Drag Queen Politics | Maebe A. Girl is Running for Congress

Meet Maebe A. Girl

Omaralexis Ochoa: Today I am so excited to introduce you to Maebe A Girl She is the very first drag queen to be elected to public office and is serving as a council member for the city of Silver Lake here in Southern California. She is now running for Congress against incumbent Adam Schiff to represent District 28. Maebe completes all of her civil duties in full drag, as she is passionate about representation for members of the LGBTQIA plus community and is completely upending what it looks like to be a politician in the United States.

Maebe, thank you so much for taking time away from your campaign to join me.

Maebe A. Girl: Absolutely, thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

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Why Challenge Adam Schiff?

Omaralexis Ochoa: You're running against current representative Adam Schiff. What inspired you to go against this long time incumbent?

Maebe A. Girl: Well, a couple of things really. So I'm currently on the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council right here in Silver Lake, which is just a couple of neighborhoods over. And when I was elected to my position, I became the first drag queen elected to public office in the United States. And I didn't even know that until after it happened. And it was exciting to get that title per se. But it was also somewhat disappointing because I was like, really, I'm the first, especially when I consider how active, many drag queens are in terms of political activism, all different sorts of advocacy. And so when I was elected to my current position, which by the way, for those that might not know what a neighborhood council is here in Los Angeles, there's essentially three levels to the, to the government. There is the mayor who's at the top. There are 15 city council districts, and then there's 99 neighborhood council districts. And the neighborhood council districts act as advisory boards to the city councils. So in essence, whenever city council has any sort of legislation that's going through city hall, we as a group votes to either support or oppose that legislation. Then we write what's known as a community impact statements. And the city councilors are supposed to take what we say into consideration and vote accordingly. Now they do always, but they should. And I will say that that is been early on into my role as a Silver Lake neighborhood councilwoman, I realized that one of my frustrations was the limited scope of what we could do in the council because it's not legislative. So I really wanted to be doing something where we are creating legislation laws to, you know, to help people, because I think that there are so many laws right now that are harming people, especially people in marginalized communities. So when I

When I thought about it, I was like, well, you know what? I would actually really like to run against Adam Schiff because he is, he's a moderate, he's a centrist. He is in some ways votes similarly to how Republicans vote. And I'm about as far left as you can get on the democratic spectrum. So I'm a progressive Democrats and he's a moderate. So I was really inspired to, you know, to do this because I think that we need more progressive people in office. I think we need more queer people in office.

And I also disagree with a lot of his voting record. I think a lot of people right now think of Adam Schiff as a national hero because of his role in the impeachments, which didn't even go through, by the way. But I think that a lot of people don't realize how he votes on particular issues. And I think a lot of people also don't realize where a lot of his money comes from. He's one of the most well-funded.

Democrats, in fact, I think he most might be the most well-funded incumbent in the Democratic Party. But if you take a look at where his money is coming from, it's a lot of dirty sources. He takes a lot of corporate money, he takes money from industries that I don't think he should be supporting. don't think Democrats should be supporting. He takes money from the defense industry, from weapons makers, from pharmaceutical industry, fossil fuels, the real estate industry. And when you think about what that means, when a politician is taking money from an organization to fund their campaign, sort of the underlying expectation is that you're going to vote in favor of those industries. And so everything that I stand for and everything that I'm fighting for is diabolically opposed to those industries. For instance, I think homelessness is a huge issue. How can we expect Adam Schiff to want to tackle homelessness when he is receiving money from the real estate industry? How can we expect him to try to enact Medicare for All when he's taking money from health insurance companies? How can we expect him to stay out of war when he's taking money from weapons makers? So when you think about it, it's kind of common sense, even though he's not actively saying, ⁓ I support war. If you look at who is funding him, he actually does support war.

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Homelessness and LGBTQIA+ Intersection

Omaralexis Ochoa: Thank you for elaborating on that. It's really great to get some background on the rationale why you're going up against this long time incumbent. I want to expand on your views on homelessness and homelessness policy. In some of your other interviews and other engagements, it's been reported that you are strongly for better homeless legislation, especially because they tend to skew more into the LGBT range.

