It’s not about you
As is the custom, after I lost the election for state Assembly, I called my opponent Joe Patterson to congratulate him on his win. In addition to the congrats, I took it as an opportunity to make some asks. If I wasn’t going to be in office, I wanted the time I did have with our legislator to advocate for what I had intended to work towards had I been elected.
I had two main asks, but the one I want to write about now is the last. I asked him to remember that as a representative for our district he represented ALL of his constituents and that we were all counting on him. His response: “In a partisan environment, I don’t know what that means.”
My brain went into helper mode and started explaining how no matter our feelings on a person’s lifestyle and belief system, we all have protections under the constitution and his job is to protect those people as well.
My brain, however, should have went into “What the Hell Man” mode. What does he mean he doesn’t know what representative government is? If he’s not representing everyone in his district, who does he think he’s representing?
Well, he answered that today. In a rant on social media, he expressed his outrage to an opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee written by Hannah Holzer that he claims loosely linked his support of anti-transgender legislation and policies to an increase in youth suicide. He went on to say that he was “blown away” and “disgusted” and was “still processing.”
In the article, Ms. Holzer mentioned that anti-transgender policies supported by him and our school boards have increased fear among youth in our community, and that is correct. Had she actually said outright that those policies contributed to increased suicide attempts, she would also be correct. I found this study in less than a minute of searching (California had the largest participant sample in the study): State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA
What kills me about all this is that his takeaway here was personal outrage for himself. Just the notion that the policies he supports could in any way hurt children didn’t make him stop and think. He just reacted for himself. Maybe he ultimately comes to the same conclusion, but he couldn’t even muster a moment of thought for those kids before he reacted. There is a subsection of children… children! in our community that are more fearful now. That is a monumental failure of leadership.
