Politics
This trans author toured red-state libraries. What she found might surprise you
The small brick plaza in front of the Pella, Iowa, public library was teeming with people. A gray-haired woman in a T-shirt stood stoically beside a large banner bearing a Bible quote with chapter and verse notation. There were a handful of other signs in the crowd. I can’t quote any of them because I kept my head down as I entered the plaza.
Inside the library, there were event posters with my face on them. I didn’t know if I’d be recognized in the crowd — or clocked as transgender. It occurred to me that in Iowa you don’t need a permit to carry a gun — open or concealed. A current of people was funneling into the library, and I joined them. I sensed, eerily, that some who were entering alongside me were protesters. I didn’t turn to look.
The event room was filling up fast, despite the fact that library director Mara Strickler held off on posting my visit to social media until three days before, opting instead for a word-of-mouth campaign. The crowd was mixed — age-wise and gender-wise — and overwhelmingly white (Pella, population 10,500-plus, is 95% white). A friend of mine who’d come from Iowa City told me later that some people in the back were giving out copies of my 2022 book, “This Body I Wore,” which had just come out in paperback. The gray-haired woman in the T-shirt filed in and took a seat.
An audience member holds a flag during a June town hall meeting in Pella, Iowa, with then-Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C).
(Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)
I found Strickler, who said there were only a few protesters inside the room and that I wouldn’t be using a microphone. She had a gift for me, and hoped I’d stick around long enough to receive it. Until then, it would just be me, my book and my naked voice in a packed room where I had no idea what was going to happen.
:::
Last summer I embarked on a red-state library tour: visiting, free of charge, any library that invited me to do a book talk and presentation on the freedom to read. The tour was an idle thought I entertained early in 2023 — an extravagant, albeit enticing, “what if?” — when the American Library Assn. selected “This Body I Wore” for its Notable Books List.
When my agent called with an offer of a paid speaking gig at an arts club in Arkansas, I thought, That puts me in a red state. With a single pin in a map, the tour began to take shape. I started contacting state library associations (every state has one) to get the word out. I’d traveled to Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Virginia, North Carolina and seven other libraries in Iowa before I arrived in Pella in late July. Florida, which leads the U.S. in book bans, was on my calendar for September.
I’d been following the wave of book bans and attacks on libraries, and reading local newspapers online, in addition to legislative bills, court filings and library board minutes. I published an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times highlighting the most salient feature of the book bans — the fact that a majority of the targeted books, as tracked by PEN America and the ALA, were by and about minorities, particularly Black and LGBTQ people.
I felt uniquely positioned — even qualified — for this tour. The 2023 Notable Books List citation was perfectly timed. The setting of my pre-transition memoir, in the conditions facing the budding trans communities of the late 20th century — when few of us were safe, accepted, employed, afforded medical care or visible in the media and libraries — also spoke to the current moment. Red-state legislatures were (and still are) trying to reverse decades of progress for trans freedom. (ABC news reports the ACLU recorded “at least” 508 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in 2023; 84 of them passed.)
The other thing that qualified me were my years as a New York City public school teacher and a touring poet, experiences that trained me to be compelling and relevant in a hurry. And six years of teaching in a juvenile jail in the South Bronx knocked out any stage fright I could feel in front of a group.
Diana Goetsch’s red-state library tour included a stop at the Salem Church Library in Spotsylvania, Va.
(From Diana Goetsch)
For safety, I decided on two rules: 1) Never post my itinerary online; and 2) Never stay in a town where I’m presenting. The thing that concerned me most (a concern shared by several librarians I spoke to) was the possibility of a book vigilante from a surrounding county or state strapping on a gun and getting behind the wheel.
As it turns out, these precautions, for the most part, weren’t needed. My invitations came from libraries that were supported by communities and library boards overwhelmingly in favor of the freedom to read. These tended to be in larger cities, such as Springfield, Mo., or Davenport, Iowa, or in college towns, like Grinnell, Iowa, or Chapel Hill, N.C. Other than in Pella, small-town libraries under threat didn’t invite me.
