As Calvert joins GOP attacks on LGBT centers, Rollins is ready to take his seat

Gay challenger says California deserves better representation in Congress

By CHRISTOPHER KANE | ckane@washblade.com

Will Rollins, the gay Democrat vying for a second chance to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert (Calif.), spoke with the Washington Blade by phone last week following the uproar over his opponent’s support for an anti-LGBTQ amendment to a spending bill that was advanced by conservative members of the House Appropriations Committee.

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Subcommittee’s package contained a total of 2,680 Community Project Funding earmarks, all previously cleared by members from both parties, but just before its passage on Tuesday Calvert joined his Republican colleagues who removed funding for two LGBTQ centers in Pennsylvania and one in Massachusetts.

The decision to go after three CPF initiatives that provide housing and other support for LGBTQ people in need, none located in his district or state, was “pretty consistent” with Calvert’s “pattern of bigoted behavior towards the LGBTQ community,” Rollins said.

A former federal prosecutor who worked in counterterrorism and counterintelligence and was involved in the Justice Department’s pursuit of charges against participants in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Rollins is set to square off against two other candidates in his party’s primary ahead of the November 2024 elections. According to Cook Political Report, new data shows Calvert’s seat has moved from red-leaning to a tossup.

Calvert has served in the House since 1993, representing California’s 41st Congressional District for less than a year since it was redrawn in 2022 to include more Democratic and LGBTQ constituents, many residing in the Palm Springs area. Rollins challenged him in last year’s midterm elections, decisively beating primary opponents but ultimately falling short in his gambit for Calvert’s seat by about 11,000 votes.

Reflecting on the 2022 race, Rollins noted that while “the turnout was relatively low, I was the only Democratic challenger in California to win independent voters and had the best performance of any Democratic challenger” in California as measured against the share of votes in the state for President Joe Biden in 2020.

As a first-time candidate with only five months between his Democratic primary and the general election, Rollins added, he had nearly unseated a member of the House who enjoyed the advantages of the name recognition that comes with being California’s longest serving Republican member in that chamber.

In 2024, “we have enough support to flip the seat,” Rollins said — noting that the campaign now has 17 months to build awareness about his candidacy before voters cast their ballots, including by tapping into media markets that were prohibitively expensive in 2022.

Rollins told the Blade Calvert has a “fundamental misunderstanding of LGBTQ Americans” and is uninterested in learning about their lived experiences as sexual and gender minorities, as evidenced by his allyship with the GOP members whose move during last week’s THUD markup provoked accusations by Democrats of rank anti-LGBTQ bigotry, igniting exchanges between lawmakers that became so heated the committee was forced to recess three times.

At one point, out Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (Wisc.), who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus and serves on the Appropriations Committee, advised Calvert that he would be wise to vote against his party’s anti-LGBTQ amendment lest he be looking for a path to retirement courtesy of the more diverse constituents he now represents.

Last month, Calvert, who chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, was criticized after passing an amendment to a military spending bill that, among other provisions, proscribes “any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially, on the basis that such person speaks, or acts, in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction, that marriage is, or should be recognized as, a union of one man and one woman.”

In practice, Democrats on the committee argued, this could provide a pathway for someone who is responsible for the disbursement of survivor benefits to deny them to gay and lesbian beneficiaries.

Showing voters the contrast between Calvert’s extreme positions on matters like LGBTQ rights proved successful in courting more support for his campaign last year, Rollins said, but these issues are galvanizing not just for LGBTQ communities and their straight allies in bluer areas like Palm Springs.

“Study after study has shown that where you discriminate against the LGBTQ community, whether it’s anti-gay laws in Georgia or anti-LGBT rules overseas, economic output decreases,” stunting small business growth and depressing wages, he said.

So, Rollins said, while it is difficult to conceive of an alternative explanation, let alone a benign one, for the actions this week by Calvert and his fellow ultraconservative subcommittee members, “we also have to be making the argument that the attacks on us really are an attack collectively on our economic growth and on opportunity and equality.”

“When you’ve got a party that is prioritizing making sure that gay seniors can’t get food when they need it, versus a party that wants to make our streets safer, or a candidate who wants to raise wages in Riverside County,” Rollins said, regardless of their political affiliation “voters understand that those priorities are misdirected from the far right.”

Additionally, he said, “part of the job, too, has to be chang- ing the terms of the debate because a lot of the premises that these Republicans are operating from are complete lies.” And while elected Republicans “definitely have some serious problems with the truth,” Rollins said “the good news for me in a purple district is that regular Republican voters,” many of whom are actually moderate, will stand up against extremism.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to the House, echoed some of these arguments in a statement to the Blade: “Ken Calvert is determined to turn back the clock on LGTBQ+ rights.”

“Calvert’s bigoted pattern of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism is disqualifying, disgusting, and wildly out of step with the values and beliefs of everyday southern Californians,” the group said.

Rollins said that contrary to Calvert’s claims last year that his thinking on LGBTQ rights had evolved, the congressman is “willing to take calculated votes to keep himself in power, which he did before the [2022] midterms” by voting for the Respect for Marriage Act — a move Rollins characterized as “a pretty transparent attempt to wash away an anti-LGBTQ career that’s lasted three decades.”

Speaking to the Blade by phone on Thursday, gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who serves as ranking member of the U.S. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee and a co-chair of the Equality Caucus, said Calvert’s tendency to vacillate between whichever positions are most politically expedient has been on display throughout his 30-year tenure in the House.

The two ran against each other in 1992 and 1994, with Calvert winning both races, and they have served together in California’s congressional delegation since Takano first took office in 2013.

Takano said that when Calvert faced off against six opponents in 1992 and ultimately beat him in the general election by fewer than 600 votes, the Republican candidate had “assured key women in the community that he would moderate on social issues like abortion.”

By contrast, Takano said, today “the reality is he cannot survive a Republican primary” without embracing far-right positions, particularly on social issues. Because the GOP has become more extreme since 1992, Takano said, “for [Calvert] to stay in politics, he has to be representative of that extremism.”

The California Democrat contrasted the act of political bravery, and by an elected Republican with unambiguously conservative bona fides, with Calvert — a politician who made a “Faustian bargain” selling his soul to stay in Congress.

“Mark Sanford and I disagreed on a lot of stuff,” Takano said, referring to the Republican former politician who served as governor of South Carolina and represented the state’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House from 2013 to 2019.

Takano recalled how Sanford came to the defense of “Hamilton” creator Lin Manuel Miranda when then-President Donald Trump attacked the Broadway star — “punching down at a citizen” — because Miranda had “made this appeal to Mike Pence to remember that he was vice president for all of America.”

“From that moment on, Mark Sanford was on the pathway to lose his primary,” Takano said.

Continues at losangelesblade.com