic in the late 1980s.