Of course, nothing prevented me from turning off the road and walking, unannounced, into any library. Had I not done so, I wouldn’t have learned half as much.
:::
The Eureka Springs Public Library, uphill from the center of a historic Arkansas mountain town, was empty except for two assistant librarians behind the reference desk. I asked if they were getting many book challenges. They told me they weren’t allowed to talk about the subject. One of them took out a printed paragraph and read it aloud: “Our library is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Act 372,” she began. Act 372, a law criminalizing librarians and booksellers for “furnishing a harmful item to a minor,” was signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and is set to take effect Aug. 1, 2023. After one assistant finished reading, the other one said, “I hate politics.”
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks while unveiling the Arkansas LEARNS education bill — which gives parents money in the form of vouchers to enroll their children in private, religious or home school — at the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock in 2023.
(Al Drago / Getty Images)
I walked into a good-sized library in a town in the Missouri Ozarks, asked to speak to a librarian and was pointed to a nervous blond woman who looked to be in her 30s. She knew a couple of things about me right away: that I’m trans, and that I’m an author. She knew this because I used my ALA-approved book as a calling card whenever I walked into a library.
Before I could ask my standard opening question of librarians — “Do you feel safe?” — the librarian had something she wanted me to know: “I don’t care if a person is rich or poor or homeless, black or white or gay or whatever. I’m here to help everybody.” That declaration, akin to the postman’s creed, is something any librarian would say. The odd thing was where she chose to declare it — in the office behind the circulation desk, where she brought me to speak in private.
At the Salem Church Branch of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Spotsylvania, Va., I spoke with a librarian named Dinah King. In 2021, King was an elementary school librarian in the Spotsylvania school district, where the school board voted unanimously to ban 14 books. Two of the members called for burning them. Soon after, someone created a Facebook “Book Burning event” page, exhorting parents to get their kids to remove “books you do NOT want in our schools,” and bring them to a spot across the street from Riverbend High School, where the school board met.
A Hamsa Hand magnet holds a newspaper clipping about book challenges on Jennifer Petersen’s refrigerator. Petersen filed challenges against 71 books with Spotsylvania County Public Schools.
(Julia Nikhinson / Getty Images)
King doubted the Facebook mob would follow through with their plan (they didn’t — the police showed up in force). What upset her far more was being forced to pull every book from her elementary school library’s shelves to check for “inappropriate” content according to some nebulous definition. One day a fourth grader appeared in front of her with a book about gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk and parroted the line, “This book is an abomination.”
:::
Before heading to Pella, I connected with veteran Iowa journalist Robert Leonard, who was described by the Des Moines Register as a “Trumpland translator” and had been covering a string of disturbing anti-trans incidents in the area. He’d recently reported on a proposal that would effectively ban trans people from an outdoor farmers market in Pella.
Leonard and I met for an interview in a study room in the library on the day of my event. Librarians there, he told me, “are afraid for their safety, for their funding, for their staff, because a small minority of people want to … erase a group of people off the face of the Earth.”
Late in 2022, some townspeople tried to ban the award-winning graphic novel “Gender Queer” from the public library. They also wanted to inspect every book. The library board was having none of it, though there was a push for a ballot resolution that would give the city council control of the library.
“Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe tops the American Library Assn.’s “challenged books” list.
(Oni Press)
In our interview, Leonard and I discussed my red-state tour and why I was doing it. I described what I saw as two layers to the book bans: politically connected groups such as Moms for Liberty spreading propaganda about “protecting children” and a MAGA base genuinely believing the propaganda. I was trying to reach a third group, the so-called “moveable middle” who might be listening to what are considered neutral sources of journalism — and were being told the book bans are part of a culture war.
“It is not a culture war,” I said to Leonard.
“Now [that’s] just pretty amazing to me,” he said, stopping to register what he called an epiphany. “Just that statement — ‘It’s not a culture war’ — sort of reimagines my relationship with the media and my writing.”
