Welcome to the jungle! California’s electoral system puts the top two winning candidates in the nonpartisan June 2 primary into an expensive slugfest to replace termed-out Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in November. As of the March 6 filing deadline, at least 10 candidates will be on the ballot, with the New York Times on March 8 posting ten political polls from Dec. 2025 to Feb. 20 showing two well-funded MAGA Republicans topping the large swath of vote-splitting Democrats.
“Yes, Republicans have a chance in California governor’s race,” reads a Los Angeles Times headline.
But with a constant barrage of news, distractions from the Trump-Epstein files scandal, and politicking with Prop 50 redistricting forcing local Republicans like anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Darrell Issa to not seek reelection, many overwhelmed prospective voters rely on the myth that California is a deeply blue Democratic state forever.
But that depends on turnout. During the horrific second wave of AIDS from 1990-1998, California was politically dominated by the elitist rich and Bible-thumping, knuckle-dragging, radically anti-gay religious right Christians – the heirs of whom now hustle to bless Donald Trump whenever they are summoned.
Graph courtesy of Real Clear Politics
Today, LGBTQ+ Californians face a heartbreakingly huge problem. While grateful for past support from the Democratic gubernatorial candidates, this is a new amoral era of Trumpism with a Project 2025 administration of white supremacists and Christian nationalists determined to kill the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act and all things LGBTQ+. And Republicans have millions to gaslight voters into believing slick campaigns of lies that could result in a run-off between Republicans Steve Hilton, a Fox News contributor, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
Democrats are not handling this well. Congressional Democrats stand up for their history-making trans colleague Rep. Sarah McBride and laud out Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach as Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee and leader on the Epstein investigations.
But more Democrats are listening to messaging from David Axelrod, James Carville, and David Plouffe, “urging Democrats to act a little more like Republicans on so-called ‘identity and cultural issues,’” as a trans journalist wrote in The Advocate last October. While their report “rarely defines which ‘cultural issues’ it means, the few times it does make it clear: queer and transgender people stand to lose the most if this vision of the Democratic Party takes hold.”
So it was uncomfortably noticeable how oddly old-fashioned several candidates seemed at the Equality California and LA LGBT Center Gubernatorial Candidate Forum on March 2. They touted experience that may no longer be applicable to agencies and systems broken by DOGE and Trump’s manic White Christian National administration.
To be sure, these principled candidates have taken heat for us. But so did Gov. Gavin Newsom when he defied the Democratic Party to advocate for marriage equality. Recently, he threw us under the bus.
“From the prism of purely politics, there’s no doubt that the Democratic party needs to be – dare I say – more culturally normal,” Newsom said in response to CNN about what Democrats need to do to win elections.
Let that sink in. “Identity politics” is at the core of every civil rights movement – an understanding that took decades of work for the California Democratic Party to grasp. Identity politics provides a specific context for the inequality and unfairness vulnerable people and communities experience in everyday life.
Affordability? “Food deserts” are found largely in urban neighborhoods, not Beverly Hills. And if you’re a single Black or Brown woman with kids whose queer appearance or DEI-laden application is a barrier to employment and housing – how are you supposed to take care of your family?
“Culturally normal” is code for whatever powerful white, straight men determine it is. Do queer women of color even qualify as “welfare queens?” Check the Williams Institute to see how it’s worse for trans folk.
Via: CNN story on Jewish students’ fears (2021)
But remember: White Christian nationalists have their “culturally normal” identity politics, too. That’s why angry white men with tiki torches screamed “Jews will not replace us!” at a 2017 rally where a Confederate statue was toppled.
“DEI” was not mentioned once during the forum, though each candidate rebuked Newsom’s comment. (Please watch the complete KNBC4 video of the forum for views and nuances.) Former California State Controller Betty Yee suggested they were looking for an excuse to explain why Kamala Harris lost the Nov. 2024 election. The LGBTQ community was thrown under the bus because “we weren’t speaking to the issues that everyday people are experiencing.”
Renee Good shortly before she was shot, as seen in the DHS agent’s video of the incident (via Wikipedia)
And here’s the problem. Many political Democrats still see intersectional LGBTQ+ people as an issue – but we’re everyday people, too. Ask the wife, friends, and family of Minnesota lesbian mom of three, Renee Good, 37, a US citizen murdered by ICE while protesting Trump’s mass immigration deportation policy. Shortly after her killing, DHS Sec. Kristi Noem called her a “domestic terrorist” – a lie for which she still has not apologized to Good’s family.
