Voters in Calexico have resoundingly ousted the first out transgender member of the City Council and her council ally after a bitter recall campaign rife with accusations of transphobia and political cronyism in the struggling city on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Nearly 74% of voters in the April 16 special election supported the recall of City Councilmember Raúl Ureña, according to early results released by the Imperial County registrar of voters Wednesday night. Ureña, who uses all pronouns but prefers “she,” publicly came out as transgender after taking office, becoming a target for harassment online and in person.

Nearly 73% of voters supported the recall of Councilmember Gilberto Manzanarez, another outspoken young progressive.

Roughly 77% of ballots received had been tallied by early Thursday, said Linsey Dale, the registrar of voters.

Both Ureña, 26, and Manzanarez, 30, said they believe the recall campaign — which thrust the almost entirely Latino city of 38,000 into America’s culture wars over gender identity — was largely motivated by transphobia. Recall organizers said that their campaign was rooted in concerns about rising homeless numbers and lagging economic development, and that Ureña’s personal life and sexuality were not factors.

After the election, Ureña said she remained “hopeful and optimistic, even with these results.”

“We will not give up on social justice in the Imperial Valley,” Ureña said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

At a City Council meeting Wednesday night, Manzanarez said the city’s political old guard, some of whom were leaders in the recall movement, unfairly blamed the young council members for problems — such as the deteriorating downtown and understaffed police, fire and public works departments — that existed years before Manzanarez and Ureña were elected.

“It’s very easy to point to downtown and make sure that people understand that it’s not OK. How long has it been that way? Did it start being that way in 2022? Absolutely not,” said Manzanarez, who was elected in November 2022.

Maritza Hurtado, a leader of the recall campaign and former mayor, declined to comment on the results.

In a previous interview with The Times, Hurtado, a member of the City Council from 2010 to 2018, called Ureña and Manzanarez “toxic” left-wing activists. She said they dismissed downtown merchants’ concerns about crime, public drug use and rampant homeless encampments, focusing instead on what recall proponents saw as more frivolous projects, such as installing charging stations for electric vehicles that most people in town cannot afford.

Hurtado, 58, said Ureña used gender “as a card this whole time,” dismissing people with legitimate political grievances as transphobic and racist.

Turnout for the special election — which cost Calexico more than $128,000 — was about 23%, with an estimated 4,933 votes cast. Dale said that number could fluctuate, with additional ballots arriving by mail in coming days.

“Imperial County, unfortunately, and I hate to say this, we’re generally at the bottom end of the state when it comes to turnout,” Dale said. During the March 5 presidential primary, she noted, 22% of registered Imperial County voters cast ballots, the lowest turnout in California.

Still, she said, the Calexico special election “was very passionate on both sides, and I feel that it encouraged a lot of voters to come out who might not have done so before.”

Maritza Hurtado, a local businesswoman and former mayor of Calexico, helped lead the effort to recall two young progressives on the City Council.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

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When they first came into office, Ureña and Manzanarez were hailed as young changemakers in Calexico, an impoverished town separated from the sprawling city of Mexicali, Mexico, by a steel border fence.

Ureña was first elected in 2020, at age 23, with 70% of the vote. In 2023, she held the rotating one-year title of mayor.

Ureña was ushered in to finish the term of David Romero, a council member who went to federal prison after taking bribes in exchange for providing a guaranteed city permit for a cannabis business. Another then-council member, Rosie Fernandez, had pleaded guilty earlier that year to driving under the influence; she was sentenced to probation and had to install a court-ordered alcohol-detection device in her vehicle. She later lost her bid for reelection.

In October 2022, state auditors released a scathing audit that said Calexico had been in the midst of a “financial crisis” for a decade and was at high risk for potential waste, fraud and mismanagement. Previous city councils, the audit said, approved budgets based on unreliable financial data, and the municipality overspent, pushing its general fund into a deficit from fiscal years 2014-15 through 2018-19.

Ureña was reelected in November 2022, a month after the audit was released. She and Manzanarez were the top vote-getters in an at-large contest for two seats.

Soon after, Ureña publicly came out as gender-fluid and transgender and started wearing dresses and makeup in official appearances. Ureña and Manzanarez were handed recall papers the following May.

Recall proponents cited a visible rise in homeless encampments in Calexico’s downtown as a major concern.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Manzanarez and Ureña regularly clashed with other council members and citizens, especially when they criticized the police. They and another council ally, Gloria Romo, often spoke during public meetings in Spanish without translation — infuriating some prominent recall supporters, who called it exclusionary.

In January, Hurtado served Romo with intent-to-recall papers, a signature-gathering effort still underway.

The ouster of Ureña and Manzanarez will leave two of the council’s five seats empty. At Wednesday’s meeting, City Atty. Carlos Campos said the two seats will be vacated once the City Council certifies the results. The council then will have 60 days to decide whether to fill the seats through special election or appointment.

Ureña said she and Manzanarez watched together as the first batch of election results came in Tuesday night. They had “a great party,” she said, even though it quickly became clear they would lose.

“I did not stop dancing,” Ureña said. “Nothing gets through my happiness.”

• Peter Barca, a former Democratic congressman from southeast Wisconsin in the 1990s, announced his candidacy for Congress against Republican incumbent Bryan Steil, who seeks a fourth term.
• Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, previously held by Paul Ryan, has become more competitive after new boundary lines were adopted in 2022.
• Barca’s political history includes previous terms in Congress and leadership roles in the state Assembly.

A Democrat who represented southeast Wisconsin in Congress in the 1990s before going on to become a leader in the Assembly and state revenue secretary announced Thursday that he’s running for Congress again.