Really? Surely he knew the difference between a political wedge issue and ethnic extermination, so why was this an “epiphany”? Maybe it’s because his colleagues throughout the media — at the very outlets that reported doxxing, smear campaigns and death threats to librarians — persist in misframing the crusade as “a culture war.” This includes sources and commentators across the political spectrum — not just the New York Post and Fox News but also PBS, NPR, the New York Times, the Associated Press and Reuters.
It’s one thing to have a culture war debate about school prayer, or a provocative painting in a museum; it’s quite another to stalk and hunt down library staff, to have Proud Boys descend on a library and terrify parents and children. Some of the methods being used — including threats of bombing, shooting and physical harm, and branding one’s opponents pedophiles — are straight out of the Nazi playbook.
This is why, when I spoke in libraries, I showed footage of the Nazi book burnings. Three months after Hitler came to power there were book burnings in 34 university cities and towns across Germany on the same night — May 10, 1933. But we only ever see newsreel footage of one: the bonfire in the public square outside the Berlin opera house.
Nazis staged massive public book burnings in Germany in 1933.
(Associated Press)
As the newsreel played, I explained that the books going into that particular fire were not by Jewish authors; rather, they were burning the 20,000-volume library of a nearby gender clinic, the Institute for Sexual Research, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. The library contained the best of what was known in medical and social science pertaining to sex and gender, along with testimonials — memoirs — of LGBTQ people. I wanted people to see the parallels between today and Nazi Germany, where the government was defining many minorities as “un-German” and weaponizing “traditional values.”
When Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels appears, addressing the crowd in that Berlin square, I pointed out something else: While the book burnings were organized by “grassroots” student groups, the Nazi government was fully looped in. It’s not hard to connect the dots to today when I show them the lineup of MAGA elected officials at the Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia, or the video clip of them cheering for Hitler — and I never got any pushback.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Moms for Liberty meeting in Philadelphia in June 2023.
(Matt Rourke / Associated Press)
:::
The crowd for my talk at the Pella Public Library was buzzing in a way I’d never experienced. I introduced my book, and read a passage about the Fabric Factory bar in Times Square and the gender-nonconforming people who gathered there in the late 1980s — “people we were 20 years away from having any respectable words for.” I read a scene from 1977, when I watched Howard Cosell interview Renée Richards on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” after she’d won the right to compete in the women’s division of the U.S. Open as a “transsexual.” I was 14 and had never heard that word, or thought such a person could exist, even though I was such a person and somehow knew it.
People were listening; no one was interrupting.
I closed my book and turned to the subject of book bans. I had three points to make: 1) The groups leading the book bans don’t give a damn about protecting children; if they did they’d be talking about assault weapons and smartphones; 2) The groups are highly organized and politically connected; and 3) Their goal, like in Nazi Germany, is to “synchronize culture” with white supremacy.
A man asked why we’re pretending that trans people are something new, when they’ve always existed. I said he had a great point and asked if he knew about the “trans panic” murder defense, a legal tactic now banned in 19 states. For decades, criminal defense attorneys argued that when a man discovers someone he’s attracted to is trans, it can induce panic and cause him to murder one of us.
When Diana Goetsch was asked what advice she would give to librarians, she replied: “Advice? I don’t know. They know their situations better than I do. I would just tell them they’re heroes.”
(Andrew Kelly / For The Times)
“Politically,” I said, “MAGA Republicans are trying to induce national trans panic.” They are taking advantage of widespread ignorance about trans people. They want the public voting for candidates who promise to prevent us from transitioning or being seen. This is why they panic when someone trans is accepted and normalized, such as Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider, who had grandmas across America rooting for her. They don’t want books dispelling ignorance about us in libraries, and they especially don’t want trans children to assimilate and grow up in their gender.
Someone asked what would help librarians. “This,” I said, indicating the roomful of people who showed up to defend the freedom to read.
“Having traveled around, what advice would you give to librarians?”
“Advice? I don’t know. They know their situations better than I do. I would just tell them they’re heroes.”
