Use the Right Pronouns, But Don’t Vote for Caitlyn Jenner
The race is on among Republicans for a long shot opportunity to win a statewide office in California for the first time since Gov. Schwartzenager's reelection in 2006.
As expected, a movement started by far-right activists aimed at Gov. Gavin Newsom, passed the necessary threshold to force a recall election. The state will spend as much as $400 million for voters to decide the questions: should the governor be sent packing and, if so, who will replace him?
Celebrity Caitlyn Jenner has announced her ‘socially liberal and fiscally conservative’ candidacy. With $100 million in personal wealth, she’ll be competing against former businessman John Cox’s pile of personal cash, and former San Diego Mayor Keven Faulconer’s supposed appeal to moderate voters.
Former Congressman Doug Ose and a gaggle of unknowns will also be hoping for a field of candidates so broad that a minority of voters' opinions could easily prevail. No known Democrats have declared an interest and, while the party will openly oppose the recall effort, the consensus is that Newsom will prevail on the first question.
The recall movement achieved critical mass --and was co-opted by slightly less loony Republicans-- in response to public health measures enabled or ordered by the Governor in response to the pandemic.
COVID-19 presented (and presents) a unique opportunity for the GOP. They were able to deflect attention away from the Former Guy’s incompetence and encourage the sense of victimhood at the heart of the party’s appeal.
Central to Republican strategy in California is a low-turnout electoral event. Democrats will use various legal maneuvers to postpone the recall election until November, when more people traditionally vote.
Should the current downward coronavirus infections continue as more people get vaccinated, the GOP’s chances will diminish. Thus, encouraging people to endanger their health (and those around them) is also a mostly unspoken tenet of the party’s strategy.
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Caitlyn Jenner’s candidacy is unique in that she’s transgender and therefore part of a class of humans central to the GOP’s ongoing cultural warfare efforts.
Republican-led state legislatures have so far this year considered 35 bills to ban or limit transition care for trans minors, 66 trans sports bans, 43 religious refusal bills and 16 bills that relate to trans people’s access to bathrooms and locker rooms.
Her candidacy has been aided by a handful of Former Guy advisors, including Tony Fabrizio, pollster for the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, and Steven Cheung, former White House and campaign communications aide. Former Guy’s campaign manager Brad Parscale, a personal friend of Jenner’s, helped assemble her team but doesn’t plan to take an official title on the campaign.
The more fantic portion of Former Guy’s entourage isn’t about to let her campaign be used as proof of the GOP’s lack of transphobia as some will inevitably claim.
Jenner’s denunciation of administration policies concerning the LGBTQ communities in 2018 gives the righties all the justification they’ll ever need. (Rules #1,2,3,4,&5: Thou Shall Not Speak Evil of the Lord & Master)
From Insider:
Caitlyn Jenner was mocked by right-wing commentators and Trump loyalists on social media after she announced she was running for governor in California...
...Jenna Ellis, one of Trump's former lawyers and part of the legal team that unsuccessfully tried to challenge the 2020 election, shared a screenshot of a Twitter poll she carried out earlier this month, asking who would be more suited to be California governor.
Of the nearly 16,000 respondents, 92 percent said they'd prefer "an actual lampshade" instead of Jenner or Newsom.
Memories of Arnold Schwartzenagger and Ronald Reagan winning elections in California by leveraging their celebrity status are no doubt part of Jenner’s thinking.
From a preannouncement profile in Vanity Fair:
Jenner has publicly aired her political aspirations before, telling CNN’s Don Lemon in 2017 that she would “seriously look at” running for office in the future. Still, an industry insider asserted to Deadline that “Caitlyn Jenner is never going to be governor of California,” although “she may get herself a new show on a streamer out of all this.” Like Trump, Jenner does have roots in the reality-TV space, appearing on Keeping Up With the Kardashians before starring in her own E! spin-off, I Am Cait, for two seasons. These days, she’s creating content on her own YouTube channel, where she offers up cooking tutorials, motivational talks, and the occasional Kylie cameo.
The world may have to await confirmation of Jenner’s bid for governor until her appearance on the final season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which is airing now.
It’s highly unlikely that Caitlyn Jenner’s candidacy will draw much support among organized gay/trans groups. In fact, what I’ve seen on social media has been scorn.