Maebe A. Girl: Absolutely. There's definitely many of these issues all intersect. And there's a big intersection between LGBTQIA issues and homelessness. In fact, if you take a look at homeless youth, not just here in Los Angeles, but nationwide, 40 % of homeless youth are LGBT, when about 4 % 6 % of youth in general is LGBT. So it's vastly disproportionate. And I think it's important to sort of look at all of these iissues with an intersectional perspective. Now, when it comes to homelessness, it's absolutely the biggest crisis facing Los Angeles right now. It's one of the biggest crises facing the nation right now. In fact, last night at a council meeting that I was at, we had a presentation by Ron Galprin, who's the LA controller. And he said that a recent poll went out to folks that live in the city. And for those people that responded,

The question was, what do you think is the biggest crisis facing Los Angeles right now? 95 % of people responded that it's homelessness. And it absolutely is, even if you look at it statistically. Every year, the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority does an annual homeless count in January. In fact, I took part in that actual count this past year. It's a point in place census, if you will, and they track how many people are living. Either not just on the streets, but also in cars, in places that you might not think to look, but it's also still not really representative of actually how many people there are, because there's certain people that you can't see that are homeless, what we might call a couch surfer, or these houses where you have 15 people living in them. And if you look at just how much homelessness is increasing based on percentage, 2019 over 2018, homelessness increased 12% countywide and it increased 16% right here in Los Angeles, which is huge. It's awful. And in certain parts of the district that I'm running in, such as Burbank, homelessness increased 40%. And so when we have a congressperson that's in office, who's been in office for 20 years, and this is an ongoing issue, I think it's time for new leadership.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Right. It's an issue that's faced this city for a very long time and in many ways has started to define it. And you are on a council, I believe, for homelessness.

Maebe A. Girl: So I'm on the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, one of my roles within my council position. I'm the co-chair of the LGBTQIA committee and I'm also one of the homelessness liaison. So I sort of interface between the council, our homeless, we have a homelessness committee, which I'm also a part of. I interface between those two organizations, but also within the city itself. So we have like quarterly meetings for all of the homelessness liaisons to, you know,

figure out, you know, what are the pressing issues, how we can address them, how we can solve them. But a lot of it comes down to, you know, our leaders, our officials, our legislators taking action. And one of the things that really pisses me off right now about LA City Hall is that you are seeing a lot of you're they're just sort of like talking heads in this in the sense that they're saying homelessness is a problem. We want to fix homelessness. But if you take a look at what they're doing in from a legislative perspective,

A lot of the ordinances that are going through City Hall right now are actually legislation that harms homeless people. For instance, City Hall just voted to once again make it illegal to sleep in your car, which, know, to somebody not experiencing homelessness, you might think, well, what's the big deal? sometimes, but that's the difference between living in your car, which can be, you know, safe, at least it's locked. You you don't have to worry about somebody coming in and the difference of sleeping on the street. So a lot of people, because they can no longer sleep in their cars, they are forced onto the streets. And the way that that is is because by now making it illegal to sleep in your car and ticketing those people, you know, if you're already living in your car because you can't afford to live in an apartment, you probably can't afford to pay parking tickets. And we all know what happens after you have a couple of unpaid parking tickets, you're towed, and then you're really screwed. And for somebody that is experiencing housing insecurity, homelessness, that's a matter of being on the streets or not.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Yeah, and this is effectively policy that's targeting homeless people.

Maebe A. Girl: Exactly. It criminalizes impoverished, which I think is despicable.

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Platform Priorities: Representation, Inclusion, and Progress

Omaralexis Ochoa: I want to pivot a bit into a couple of your other platforms. I know that you have really three major, major pillars for your platform seeing to protect, you know, different disenfranchised groups, ⁓ minorities, immigrants, as well as our environment, as well as advocating for different things like diversity and inclusion and education, as well as legislating for more progressive action. Can you tell me more about the work you would like to do to protect minorities and immigrants?

Maebe A. Girl: Yeah, absolutely. feel like, you know, especially when it comes to a federal position, know, legislation is one of the most important ways that you can influence that. But also, when you're in a position of power like that, your voice matters. And just the way that you speak about people and the way that you speak to people and you speak on behalf of them or against them matters. And I don't see enough of our politicians speaking on behalf or in favor of many of our marginalized communities. And that's not just the LGBTQIA community, but It's people of color, it's immigrants, it's women. These are the marginalized communities. And when you take a look at how our government is right now, I think you always ask people this question. When you think of a politician, you probably think of an old, wealthy, cisgender white guy. And that's not representative of what America is. It's not representative of what even Los Angeles is.

Omaralexis Ochoa: That alone is a really fantastic rationale for running.

Maebe A. Girl: Yeah, I think that alone is reason enough to run. Advocacy, think, is a big part of it. Part of my platform is to advocate for diversity, representation, and inclusion. And when I say representation, that's a big buzzword right now. And representation, we need to see more marginalized communities represented in many elements of our society, not just government and politics. It's Hollywood, things like that. But when it comes to government and the policies that dictate how we live our lives, it's particularly important. know, out of the 435 members of Congress, only 10 identify as openly queer. And there has never been a trans person in Congress. So how can we trust that our government is even knows how to look out for us when they don't truly understand the struggle that our communities endure every single day?

Omaralexis Ochoa: Especially given that many of these roles in government are actually roles that we to some degree have control over and leverage our voice to gain that representation. it's oftentimes the lack of action that people take in thinking, say, their vote doesn't matter. It's just one in a million that really results in a lot of these incumbents staying in for 10, 20+ years.

Maebe A. Girl: which by the way, think even in and of itself, I think is wrong. I don't think that our politicians should be in office that long. Just as we have term limits for the president, I believe that we should have term limits for our Congress people. In fact, I would vote on legislation to limit my own term. don't think that, you know, what that term is exactly, I'm not quite sure. I'm personally in favor of a three or four limit term for Congress people, probably a four limit term because there are two year increments for the House of Representatives, maybe for Senate, maybe... maybe a little bit less because they have a longer term. But the fact that we can only have our president in office for eight years, the president is only a third of the, just one branch of the government. I think when you have these congressmen that have been in office for decades, it just presents a very obvious generational gap. And I don't think that many of our congresspeople are truly in tune with today's America.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Yeah, and it's really the executive branch of government, you know, represented by the figurehead president that really just approves legislation, doesn't actually create it. And that's really where a lot of the issues stem from.

Maebe A. Girl: And we talked about this a little bit before we started recording about how, you know, most people have an idea of who they're going to vote for for president. They're at least aware of who the presidential candidates are. And there's a lot more ignorance when it comes to who you're going to vote for for the House of Representatives, who you're going to vote for Senate, you know, who you're going to vote for school board, for judge. And, those things are really important because these are all of the pieces that creates, you know, the government that you want to see or don't want to see.

And while you might not have as big of an effect as you think on, say, a presidential election, you have a huge effect on more local elections because it's a much smaller number of people voting for that particular person. So truly, every vote does count.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Right, and I do actually recall something from high school. One of my school's sort of media center managers was also the county commissioner, and he had actually earned that position by a swing of only 45 votes in a local election. Wow. And that really is where it comes down to the wire and where your votes really do count.

Maebe A. Girl: Exactly. And they even do count on a bigger scale. You if you think about how close this last presidential election was, you know, I'm also reminded of how close the presidential election was in early 2000s when it was Bush versus Gore. You know, your vote counts more than you might think it does, especially because if everybody had that mindset, nobody would go out and vote.

Omaralexis Ochoa: And I do believe in the last election for Trump, the rate was somewhere around 35 or 36% for a nation of almost 300 million people.

Maebe A. Girl: I've always been someone to say that if you don't vote, you can't complain. You can't complain.

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Drag as Armor: Visibility and Political Power

Omaralexis Ochoa: very well put. In your most recent feature with NowThis, you've described your drag as something of a suit of armor. How would you say that this has benefited you throughout your campaign and throughout your political career?

Maebe A. Girl: You know, I think when I say that, you know, it really speaks to how I grew up as a queer person and how many queer people grew up. you know, an interesting thing about being a queer person versus, say, a person of color is that you do have the capability of hiding it if you'd like to. And I think that a lot of queer people, especially growing up, intentionally choose to hide their queerness so as to not be ostracized, so as to not be judged and excluded from their communities. And that's something that carries on with you throughout your life. You you tend to be guarded. And part of the reason why I decided to, you know, to run under my drag name and to present female when I'm in my council meetings and hopefully eventually in Congress is because it's a very clear visual representation of queerness and it's very, it's very loud and clear and queer. And I think that's important. And that also sort of feeds into what I was talking about, you know, visibility and representation. And, you know, also it's hard to, you know, ignore the seven foot woman in the room.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Yeah, exactly. And having that sort of representation, I think is very important, not only from the perspective of, you know, people who are queer and want to see themselves represented, but also people who are sort of struggling to reconcile their identity with, their religious beliefs or other things.

Maebe A Girl: Absolutely. To see people in positions of power and having success. And that's actually one of the objectives, I would say, maybe of your campaign, but also of this podcast and why we are very glad to have you on to sort of be that example for listeners who might be interested in maybe running for political positions in the future, but might think, you know what, like I'm, I'm a bit feminine. I'm not really traditional. I'm gender fluid or I identify with different pronouns. I'm not the right person.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Yeah, and that's the thing is many people for any reason or another, you know, think I can't do this because of reason A, B or C. And a lot of why they think that is because of what we talked about earlier, because of what you traditionally think of as a politician. And one of the reasons that I'm so inspired by politicians like AOC is because she's an everyday person representing everyday people. Obviously, she is in Congress now, but before she was in Congress, she was a bartender.

And a lot of people look at that as a bad thing. And I look at that as a great thing because you're a direct connection to the working class, to people that traditionally, historically do not have a voice. And I think that we need more everyday regular people representing regular people. Feeds into what we were also talking about how, you know, how can the elites truly understand what the, you know, the lower classes are experiencing, you know, when they don't live that experience. It's not their experience and it's easy for them to just sort of overlook things and not give too much concern to things. But if you were in that position, if you're a poor person, if you're somebody that doesn't have health insurance, doesn't have a job, doesn't have a home, it's an immediate concern for you, not an afterthought.

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Immigration, ICE, and Human Rights

Omaralexis Ochoa: And I guess on the subject of immediate concerns, being in the South California community, one thing that we've been really affected by has been immigration policies, our proximity to the Mexican border and all the things we've been seeing with migrant detention and the wall and these other things. You've come out and stated that you openly condemn ICE. Can you expand more on your immigration outlook?

Maebe A. Girl: Absolutely condemn. Yeah, absolutely. I truly believe that we need to abolish ICE. I think it's an awful institution. It's ripping up families. We do not need kids in cages. We don't need any humans in cages. one of the reasons that I think it's particularly, I think we need to get rid of Adam Schiff is because in District 28, more than 25 % of the population is Latinx. How can you justify funding ICE more than $200 million?

So I think that's something that a lot of people, again, don't realize about Adam Schiff is just last summer, he voted for a bill that granted more than $200 million to ICE. Now on top of that, he also was one of the few Democrats that voted in 2002 for the Homeland Security Act, which created ICE. So not only did he create ICE in the early 2000s, he's also continuing to fund it while saying that he has the best interests of all of his constituents.

While undocumented immigrants might not technically be his constituents, they actually are. And they're family members of many of your constituents that make up such a huge part of the identity of the district. And I think it's just something that needs to be done with.