Afterward Mara Strickler and I shared a hug. The gift she had for me was an assortment of fruit-tinged local beers. I poured a can for myself when I got back to my motel room — 30 miles away in Colfax, Iowa.
People at an Orange County school board meeting in Orlando, Fla., on April 11, 2023, protest the move by the school boards and the Florida legislature to remove books from school library shelves and limit education on race and LGBTQ issues.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
:::
The goal of My Red-State Library Tour was to defend an institution I loved and to send the message that the book bans are a fascist-style campaign of cultural erasure, which our media has failed to grasp. I don’t know if I succeeded, though I would love for there to be copycats — other authors who travel to libraries to speak, repaying the favors they do for us.
But maybe the main thing I accomplished was simpler than any of that. On election night in 2016, when Florida was called for Donald Trump, I felt, instantly, my country get narrower. I would watch a growing number of trans refugees flee red states, give up their homes and often their jobs, to protect themselves or their kids. My tour was an affirmation, to myself as much as anyone else, that my body belongs in every state of this country. All of ours do, and our books belong in libraries.
Last year on election day, Moms for Liberty candidates were “annihilated” by members of actual parents’ rights groups. My eyes, however, were fixed on a town in southern Iowa and “Resolution No. 6442” — a measure to allow political officials to control the library in Pella, which went for Trump by 68% in 2020. That resolution was voted down, and a great institution remains independent. The vote was close: 51% to 49%, a difference of 87 people. I’d like to think some of those 87 were in the room when I spoke there.
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HEBRON, KY – Ed Gallrein, the Republican congressional candidate backed by President Donald Trump who is challenging Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky for the GOP nomination, landed extra firepower on the eve of the state’s primary.
Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL and Kentucky farmer, was joined on the campaign trail Monday by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Massie has long been one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics in Congress and the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, in the northeastern part of the state, the latest test of Trump’s immense grip over the GOP.
“President Trump needs reinforcements, and that’s what war fighters do. They stand behind leaders and have their back,” Hegseth said at an event organized by America First Works, a Trump-aligned nonprofit political advocacy group.
TRUMP SCORES MAJOR PRIMARY VICTORY AS CASSIDY OUSTED IN LOUSIANA
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, joins former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, at an event on the eve of Kentucky’s primary, in Hebron, Kentucky on May 18, 2026. Gallrein is backed by President Donald Trump as he primary challenges Rep. Thomas Massie for the GOP nomination in the state’s fourth congressional district. (Jessica Sonkin/Fox News)
Massie, a libertarian-minded lawmaker who repeatedly takes aim at the president over foreign policy, including the Iran war and unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, also successfully pushed for the release of government files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But Hegseth argued that Massie’s record is one of “too much grandstanding, too few great votes, years of acting like being difficult is the same thing as being courageous. It’s not. Real courage means stepping up when the mission matters most, when we need that tough vote to beat left-wing lunatic Democrats the most.”
“President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people willing to help him win, to vote with him when it matters the most,” Hegseth added.
Hegseth’s remarks, which came soon after a stop at nearby Fort Campbell to award medals for service members, were rare for the civilian head of the nation’s military. Defense secretaries have traditionally avoided appearing at political events.
Ahead of the stop, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth would appear only “in his personal capacity” and that “no taxpayer dollars will be used to facilitate his visit.”
Hegseth noted the unusual appearance.
“I have to say up front, for the lawyers, that I’m here in my personal capacity as a private citizen, a fellow American, and a fellow combat veteran.”
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But Massie, who’s locked in a competitive clash with Gallrein in what’s become the most expensive congressional primary in history, claimed in a Fox News Digital interview on Monday that Hegseth’s stop “shows that I’m up in the polls. They wouldn’t be sending the Secretary of War to my congressional district if I weren’t.”
“I think it also shows I’m tougher than Iran, and I don’t even have a nuclear weapon. I mean, they are all in at this race. It’s basically a national race at this point, the most expensive race primary in congressional history, and that’s because, you know, I’m up there, I’m getting things done. I got the Epstein files released, I’m getting legislation in the farm bill, I’m getting legislation passed on the floor, and they want to shut me down,” Massie emphasized.
