Gay trailblazer leaves office: Yeager eyes Senate run

In his 1999 book about the first LGBT people elected to public office in the U.S., Ken Yeager noted that being a politician was "an occupation where the words 'heterosexuals only' might as well be stamped in big letters."

For the last 34 years Yeager has worked to ensure that wasn't the case in Santa Clara County, as the gay San Jose resident co-founded the LGBT political group known as BAYMEC, short for Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee, in 1984 with an eye toward electing out people to public office in the South Bay and California's central coast.