Peter Barca announced his bid against Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who is seeking a fourth term. Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, previously represented by former House Speaker Paul Ryan, leans Republican but was made more competitive under new boundary lines adopted in 2022.

The seat is a target for Democrats nationally as they attempt to regain majority control of the House. It is one of only two congressional districts in Wisconsin that are viewed as competitive. The other is western Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District held by Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

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Republicans hold six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional seats.

Barca, 68, previously held the 1st Congressional District seat from 1993 to 1995. He had previously considered running again for the seat after Ryan stepped down in 2018.

Barca is the first well-known Democrat to get into the race. National Democrats are expected to back Barca’s campaign. The primary is Aug. 13.

Barca, in a statement announcing his campaign, said his long record of public service showed that he was a fighter for working families and contrasted himself with a “do-nothing, dysfunctional Congress.”

“We need someone to step up and start going to bat for our families again,” he said.

The Steil campaign said in a statement that Barca has “put his political career ahead of Wisconsin families” over the past 40 years. The campaign also faulted Barca for opposing a 2016 bill that would have banned sanctuary cities and for voting in 1993 for a budget bill in Congress that raised the gas tax.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella branded Barca as a “sacrificial lamb” who has “put his out of touch policies ahead of Wisconsinites.”

Steil was elected in 2018 by 12 percentage points, and won reelection by 19 points in 2020 and 9 points in 2022.

Barca was elected to serve in the state Assembly from 1985 until 1993 when he resigned after winning a special election to Congress. After he lost in 1995, former President Bill Clinton appointed him to serve as Midwest regional administrator to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

He was elected again to the Assembly in 2008 and served as Democratic minority leader from 2011 to 2017.

Barca was leader of Democrats in 2011 during the fight over collective bargaining rights. While his Democratic colleagues in the Senate fled to Illinois in an attempt to block passage of a bill that effectively ended collective bargaining for public workers, Barca helped organize a filibuster in the Assembly that lasted more than 60 hours.

Barca stepped down as minority leader, in part over grumbling from fellow Democrats over his support for a $3 billion incentive package for Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing company that had planned to locate a massive facility in his district.

Barca left the Assembly in 2019 when Gov. Tony Evers tapped him to be secretary of the state Department of Revenue. He resigned last month.

Frustrated over the lack of progress on homelessness in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for increased oversight of cities and counties that receive state funds in an effort to hold them accountable to deliver results.

Newsom’s more aggressive stance is the latest example of the governor wanting local governments to do more to lessen homelessness, which has worsened in his tenure despite more than $20 billion in state funds spent on programs to help over the last five years.

The governor’s plan seeks to expand a unit that was created in 2021 within the Department of Housing and Community Development to enforce local compliance with state housing law. The unit’s work has resulted in Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filing lawsuits against cities, such as Huntington Beach, for refusing to build enough homes.

“Local governments have told us that they have plans to reduce unsheltered homelessness,” said Jason Elliott, Newsom’s deputy chief of staff. “They’ve written that down, and they’ve signed on the dotted line. This reform is about making sure that those promises get fulfilled.”

The proposal would broaden the responsibilities of the Housing Accountability Unit to include oversight of state homelessness grants to cities and counties and whether local governments follow through on their plans to reduce unhoused populations and adhere to state laws. Through the state budget process, the proposal seeks to shift nearly two dozen staff members into the unit to focus on local homelessness oversight and enforcement.

Newsom also wants lawmakers to pass legislation that would, beginning in 2027, in effect require jurisdictions to zone housing for homeless populations and give the state another avenue to hold local governments accountable for reducing homelessness.

The changes “create a pathway for jurisdictions to actually be responsive to that lower income category,” said Tomiquia Moss, secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. “The zero to 30% area median income, which many of the folks who are unhoused fit within, has not had a housing requirement to it.”

Newsom’s plan is likely to receive support from advocates for the homeless and elicit concerns among some local governments about enforcement. His effort to punish cities and counties for not approving enough housing has drawn a mixed bag of reactions over the years, including concerns about the state infringing on the rights of local government.

The effort follows a report from the California state auditor’s office that found the Newsom administration failed to track and evaluate the effectiveness of billions of dollars spent on its own programs. Elliott said the state does not have enough data to determine the efficiency of its homelessness programs and added “we’re really not getting information from local governments about whether or not they’re executing on their obligations.”

Expanding accountability, Elliott said, will hold local governments responsible for delivering solutions and tracking performance in exchange for billions in state funding.

The proposal marks a new effort by Newsom to address homelessness, a pernicious problem in California tied to a shortage of housing, the high cost of living and a drug abuse and mental health crisis. At last count, the state’s homeless population stood at 181,000.

Newsom has highlighted homelessness as the top policy priority of his governorship, and in doing so, also made the issue his greatest political vulnerability. Fox News and conservative politicians repeatedly draw on the image of encampments lining California sidewalks as an example of his failures as governor and as a rebuke of Democratic leadership.

The governor is acutely aware of the criticism and sends pictures to his aides of encampments from his travels throughout the state as a reminder that they all can do better.

Newsom has repeatedly criticized local governments for not taking a more aggressive stance to address homelessness and mental health needs in their communities as he takes on progressives in his own party by employing a more moderate approach to the problem than on any other policy issue.

Eager to make progress, the governor successfully advocated for changes to the law to permit compelling people with severe mental illness and substance disorders into care. He recently referred to the narrow passage Proposition 1, his March ballot measure to boost funding and treatment beds for mental health, as an example of voters feeling cynical about the idea that more money would solve the problem.

“The results are not what any of us want them to be,” Elliott said. “Walk down any street in any major or small city in California and you know exactly what I’m talking about. So, this is really about homelessness spending and accountability and accountability for the actions that local governments are required to take.”