Gallrein, speaking with Fox News Digital ahead of his event with Hegseth, charged that Massie’s “running against President Trump, and the agenda that has been put forward by the Republican Party.”
Kentucky’s primary is being held two weeks after Indiana’s primary, where Trump-backed challengers ousted five sitting Republican state senators who last December teamed up with Democrats to defeat the president’s push for congressional redistricting in the GOP-dominated Midwestern state.
And the ballot box showdown in Kentucky comes three days after Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was ousted as he sought renomination. The senator came in third in the primary, behind Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and conservative Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming.
Cassidy’s political defeat came five and a half years after he voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House for his role in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters who aimed to upend congressional certification of former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
Massie said he “absolutely can” overcome the Trump endorsement of Gallrein. “I’ve got the groundswell here, like my events. I’ve got 100-200 sometimes 300 people show up. My opponent had to cancel events because he couldn’t get enough people, you know, to fill up a Dairy Queen, half a Dairy Queen.”
SCOOP: TRUMP-BACKED FORMER NAVY SEAL LAUNCHES GOP PRIMARY CHALLENGE AGAINST MASSIE
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky campaigns on the eve of his state’s primary, in Mason County, Kentucky on May 18, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
The race has become the most expensive in House history in terms of ad spending, with over $32 million shelled out, according to the nationally known ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Much of that money has been shelled out by Trump’s allies and pro-Israel groups.
“Here’s the thing, I’ve got nothing against Israel. I just have never voted for foreign aid. When I said America First, I meant it. I don’t vote for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Ukraine. I’ve got a flawless record on this, and I’m not going to ruin it by sending foreign aid to one country,” Massie said as he defended his stance on Israel.
And Massie touted that while Trump’s allies and pro-Israel groups have spent tens of millions to take him out, he said, “I’ve got tens of thousands of grassroots donors who are funding me $50 at a time, $20 at a time. We’ve been able to match them to go toe to toe with them on TV using grassroots donors, and it’s really galvanized the nation.”
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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) leaves to speak with the media after the House voted 427-1 to approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act and the release of documents and files at the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
Trump has repeatedly targeted Massie in social media posts in the closing days of the primary campaign.
The president said in a video posted to Truth Social on Monday that he hoped Kentucky voters would put Massie “out of business” and that “we’re in a fight against the worst congressman in the history of our country.”
And Trump praised Gallrein as “a great guy” and “a great patriot.”
But Massie said Trump’s taunts on social media may backfire.
“It shows he’s losing sleep, his reputation is on the line. He really shouldn’t have got involved in this race, because I vote with him 90% of the time,” the congressman said.
San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s run for California governor has been defined from the start by his donor list.
Mahan entered the race late and with little statewide name recognition, but catapulted into contention thanks to massive funding from billionaire tech titans, venture capitalists, cryptocurrency investors and other Silicon Valley elites. In a state with more than 23 million voters and hugely expensive media markets, the money signaled Mahan would be a contender.
It also spurred accusations from his more liberal Democratic competitors and powerful labor leaders that Mahan is beholden to Big Tech, including forces aligned with President Trump.
California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher recently described Mahan as “funded by Trump’s big tech billionaires,” while fellow Democratic candidate Tom Steyer — a billionaire running against corporate interests — called him “MAGA Matt Mahan.”
That framing has persisted, despite Mahan being a centrist Democrat who has publicly criticized Trump.
On Thursday, Mahan released a four-page “Plan to Hold Big Tech Accountable and Ensure AI Works for All Californians.” The proposal called for AI and data centers to pay for their power and water needs, fund workforce stability initiatives and ensure human oversight of AI tools in critical sectors such as healthcare. It also called for the state to use AI to become more efficient, to bar cellphones in schools and to require parental consent for kids 15 and under joining social media.
In an interview with The Times, Mahan, 43, said AI is “one of the most significant trends in society” and needs to be addressed.