To paraphrase abolitionist leader Sojourner Truth: Ain’t we everyday people, too?
California’s LGBTQ+ Gubernatorial Forum with Equality California and Los Angeles LGBT Center / Screenshot from Telemundo
Yee knows. “Our LGBTQ+ community and our transgender siblings are a part of the fabric of California. And I speak from this as a woman of color, as a woman of Chinese American descent, where we have been a target in the past,” Lee said at the forum, adding that “being inclusive and supportive of all of our communities…is the hallmark of California.”
Because LGBTQ+ people are not “culturally normal” enough to be politically useful, we are being erased by the Democrats just as racist candidate Donald Trump promised to do for his Project 2025 backers: “The path back to national unity is to decisively win the culture wars.”
But here’s the rub: Yee ranks between 2%-5% in the polls, with Rep. Eric Swalwell, former Rep. Katie Porter, and progressive billionaire Tom Steyer jockeying for the lead.
Former California Attorney General and US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, and former L.A. mayor and Speaker of the California State Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa make up about 30% of the surveyed voters. At some point, if these lower polling candidates don’t realistically see a path to victory, they need to ask themselves: Ask not what California can do for you – but what you can do for California.
After all, we remember Ralph Nader as a self-obsessed 2000 election spoiler, not as the founder of the nation’s consumer rights movement.
Another problem with candidates seeing LGBTQ+ people as an inconvenient issue and not a constituency is that, other than Eric Swawell, there seemed to be no real understanding of the impact of the Iran War on us as real Californians.
All the candidates were asked a version of this question: Given the number of military bases here in California, active duty, reserves, and National Guard. And LA having the largest population of Iranians outside the country, “this war affects so many people here in California. As governor, would you prioritize speaking out on foreign policy?”
Moderators Colleen Williams of KNBC-TV and Dustin Gardner of Politico with Rep. Eric Swawell at the Candidates forum (Via: KNBC4)
“Well, first, for this room, we have to acknowledge that in Iran, most of us would not be accepted and some of us would not be alive,” Swalwell said. “And the Iranian diaspora is some of the biggest dreamers in California because they dream of a place where women can drive freely and dress the way they want to dress, and everyone can vote openly. So, I understand why they would celebrate a brutal dictator no longer being around. However, I also understand that we have a long history of going into the Middle East without a plan, trying to change a regime and always, always failing and losing a lot of American soldiers along the way.”
“On the Middle East and Iran, [Trump] doesn’t even have a concept of a plan,” Swalwell said.
We’ve had our freedom rattled before. The 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards were cancelled twice after the Sept. 11, 2001, Taliban terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then, on Nov. 4, 2001, after a reassuring opening by former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, out comedienne Ellen DeGeneres reset the nation’s mood.
“I felt it was important for me to be here tonight because our leaders have told us to get back to our jobs,” she said. “I’m in a unique position as host, because think about it. What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?”
That may have been one of the last times the nation exploded in unified laughter. After that came numbness, fear, distrust, and “the seeds for today’s thicket of misinformation,” according to a Poynter Institute Politifact report. “The attacks and their aftermath also helped reshape, and in some ways turbocharge, the misinformation and conspiracy theory industry — encouraging people to turn to the internet for answers.”
Twin Towers burn on 9-11-2001. (Photo via WikiCommons)
Some of the resulting distrust was well-deserved: the National Security Agency knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened. “We know now that our inability to detect and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks was an intelligence failure of unprecedented magnitude,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said after the 2002 release of a joint House-Senate inquiry report.
Eighteen years later, in 2020, I reported on Trump’s first threat of war after he ordered the drone strike assassination of Iranian bad guy Gen. Qassim Soleimani – something even the Israelis had declined to do, fearing unpredictable and uncontrollable retaliation. Trump stepped back from the brink, but people were unnerved.
“It feels to me that the [Iranian Islamic] mullahs have been strengthened in this situation more than anything, which is not good for the people of Iran who want to be free of this oppressive regime,” said West Hollywood-based Iranian-American lesbian attorney Sepi Shyne.
With nearly 800 US military bases around the world, between 60,000 and 70,000 US troops stationed throughout the Middle East, and their families – including ours – waited for reaction to Soleimani’s assassination.
