By Daniel Trotta<\/p>\n
HUNTINGTON BEACH, California, May 29 (Reuters) \u2013 Huntington Beach, the right-leaning California city that banned the Pride flag from City Hall and elected a city council of MAGA supporters, is heavily favored to get a new Democratic congressman who is gay, progressive and an\u00a0outspoken critic of U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a result of redrawing congressional districts. A flurry of redistricting was touched off when Trump pushed states, starting with Texas, to come up with \u200bvoting maps favorable to his Republican Party. With control of the U.S. House of Representatives at stake in November\u2019s elections, heavily Democratic California countered the Texas \u200credistricting, with voters approving a plan that targets\u00a0five Republican seats.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, two wrongs make a right?\u201d Huntington Beach City Councilman Pat Burns said from his council office, where a bust of Trump that he once placed on the dais at city council meetings now sits on his desk. \u201cIt\u2019s just California ugly-ass politics, and they are all about their agenda and not about the people. They don\u2019t care about the people of California one bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huntington Beach counts itself among the cities and towns in roughly a dozen U.S. states caught up in the redistricting battle, with political parties reconfiguring voting maps to their advantage in what is \u200cknown \u200bas gerrymandering.<\/p>\n
As a result, voters can suddenly find themselves in a new district \u2013 with representation that they say fails to \u2060reflect their interests.<\/p>\n
A conservative enclave in mostly liberal Southern \u2060California, Huntington Beach has set itself on a collision course with liberals in the Trump era, defying Democrats in the state capital on issues such as voter identification and housing density. Officially nicknamed Surf City USA, it reflects the individualist and independence-minded aspects of surf culture, not the clich\u00e9 of laid-back free spirits.<\/p>\n
At the moment, Huntington Beach, which banned the rainbow Pride flag and other nongovernmental banners from city property after a local voter referendum in 2024, is represented in the House \u200bby Representative Dave Min, a Democrat seen as moderate and pragmatic.<\/p>\n
Redistricting, however, means that after the November elections the city will most likely be represented by the more progressive Robert Garcia, a 48-year-old gay immigrant, who said in an interview he has \u201cbeen dealing with homophobia my whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n
A two-term Democratic U.S. representative, Garcia comes from Long Beach, a city \u2060of 450,000 people across the Los Angeles County line from Huntington Beach. Once in different districts, Long \u2060Beach and Huntington Beach have been coupled together into one district through gerrymandering and will share a representative in the House.<\/p>\n
Born in \u200bPeru, Garcia came to the U.S. as a child. A former mayor of Long Beach, he was elected to Congress in 2022 and won his 2024 re-election by 36 percentage points. \u200bHe is heavily favored to finish first in the primary election on June 2 that will test the new districts for the \u200cfirst time, and to prevail in the November general election.<\/p>\n
Garcia, a Trump critic, is the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, the congressional watchdog over the executive branch. His stands on issues including immigration, climate and healthcare clash with the MAGA agenda.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve represented people I don\u2019t agree with on everything, my entire time as mayor, and currently as a member of Congress,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cThat\u2019s OK. That\u2019s America.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018RULE BY FIAT\u2019<\/p>\n
Domnic McGee, a Huntington Beach Planning Commission member and outspoken conservative, sees redistricting as part of a broader effort by Democrats to consolidate power \u2060in California and advance policies he opposes. McGee said he plans to \u201cfight for traditional American values\u201d and resist \u201coverreach\u201d by the left.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Democrats now with redistricting are set to take even more power in California,\u201d McGee said. \u201cThey want to rule by fiat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janet Jacobs, who attended a recent city council meeting, is also firmly in the \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump is \u2060doing a hell of a job, and God is on his \u200cside,\u201d said Jacobs, who wore a red baseball cap emblazoned with \u201cMake Huntington Beach Great Again\u201d and \u201c7-0\u201d on the side, extolling the \u20607-0 MAGA majority on the council.<\/p>\n
Still, Garcia predicts cooperation rather than confrontation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect actually there\u2019s going to be a lot \u200bof partnerships with \u200cthe cities, especially communities like Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. While they might have a more conservative council, at the \u200bend of the day, \u2060they want the same thing that communities in Long Beach want,\u201d Garcia told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Garcia flagged one issue he said unites the district: offshore oil drilling. \u201cWhether you\u2019re in Huntington Beach or Newport Beach or Seal Beach, that is a huge concern to everybody here,\u201d Garcia said. He said he would be \u201cmuch more engaged on that issue\u201d given the Trump administration\u2019s moves toward reopening California\u2019s coast to oil production.<\/p>\n
Huntington Beach Mayor Casey McKeon also said he expects any representative to do the job professionally. He cited previous Representative Michelle Steel, a Republican who worked with a then-liberal council on beach sand replacement.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe still did what was right for Huntington Beach,\u201d McKeon said. \u201cShe didn\u2019t let politics get in the way of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Huntington \u200bBeach; editing by Donna Bryson and Cynthia Osterman)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Daniel Trotta HUNTINGTON BEACH, California, May 29 (Reuters) \u2013 Huntington Beach, the right-leaning California city that banned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-337520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}