He also rejected the notion that he would do Big Tech’s bidding, and the idea that his support from tech leaders is entirely or even largely premised on his plans for their industry.
“I’ve spoken very little about tech with any of my donors,” he said.
Mahan said his fundraising has instead been “centered on how we get California on a better path in terms of building housing, improving the quality of our public schools, solving our biggest problems,” which “just resonates with people in the tech industry.”
A ‘digital native’
Mahan, the son of a teacher and a mailman, grew up in the farming community of Watsonville but commuted to San José to attend high school at Bellarmine College Prep on scholarship as a low-income student. He went on to Harvard University, where he was student body president and classmates with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, spent a year in Bolivia building irrigation systems, and then taught for two years in Alum Rock as part of the Teach for America program.
He then joined Causes, an early Facebook application that allowed nonprofits to build grassroots support online, and rose to become chief executive. In 2014, he co-founded Brigade, a nonpartisan platform where voters could advocate for issues, which was acquired in 2019. He won a San José City Council seat in 2020, and was elected mayor in 2022.
An early mayoral profile described Mahan as painting a whiteboard behind his desk to “write on the wall as I did in my tech days.” Another noted he used ChatGPT to write speeches. A third recounted how he’d used AI to make city buses run faster.
Mahan said he learned as a startup leader and a classroom teacher that metrics matter — that “when we take our precious tax dollars and invest them in public services, we should measure our performance.”
He said he has always believed government should take the best tech has to offer while being vigilant about the risks it poses, which maybe comes naturally to him as a millennial who remembers “the world before the internet” but is also something of a “digital native.”
Donors explain
Between Jan. 1 and April 18, Mahan’s campaign raised nearly $13.5 million, according to state campaign finance filings. During the same period, an independent expenditure backing Mahan called Back to Basics raised about $22.7 million, while another launched by the group Deliver for California raised nearly $3.3 million.
The donors are a who’s who of tech leaders, venture capitalists and other leaders in the gig, gaming, digital media and AI defense fields.
Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, gave the maximum individual contribution of $39,200 to Mahan directly, and $1 million to the Deliver for California committee. Reed Hastings, the co-founder and chairman of Netflix, gave the maximum contribution to Mahan, plus $1 million to the Back to Basics committee.
Some donors, such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who gave the maximum to Mahan, are well-known supporters of progressive causes. Others, such as Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and crypto founder David Marcus, who maxed out to Mahan, are also Trump backers.
Brin, a friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom since the Democrat was mayor of San Francisco, has been moving rightward recently. He has donated to the Republican National Committee and in March was appointed to the White House tech advisory council. He’s also a major donor to the nonprofit opposing the ballot measure for a new tax on California billionaires — which Mahan also is against.
Brin, Lonsdale and Marcus did not respond to a request for comment. Hastings and Hoffman declined to comment.
Several other tech donors did speak with The Times — and universally described their support for Mahan as less to do with his tech policies, and more to do with issues important to all Californians.
Jamie Siminoff, who sold his home security startup Ring to Amazon for $1 billion and gave the maximum donation to Mahan, said he thinks L.A., where he lives, is the “greatest city in the world” and California is the “best state in the world.” But he sees Mahan as someone who could make improvements by bringing the state toward the political middle on public safety, housing and homelessness.
“He’s just like a nice, pragmatic, sort of centrist person, from what I can see, [who] wants to make California better, and I’m 100% behind that.”
Siminoff said it doesn’t hurt that Mahan speaks the same language as many tech leaders, who are mostly just “pragmatic inventors and entrepreneurs” who want California’s leader to be “principled in thinking about fixing things.”
Ruchi Sanghvi, the first female engineer at Facebook and a former Dropbox executive who state records show donated $25,000 to Mahan, said she has known Mahan since he was leading Causes but fell out of touch. When he entered the governor’s race, and she “got all these emails from people that I respect” saying they were supporting him, she asked for a meeting.
At that meeting, she said, Mahan “really dug in on some of the core issues that I care about,” including housing, homelessness and education.