“Many of our military families are expressing a real sense of tiredness, dread, and sadness over the latest developments in the Middle East,” said Stephen L. Peters II, a Marine veteran and Director of Communications and Marketing for Modern Military Association of America.
Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight Action International, issued a warning: “In times of war, majorities scapegoat minorities, and the result is increased verbal and physical hatred toward those of us who are LGBTIQ, women, people of color, immigrants, or members of religious or ethnic minorities.”
Sepi Shyne and then wife Ashlei Shyne (Photo courtesy: Shyne)
Shyne, who later became the first out Iranian-American Mayor of West Hollywood, also noted that “people now in Iran are becoming united against a common enemy, which is now the Trump administration.”
This Iran War, Operation Epic Fury, started on Feb. 28, 2026, with Israel’s surprise Blue Sparrow ballistic missile attack that killed Ayatollah Khamenei and his top deputies, a blast so significant that debris was found in western Iraq.
The next day, after an Islamic radical shot up an Austin bar, Homeland Security issued a warning: “Although a large-scale physical attack is unlikely, Iran and its proxies probably pose a persistent threat of targeted attacks in the Homeland, and will almost certainly escalate retaliatory actions — or calls to action,” as well as attacking US targets in the Middle East.
The DHS warning put LA city officials on alert, but with “no intelligence” of any terror threat ahead of Sunday’s March 8 event, 27,000 runners shared a historic race as American Nathan Martin edged Kenya’s Michael Kimani Kamau by 00.01 seconds – the closest finish in L.A. Marathon history.
The Marathon was scheduled early to avoid conflict with the Academy Awards on March 15 in Hollywood.
But who’s minding the intelligence? Trump thankfully fired DHS Sec. Kristi Noem, but he wants to replace her with a sycophantic loyalist.
And just days before the launch of the Iran War, FBI Director Kash Patel fired “a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit [CI-12] tasked with monitoring threats from Iran,” including “tracking foreign spies operating on US soil,” CNN reported March 3.
On Saturday, March 7, Trump said Iran “will be hit very hard” today, with new areas of the country under consideration for “complete destruction and certain death.” NBC News reported that Trump may put boots on the ground after lawmakers declined to restrict his war powers. And there still appears to be no evacuation plans as the war expands.
Tehran, meanwhile, is looking for new US assets to strike in response, a senior Iranian official told CNN.
Is the Port of Long Beach safe? Is someone checking to see whether the daily $1 billion Iran War price tag is accurate? Is the war really supposed to level out surging gas prices and higher food prices, even with a February jobs report showing 92,000 lost jobs, projecting a recession?
Trump in a white baseball cap at the dignified transfer of six dead service members (Via: Manchester Evening News FB)
Trump promised to lower costs and avoid war. But power-hungry Trump has demanded an “unconditional surrender” by Iran and told Reuters he must play a role in selecting the country’s new leader, which hasn’t happened.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at Iran news conference (White House screenshot)
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who’s now the powerful Christian National in charge of the Pentagon, acts like a horny teenage gamer boasting about his cool “Call of Duty” kills.
“We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” The New Republic reported. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” He “proudly crowed” about “no politically correct wars.”
Apparently, “end-times” Christian commanders at military posts are equally excited.
“A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was ‘anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,’ according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer,” independent journalist Jonathan Larsen reported on his Substack.
In the first 72 hours of the war, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) received more than 110 similar complaints from more than 40 different units across at least 30 military installations, Larson reported.
“The United States is waging a religious war. This is, at least, how dozens of fanatical U.S. military commanders understand President Donald Trump’s illegal assault on Iran: a messianic battle to bring about Jesus Christ’s return,” The Intercept reported March 5.
California has the nation’s largest military population, with over 157,000 active-duty personnel and more than 800,000 veterans; 44 military installations; contributes over $90 billion annually to the California economy, and provides over 700,000 jobs.
Have any of the gubernatorial candidates talked with military leaders in the state or DHS, or the FBI? Since both Christian nationals and the Islamic Republic hate gays, guess who gets to be the first fodder in a ground war? And with Trump and Hegseth’s childish antipathy toward California, guess who’ll get called up first? So, who do you want fighting back against that?
As journalist Mehdi Hasan writes in his piece “A Holy War Against Iran?” – “Remember: once messianic leaders start insisting that God is on their side in battle, making peace becomes almost impossible.”
What happens to everyday people, then?
This essay is cross-posted from Karen Ocamb’s Substack, LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters.