Many political correspondents predicted Hillary Clinton would officially throw her hat in the ring with something subtle on social media. What we got instead was the opposite — a sharply produced cross-section of Americans embarking on life ‘transitions’ of some kind. And 50 seconds into what could easily be mistaken for a pharmaceutical commercial, two men walk hand in hand as one of them narrates, “I’m getting married this summer to someone I really care about.”
The two grooms-to-be have been identified as Chicago couple Nathan Johnson, 30, a project manager for a health care consulting company, and Jared Milrad, 31,an attorney and social entrepreneur who founded the non-profit Civic Legal Corps.
They had no idea when they agreed to participate in the video project for Clinton that it’d be used for her announcement.
“When we were first contacted, they basically told us a little bit about what they would be doing and said they were interviewing people going through big changes in life and also said that it was something affiliated with Hillary, but didn’t exactly say what it would be,” Johnson told the Washington Blade. “So they just mainly wanted to hear our story about that and our life and decision to get married and how we’re dealing with that and how excited we are about that.”
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Milred actually worked with the Obama campaign in 2008, and the two met just after the election.
Johnson remembers the night they met in Boston. “[Jared is] a very passionate guy with kind of a different background than I had being from a small town in Michigan especially. This guy was from New York, was a Jewish gay guy and had a lot of passion in life, so I think we hit it off pretty quickly. So that was 2008 just after the campaign. We pretty much started dating right after that.”
When they discovered along with the rest of the country that their segment was part of Clinton’s announcement video, they were pleasantly surprised. “It was particularly moving to see Secretary Clinton feature a gay couple engaged to be legally married, the first of any major presidential candidate. To us, this decision demonstrates Secretary Clinton’s commitment to LGBT equality and the type of inclusive leader she would be as president,” Milred told the Blade.
Despite having supported Obama in 2008, Milred and Johnson agree that Hillary is the right candidate for 2016.
And of course, they didn’t miss the opportunity to invite the candidate to their July 19th wedding:
Thanks for inviting us to your big day @HillaryClinton. We’re returning the favor & inviting you to ours. #wedding pic.twitter.com/paMtBFLLUW
— Jared Milrad (@JaredMilrad) April 12, 2015
Wesley Davenport
If I were Hillary I’d make sure to make it to that wedding.
Billy Budd
THey are cute including the dog.
Matthew Paul Dumas-Bowden
They are both cute.
Patrick Beringer
Well duh. What the hell did they think it was for? Why is this a news story? We all new she’d run. Hope she wins too–the Clinton effect really boosts the economy.