Dear friend,

I live in a very progressive congressional district in Los Angeles, CA-30. It includes, Hollywood, Burbank, Los Feliz, Silverlake, West Hollywood, East Hollywood, Atwater, Hancock Park and Glendale. The PVI is D+23 and the partisan lean is D+45. Biden beat Trump 72.2% to 26.0%.

In the 2022 congressional race, two Democrats won slots in the run-off— incumbent Adam Schiff and progressive challenger Maebe A. Girl, beating out Republican Ronda Kennedy. Maebe brought in over 21,000 votes in that primary.

Democratic primary winners in that year’s primary who won included these 5-- who were all heavily favored by the establishment and went on to lose in November:

• Robert Zimmerman in NY-03 with 9,482 votes

• Lauren Gillan in NY-04 with 12,432 votes

• Max Rose, a former Congressman, in NY-11 with 15,871 votes

• Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in NY-17 with 21,525 votes

• Francis Conole in NY-22 with 10,644 votes

Dan Goldman is now serving in Congress but when he ran in 2022, he took just 16,686 votes to win. And Hakeem Jeffries, now the top Democrat in the House had a contested primary, which he won— with 22,196 votes, approximately the same number of votes as Maebe.

Schiff is gigantically popular in the district and he won the runoff but when he announced he would run for the open U.S. Senate seat, Maebe was in a unique position to run again. Over a dozen other candidates have since jumped into the race, none nearly as progressive as Maebe and some quite conservative for a progressive district.

Maebe is the obvious candidate for progressive groups and both Blue America and Catch Fire have endorsed her.

In 2022 the local Feel the Bern chapter did as well and probably will again. But for most national groups and national politicians, even the most progressive… find endorsing a trans-woman just too difficult. I’m not accusing anyone of homophobia or even transphobia but Maebe is a local at-large elected official in Silverlake and her platform is the best of any candidate in the congressional race. So what’s the problem?

Last month, I posted Maebe’s platform on my Facebook page:

Someone’s comment has had me thinking since then. He wrote “I like the platform and would certainly consider a challenge to Schiff whose major celebrity value seems to be performative. ‘We're doing all we can,really.’ I wish it was not in the mask of a joke candidate which is still not possible to seriously vote for. I'd like it if they were willing to go to office.”

First of all, Schiff isn’t running again. Second of all… there is nothing about Maebe that is “a joke candidate.” Quite the contrary… unless being a transgender person is somehow “a joke.” I hate to think any of my Facebook friends would think something like that. But it’s a steep hill that Maebe has to contend with constantly— although not as constantly as the outpouring of anti-trans hatred she has to contend with as a candidate.

One way to show support for Maebe is to contribute to her campaign. She needs the show of support from the entire progressive community to make it through the runoff again and show transgender people are no “joke.”

Thanks for always doing what you can to help make this a better world,

Howie Klein, for the entire Blue America team.

About our June 30th fundraising deadline:

Every quarter a political campaign has to release its fundraising numbers, and June 30th is our upcoming end-of-quarter deadline. Current officeholders and advocacy groups look at quarterly fundraising when choosing who to endorse, using money as an indicator of “viability.” In a perfect world we’d have publicly funded elections, but right now a grassroots campaign like ours needs to raise at least $150,000 this quarter to show our strength, get key endorsements, and win. We don’t take any corporate PAC or special interest money, but with your grassroots support, this goal is within reach. Please contribute to Maebe’s campaign before June 30th so we can show the power of bottom-up organizing!