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Prison Reform and the Carceral System

Omaralexis Ochoa: Very well put and thank you for expanding upon that. When it comes to immigration, you mentioned we don't need any humans in cages. Another one of your platforms has been also prison reform. Can you expand upon that as well?

Maebe A. Girl: Absolutely. First of all, I think that we don't need private prisons in this nation because private prisons operate off of the idea of profiting off of people that are incarcerated, which I think is, again, immoral. I think it's unethical. I think it's despicable. We have one of the biggest, if not the biggest, incarcerated population in the world. And if you take a look at who is incarcerated, once again, it feeds back to a lot of those people that we were talking about earlier, poor people, people of color. Immigrants, all of these marginalized communities that again, don't have a voice and are further disenfranchised when they are, you know, thrown into private prison. In fact, this upcoming election here in Los Angeles, there is a there's a measure on the ballot to increase prison reform here in LA County. And I hope everybody votes in favor of that. Make sure you vote yes. And that's something that I'd like to see nationwide, not just here in California or Los Angeles.

Omaralexis Ochoa: And then when it comes to the prison issue, it really does tie back into all of those macro issues surrounding LGBT social acceptance within a family, leading to homelessness, leading to drug use or theft, those sorts of things that accumulate over time. And it really all just comes back together.

Maebe A. Girl: You know, that's not to say that I don't think that we should have any sort of any form of prisons. You know, there are, you know, there's a certain class of criminals that, you know, I do think that we should not trust to, you know, have in society, you know, be it, you know, murderers, pedophiles, you know, people of that nature. But, you know, I don't think that people who are in prison right now first getting caught smoking marijuana when the white dude down the street is buying it at the corner shop.

I think there's just, it's totally unfair. I think that everybody who is in prison right now for issues such as marijuana, I think that's awful. think they need to be released immediately just like Rod Blagojevich was, even though he tried to sell the Senate seat.

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Political Origins: From Chicago to Silver Lake

Omaralexis Ochoa: I want to jump back a little bit to your beginning in politics. You are clearly very passionate about helping disenfranchised groups and making an impact on your local community, but also inspiring others to get involved. But being on the Silver Lake neighborhood council isn't actually your first rodeo in terms of politics. One thing that I read, and you can, of course, can confirm for me is you actually ran for the mayor of Chicago.

Maebe A. Girl: Yeah, so when I lived in Chicago in the early 2010s, I was surprised to see that Mayor Richard Daley was stepping down because he'd been in office as the mayor of Chicago for more than 20 years. And prior to that, his father was in office for more than 20 years. And I don't believe in that sort of. ⁓ Yeah, I just think that is, you know, I don't think that's right.And even back then, I had this feeling that we need more regular people representing more regular people. Now, when I ran, when I attempted to run in that election, I failed to meet the number of signatures that you need to get on the ballot. So that's why that didn't happen. But I was still proud, though, because we needed to get, I think, 12,000 signatures to get on the ballot. And I think we got 1,200, which, granted, is only a fraction. But that was at least 1,200 people that me and my small group of people were able to say, "Hey, you we need to change. We need something different."

Omaralexis Ochoa: Right. And 1200 people that sort of have decided to elevate their voice and say, "Hey, we agree."

Maebe A. Girl: Exactly. And that's only the 1200 people that we spoke to, you know, we didn't have the sort of manpower capacity to reach out to more voters.

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Incumbency, Money, and the Primary Strategy

Omaralexis Ochoa: What would you say to people who look at your current campaign and say, "Adam Schiff is a long time incumbent. He has a proven track record. He has hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to run with." And what would you say to people that are doubting that your campaign could even make it?

Maebe A. Girl: I would just say that, I would say first of all, that it's not a good thing that somebody's been in office that long. Furthermore, he sort of was written into a loophole when he was elected in the early 2000s. It was actually not for District 28. What is now District 28 was -- so the borders changed after the census in 2010, or in 2000, I believe -- the district ended up changing to become overwhelmingly democratic. So when he ran, that was his only big race when he was running, because he was running up against a Republican and he won.