The San Francisco resident, political independent and mother of three said the idea that tech leaders are backing Mahan because they believe he will scratch their back in business is wrong. Referring to his tech plan’s restrictions on social media for youth, she said, “I don’t think of that as scratching my back.”
Instead, “what really resonates with me and my peers is that, yes, he is pragmatic,” Sanghvi said. “He cares about measurable outcomes, which I think is very critical.”
Marc Merrill, co-founder, co-chairman and chief product officer of L.A.-based video game developer and e-sports company Riot Games, gave the maximum to Mahan, as did his wife, Ashley, founder of the sleepwear brand Lunya. In a statement to The Times, Merrill said he and his wife are lifelong Californians who love the state and support Mahan because of his record “addressing California’s most pressing challenges with practical, results-oriented solutions” in San José.
Merrill said Mahan brought down violent crime, reduced homelessness with “data-driven programs that address root causes rather than just managing the problem,” and “fostered an environment where businesses are choosing to invest and grow in the city.”
Tech vs. labor?
Gonzalez Fletcher said tech leaders have long “been very clear about their desire to support candidates who won’t regulate AI, to support candidates who will go after organized labor” — and their support for Mahan is no different.
She pointed as an example to a March event attended by Mahan and hosted by one of his most vocal backers: Garry Tan, a venture capitalist and chief executive of Y Combinator, a startup incubator in San Francisco.
At the event — which was part of Tan’s launch of a new statewide group called Garry’s List, which he has described as a “Rotary Club for radical centrism” — Chris Larsen, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency network Ripple, railed against the influence of unions in California politics and the “weak” response from business leaders, according to video.
“We’ve got to fight on par with the unions when they’re proposing stupid, job-killing ideas like the San Francisco CEO tax,” Larsen said. He noted that several other candidates for governor, including former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, whom he’d donated to, had backed the measure to tax companies that pay their chief executive 100 times more than their average employee.
Neither Tan nor Larsen responded to a request for comment.
Gonzalez Fletcher, a former state legislator, said the argument that California Democrats have caused the state’s biggest problems by bowing to unions is false, and that what is more true is that “ruling class” Democrats such as Newsom “acquiesce to business interests” driving the state’s affordability and homelessness crises.
She said employers get away with underpaying workers and big landlords are allowed to take advantage of renters. She said Airbnb, as a tech example, has gone unchecked despite causing “a lot of the removal of housing stock.”
She said one reason she opposes Mahan is that he “suffers from the same love affair with Big Tech” as Newsom.
Steyer — who has funded his own campaign to the tune of nearly $200 million — has repeatedly struck a similar note.
Earlier this month, his campaign wrote that “Mahan continues to fail working Californians by catering to tech billionaires and wealthy special interest groups.” In February, it wrote that although Mahan had the support of “powerful special interests hellbent on keeping California a playground for the rich,” Steyer had the backing of “bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and custodians.”
Airbnb declined to comment but in the past has denied claims its platform substantially contributes to housing affordability issues, and has donated to housing initiatives. Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, a Mahan donor, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mahan said he values unions, in part because he grew up in a union household and benefited from the high-quality healthcare that provided, included when he was hospitalized for a collapsed lung as a teenager.
He said he has also worked with tech employers who “are inventing the future, quite literally,” and “creating a lot of jobs and opportunity.”
Mahan said the idea the two are inherently at odds is false, because “business needs labor, and labor needs business,” and the real question is “how to balance everyone’s needs.”
“If we don’t have a strong enough regulatory environment, and business has too much power, workers can be exploited, the environment can be exploited and we can see really negative social outcomes,” he said. “But the flip side is also true. If labor in our politics has too much power, you can also see distortions, you can see investment flow elsewhere, you can see less housing get built.”
Mahan said that “neither side has a monopoly on the truth,” and that government has to “bring people together and strike the right balance.”
He also defended Airbnb, which in San José pays taxes just like hotels, he said.
“We don’t see Airbnb as an antagonistic thing. We don’t let them take over the market, we regulate them, we charge them, and we use their tax revenue to provide services to people.”