She “spent years telling the #LGBTQ+ community to trust Donald Trump. We saw how that turned out. Now she wants us to trust her?” Equality California tweeted, “Hard pass.”
Via Conde Nast’s Them:
Jenner has remained a controversial figure within trans circles for her membership in the GOP, which has continued to pass anti-trans legislation at the state level in the early days of the Biden administration, and for offensive comments she has made about transness, including a Time magazine interview in which she said of other trans women that “if you look like a man in a dress, it makes people uncomfortable.”
So far, none of the major LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have reacted to Jenner’s announcement, including the Victory Fund, an advocacy group that works to elect LGBTQ+ candidates. Meanwhile, LGBTQ+ people filled social media feeds on Friday with doubts about Jenner’s intentions, with some pointing out that her campaign website contains links for donations and merchandise but doesn’t yet contain any information about her policies.
Jenner is not the first openly transgender person to run for governor in the U.S. In 2018, former energy industry CEO Christine Hallquist won the 2018 Democratic nomination for governor of Vermont, becoming the first out transgender major-party gubernatorial nominee in U.S. history. She ultimately lost to Republican incumbent Phil Scott.
Unlike other successful celebrity candidates, Jenner doesn’t have much in the way of a point of view. It’s more like, “I’m famous, vote for me.”
Most of what we know about her, other than “Newsom is bad,” comes from a 2018 op ed in the Washington Post where Caitlyn announced her break from Trump. The words “homelessness, job discrimination, violence, access to health care, prejudice in housing, depression, suicide and so many other issues that disproportionately affect our long-ignored community” appear. There is not a peep about actual ideas or problem solving.
Her plan of action, via Vox:
“This will be a campaign of solutions,” Jenner said Friday, “providing a roadmap back to prosperity to turn this state around and finally clean up the damage Newsom has done to this state.”
Advisers also say that Jenner, who starred on the reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, will benefit from substantial name recognition, according to Axios. Jenner first rose to fame as a decathlete, winning Olympic gold medals in the 1970s, and renewed her visibility as part of the Kardashian media empire.
But celebrity gossip site TMZ has reported that Jenner’s famous family members will not campaign on her behalf, in part because of political differences. And although Jenner renounced her support of Trump, at least one prominent LGBTQ rights organization has come out against her candidacy, too.
Perhaps the most damning thing about the Caitlyn Jenner candidacy is evidence of her lack of interest in governance. After all, if you can’t be bothered to vote, why should anybody think you care?
Here’s the final nail in the coffin via Politico:
Jenner, a 71-year-old political neophyte who has criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom’s performance on social media, did not vote in the 2018 gubernatorial election that delivered Newsom the biggest landslide victory for a non-incumbent since 1930. She also did not vote in the historic 2003 recall that ejected then-Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and brought Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger to power, according to records kept by the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters.
Jenner never cast a ballot in the 2016 elections won by former President Donald Trump — including the GOP primary that anointed him as the party leader and his nail-biting general election contest against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
All told, Jenner has voted just nine times in California's 26 statewide elections since 2000, the records show. Seven of those were statewide general elections, including five presidential contests. The two exceptions were the February 2008 presidential primary and the November 2005 special election featuring several ballot measures backed by Schwarzenegger.
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https://twitter.com/cmarinucci/status/1386109459991195649?s=20
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Like the “me!,me!,me!” genre of reality TV that Jenner’s made a career out of, her campaign is only worth watching if you’re into superficial drama.
At the same time, let’s be vigilant about the already on the record efforts to misgender or ridicule her as an expression of transphobia. Joy Behar at The View has apologized. Bill Maher, being the asshole that he is, hasn’t.
Rich and ignorant people run for office all the time. Unfortunately, sometimes they win.
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Post script: As I finished writing his article, I learned that actor Randy Quaid is making noises about running for governor. Given his crazy Tweets about election fraud last fall, I'm sure he'll be popular with the ultra-wingnut part of the Former Guy's following.
I'm not sure he even lives in California, since his last big pronouncement was about a 4th of July party.
https://twitter.com/RandyRRQuaid/status/1371504371817664513?s=20
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