But the district changed its borders after that. And now the district is overwhelmingly Democratic. The distric tends to vote between 70 and 75% Democratic in any midterm or presidential election. So that means that there is virtually no chance that a Republican is going to be voted into this particular district.

Now, incumbents already have the advantage of being an incumbent in terms of an election. Now add to it that Adam Schiff has millions and millions of dollars. I believe that he's the most well-funded incumbent in the Democratic Party right now. It's virtually impossible for anybody else to get in. I think it's unfair. I mean, when I think of a career politician, that's the definition of a career politician.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Right. And we definitely don't need more of those.

Maebe A. Girl: We don't. One of the one of my criticisms of Adam Schiff, and you know, I also would like to say that I am trying not to run a smear campaign against him, because I don't think he's an awful human. I don't think that he's, hatful or has bad intentions. I just don't think that he has -- don't think he knows what -- he doesn't know he should be doing is what I'm saying. So just wanted to say that I don't hate him. I don't think he's a bad person, but he's just not doing enough. He's not the one.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Yeah, of course. And I know that you've also mentioned in other different publications that you have nothing against Adam Schiff. It's really more a matter of representation specifically for the South California.

Maebe A. Girl: It's a difference in ideology. It's a difference in policy. The big difference is that, again, he's a moderate and I'm a progressive. That's sort the most simple way to explain the difference. And one of the reasons that I think that people should vote for me in the primary election is because here in California, we operate on what's known as a top two primary or also known as a jungle primary. So in many states, the primary election determines who the Republican nominee is gonna be and who the Democratic nominee is gonna be for the general election.

In California, the primary election determines it's the top two vote getters move on to the general election. So it could be one Democrat and one Republican, or it could be two Democrats or it could be two Republicans. So if you vote for me in the primary election, the benefit of that is that if it's me and Adam Schiff in the general election, voters have an actual choice between Democrats rather than just having to go, and vote along party lines. The voters will have the choice, do we want a moderate or do we want a progressive? And I think that's much more democratic than just, you know, all right, I'm just going to go with the one person that I have the choice of. If I don't move forward, if I don't advance into the general election, it's more than likely going to be Adam Schiff and a Republican, which is going to result in Adam Schiff being reelected. And it's just going to be a lot of the same old same old.

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Final Message to Voters

Omaralexis Ochoa: Yeah. And you know, on the subject of sort of towing the party lines, that's oftentimes how a lot of incumbents end up staying in office and how we don't get those sort of shakeups on a local level or a representational level. So is there anything else that you want to add to voters in the Los Angeles community before we sign off today?

Maebe A. Girl: I would just say that, you I hope that everybody votes progressive. I know that there has been, you know, a lot of division within the Democratic Party. One of the big, you know, words that has been thrown around a lot is unity. And, you know, it's hard to unify. It's hard to unify when there are fundamental differences within the party. And so I just hope that people take a deeper look into the social benefits of being a progressive Democrat rather than being a centrist or moderate Democrat. You it's actually you come from a place of privilege when you vote that way because it says that you're okay with the status quo and you're okay with things as they are. And I think it really neglects to take into consideration those people who don't have that privilege, know, people that don't have health insurance, people that are homeless, people that don't have the same rights and dignity as everybody else. So I hope everybody will come out and vote yes on maybe at the March 3 primary. If you want to find out more about my candidacy about my issues, please feel free to check out our website, is MaybeAGirlForCongress.org. You can also follow me on Instagram, @MaybeAGirl, or on Twitter, @Maybe_A_Girl.

Omaralexis Ochoa: Yeah. And not to mention you can also go to maybe agirlforcongress.org/contribute if you want to make a contribution to the campaign as well. So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Maebe A. Girl: Thanks so much, I appreciate it. And no matter who you vote for, go out and vote. Thanks. Yay.

Drag as Armor: America’s First Elected Drag Queen is Running for Congress

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