He said the state’s housing crisis is due to over-regulation slowing new building to the point where it cannot keep up with job growth — which he called “fundamentally unsustainable and unfair” to low-income folks pushed out of job centers as a result.
The answer is building more homes, more quickly, he said, including by reducing building fees and streamlining permitting processes — which he said he has done in San José and would replicate statewide as governor.
“I am, first and foremost, focused on making government deliver results that make a real difference in people’s lives,” he said. “That’s my North Star.”
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election in November, but fewer than a tenth of those races are likely to be competitive. And that number has been dwindling.
One culprit? The nationwide redistricting battles, in which Republicans and Democrats across the country have resorted to creative cartography to draw as many safe seats as possible as they fight for control of Congress.
Based on 2024 presidential vote margin
Competitive districts lost with recent redistricting
Competitive districts — where a candidate leads a challenger by fewer than 10 percentage points — are increasingly rare. That is partly because many voters choose to live in communities with like-minded people, making many areas more politically homogenous and less competitive. And it is partly because parties are able to draw gerrymandered House maps, whittling down the number of swing districts even further.
“It’s a mutually reinforcing process,” said Eric Schickler, a political science professor at U.C. Berkeley.
Presidential candidates won about 28 percent of congressional districts with fewer than 10 percentage points in 2008. In 2024, that decreased to 20 percent.
Four swing districts vanished after Florida’s latest round of redistricting in April. Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps. The new map retained only one district that would have been considered competitive in the 2024 presidential election.
Nearly 20 years ago, Florida had 14 competitive districts.
Florida
2024 presidential vote margin
2024 districts: 5 competitive
New districts: 1 competitive
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
Texas’ new maps shifted seats in favor of Republicans and in the process wiped out the only two districts that would have been considered competitive in 2024.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20 +20 or more Trump
Texas
2024 districts: 2 competitive
New districts: 0 competitive
Democrats have taken a similar route. Three swing districts disappeared in California when lawmakers redrew its map so Democrats could pick up seats.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
California
2024 districts: 14 competitive
New districts: 11 competitive
Using presidential election results to analyze House races is far from a perfect forecast for the 2026 midterms. For one, voters don’t always cast ballots along party lines. And while voters overwhelmingly turned out for Republican candidates in 2024, the political environment in this year’s midterms is expected to favor Democrats.
But presidential results are a useful lens because of their high turnout and ability to offer a clearer view of partisan trends than congressional elections, which can be highly influenced by incumbency.
The lack of competition is bad for democracy, experts say. Voters have less of a reason to participate if races are not close, and they have fewer ways to force out leaders with whom they are unhappy.
“If you do away with competitive seats, you’re just going to get much less of a response when voters are dissatisfied,” Mr. Shickler said.
House members who occupy safe seats have fewer incentives to compromise or work across the aisle. Many can win by appealing to their party’s base, who are often more likely to vote in primaries.
That increases polarization and can lead to gridlock in Congress, according to experts. “We see that pretty well in our politics already,” said Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University. “And we’re only going to see more of that as swing districts disappear.”
Mr. Hildebrand points to his home state of North Carolina, which went through two rounds of mid-decade redistricting within two years. Its legislature passed new maps in 2023 that left just two competitive districts. The latest map passed in October shifts one of those districts, currently represented by Don Davis, a Democrat, from one which Mr. Trump won by three percentage points in 2024 to one that he would have won by 12.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump +10–20
+20 or more Trump
North Carolina
2024 districts: 2 competitive
New districts: 1 competitive
About half of voters in North Carolina voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. But only about a quarter of the state’s delegates are Democrats.
After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, and with encouragement from the Trump administration, Republicans in several Southern states — Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina — have moved quickly to redraw maps in their favor. Democrats have threatened to do the same in blue states.
Use the dropdown below to explore how districts’ 2024 presidential election results have shifted in each state that has passed new maps.
+20 or more Harris +10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
Note: A court has not yet approved Alabama’s use of a new map.
2024 districts: 1 competitive
New districts: 0 competitive
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