Voters are recalling a trans council member who came out in office because they feel “duped”

When Raul Ureña was elected onto the Calexico, California Council, voters hoped the young politician would bring a new outlook to the border city’s long-running issues with unemployment, crime, and deprivation. 

But when she came out as a trans woman — wearing dresses, makeup, and using she/they pronouns — many voters changed their minds.

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First elected in 2020 at the age of 23, Ureña won with 70% of the vote. She came out as trans and gender-fluid after her reelection in 2022. During her tenure, she has also served as the state’s first trans mayor (the mayor and pro-tem mayor are selected among these council members, and rotate on a yearly basis).

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Ureña has made no attempts to hide her gender identity. She has worn dresses in official appearances and also at council meetings.

Nevertheless, some of her voters reportedly feel “duped,” as the Daily Mail put it, because, during the election, they believed they were voting for a cisgender gay man. Many voters have denied such claims and say they feel upset by her progressive policies and not her gender identity.

But Ureña is calling their bluff, telling the Los Angeles Times she believes it’s all about “tried-and-tested, predictable transphobia.” 

In 2023, Ureña attended the raising of the Progress Pride Flag, where she was reportedly lunged at by local Rebecca Lemon.

Lemon, a 43-year-old woman, described herself as “white, Lutheran, conservative Republican, everything they think is hateable.” She called the city’s move to fly the Pride flag next to the Stars and Stripes outside City Hall an affront to U.S. military veterans like her father and grandfather.

“He’s not a daughter, he’s a son!” Lemon yelled at Ureña’s father, who had been recording her outburst. 

“He’s not a woman! He’s not a woman!” she kept screaming before swearing at the police and kicking Ureña’s father. 

Lemon has been at the forefront of a campaign to remove Ureña from office. She personally served Ureña the recall papers.

Ureña, however, is unfazed. “I can’t be afraid of those kinds of incidents. I have a whole city to govern and it’s a particularly difficult city to govern at home,” she said, according to the Daily Mail, which, it should be noted, referred to Ureña as a “hairy-chested, dress-wearing trans mayor.”

It’s easy to see the challenges Ureña faces in governing. The second-largest city in Imperial County, Calexico had a 17% unemployment rate in 2023 – more than three times the statewide average and the highest in California.

A senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law, Joshua Spivak, told LA Times that the vast majority of recall attempts fail to make the ballot. However, when they do, the politician in question is likely to get ousted. Since 2011, some 61% of officials nationwide whose recall made the ballot were voted out, he claimed.

In the past months, Ureña and progressive fellow council member Gilberto Manzanarez (who is also the target of a recall) have been going door-to-door campaigning. Several citizens have called Ureña anti-trans slurs to her face, Manzanarez said, adding that he feels “horrible, with the amount of hate Raul has to put up with.”

“We’ve had people in suits and ties get taken to jail out of the City Council. Very well-dressed. I’d rather have someone in a dress who’s actually gonna work for the people.”