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The council is part of a continuing political reset for the city that started when former Mayor Steve Pougnet decided not to seek reelection in 2015 after his business dealings came under scrutiny. “It is a process that has changed Palm Springs dramatically from the 1950s when it was probably one the reddest towns in California,” Wallace said. Many credit that to the LGBTQ community’s growth in the city. The new Palm Springs City Council will also be made up entirely of Democrats. Between the two of them, Sonny Bono and later his widow, Mary Bono Mack, represented the area in Congress for 18 years until Democrat Raul Ruiz flipped the seat blue in 2012. The city’s transformation into a LGBTQ stronghold comes as the Republican Party has lost its edge in the town. “I have been welcome in this town like no other place I have ever lived.” “Palm Springs is an incredibly affirming and exciting place for people to live,” she said. Not when she served on the planning board. Not when she ran for a seat on the neighborhood council.
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She said being a transgender woman was never an issue for her as she climbed the ranks in city politics. That is certainly true of Middleton, who moved to Palm Springs in 2011 after living all over California, including Los Angeles, Ventura and San Francisco. “It is like refugees coming to a city: if they find a group of people who make them feel welcome they keep coming.” If a place is friendly people tend to follow that,” he said. “It is really hard to tell how these cultural things come about. Las Vegas has stolen the moniker, but it was true of Palm Springs.”ĭavid Wallace, author of “A City Comes Out: How Celebrities Made Palm Springs a Gay and Lesbian Paradise,” said many older same-sex couples flocked to the area in the 1970s and 1980s to buy some of the mid-century homes that are now considered architectural gems. “ What happened in Palm Springs, stayed in Palm Springs. “This was the place could come and they could meet and whatever they did was their business,” he said. Oden said the desert city attracted many people seeking privacy, and that made gays feel welcomed. For decades, the Coachella Valley was also popular with some of America’s leading Republicans including President Ford and Walter Annenberg, the publishing tycoon and advisor to President Reagan. Oden said the city has always been a magnet for gays and lesbians since the 1950s, when celebrities would retreat to the desert for privacy. “I am proud of the citizens of our city who looked beyond the surface and asked is this person qualified.” “I faced it the entire time, it wasn’t overt but it was there,” he said. When he ran for office two decades ago, Oden said he faced discrimination as he sought to become not only the first gay man but also the first African American elected to the council. Oden said he was pleased to see that voters had no qualms about electing an all-LGBTQ council. I do think representation matters, and we should continue to be a model city for civil rights.”
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“But it is still historic for the movement. “We really focused on local issues, we are not running because of those identities,” Holstege said.
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Holstege and Middleton said identity issues never became a central part of the campaign, which focused more on environmental concerns, the city’s growing homelessness population and how to tackle looming pension liabilities. “We have broken through,” Middleton said. Middleton called the elections historic for transgender Americans. In Virginia, a transgender woman, Democrat Danica Roem, unseated an incumbent who sponsored a bill that would have restricted which bathrooms she could use.
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Middleton, a retired auditor who worked for the State Compensation Insurance Fund, joins at least seven other openly transgender people elected to public office across the country last week, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California, said Palm Springs is the only city council in California comprised of all LGBTQ people. And while the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization, doesn’t keep nationwide data on the makeup of city councils, the Palm Springs council is believed to be the first in the country to be entirely LGBTQ.