The Impact of Progressive Voices in Legislative Battles w/ Jessie McGrath

Join lives with Jessie McGrath, as she reveals why a run for Nebraska's Legislative District 31 was ultimately shelved.
 
Jessie's story is one of dedication to progressive causes, as well as a poignant reminder of the sacrifices often made by those considering a leap into the political arena. With Jessie’s full-throated support, Marianne Fulchert takes the mantle, embodying the democratic values Jessie holds dear, as she discusses what it means to campaign for justice and equality without being the name on the ballot.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everybody. It's Jesse and I'm doing a live, and I'm doing it on both Facebook and Instagram so that I can reach out to as many people as possible. I know a lot of people have been wondering exactly what it is that I'm going to be doing and if I am going to actually run for office this year. Going to actually run for office this year, I have to make a decision, and that decision is basically today, and yesterday I was contacted by the Nebraska Democratic Party and asked if I was going to proceed with my candidacy for the legislative seat in Legislative District 31. And it's been a very difficult process and decision for me to come up with an answer in relationship to that, and so I guess it's time to officially announce that I will not be running for the legislature this term, and it's not because I do not want to take that battle on. I do and I am going to to take that battle on. I do and I am going to be taking this battle on, and I am going to be fighting against the senator who introduced all of the anti-trans legislation this last session.

Speaker 1: 1:38

But having been here now for six months, seven months, and getting a chance to meet everyone and get to meet the folks that are running for office in this state, I came to the conclusion that it would not be good for everyone at this time, and so I am not going to run. And another reason why is when I first moved here and was thinking about doing this, I had not met with my retirement association for LA County, so I had somewhat of a sense of an idea of what my retirement would be like, however, of what my retirement would be like. However, after going through it, I discovered that if I were to retire now or in the next couple of months and not go out for an additional two years to reach my maximum retirement, it would cost me $30,000 a year in retirement income, and that is definitely something that I cannot afford to do. And so I have another two years to go until I can reach my full retirement, which will allow me to be able to do a lot more things that I want to do, be able to do a lot more things that I want to do, and I think it's important that I have the ability to help people after I retire and that additional income is something that I can use to help fund some other things and help some other people, and so it's with a kind of a heavy heart that I'm saying I'm not running. However, being here, I have gotten to know so many folks and one of the people I have gotten to know is Marianne Fulchert, who is running against Kathleen Kauth in Legislative District 31. I've been speaking with her for a lot of months and we've been talking with each other. You know quite a bit and I am wholeheartedly supporting Marianne in her run against Senator Kaupp and it is something that I will be fighting for.

Speaker 1: 4:02

I will be going door to door here in Omaha looking at helping get her elected, helping get other Democrats elected, because that's very important and, especially with the way things have been going lately, that we definitely need new leadership. We need new people in the legislature who are not going to go on culture wars, who are going to represent the folks here in Nebraska with dignity and not go after somebody just because they appear to be a little bit different. Another reason I have is that in my job, when I first took over as the head of my section that I'm supervising, I was supervising four lawyers and since I took over four years ago, I have lost two lawyers and they have not been replaced, and so that is something that has required me to reorganize my section and it's required me to take on additional responsibilities and has required me to not be able to have the time that I would have to have to devote to truly represent the people of my district, and I cannot, in good conscience, do that. It's just something I would not be able to do. So I am wholeheartedly supporting Marianne in her run.

Speaker 1: 5:36

There's a number of great Democratic candidates here in Omaha who I am also supporting, and I will be out working for I am not giving up on politics. In fact, I'm already a delegate to the county central committee and I believe on Saturday I'm going to become a member of the state Democratic Party Central Committee. I'm also currently the vice chair of the Stonewall Democrats, and so I'm going to be involved this year in getting out, recruiting LGBTQ youths and adults to become members of the Stonewall Caucus, to get registered, to get out and vote, because this is certainly a year where there is so much on the line and we have to elect individuals who are going to respect the rights of others, who are going to respect the rights of women to make their own decisions and reproductive health care decisions to make. Trans people allow us to be able to make our own medical decisions and not come after us just because we're trans. So I've got a lot of work that I'm going to do to expand my reach and expand my responsibilities with a very important FQHC Federally Qualified Health Center that I've been a part of, and it's something that I think is a tremendous opportunity for me and the trans community of Los Angeles County tremendous opportunity for me and the trans community of Los Angeles County and so I have to focus on getting that going, because there's a real possibility that we're going to have an influx of refugees into California from states that are banning gender-affirming care for youth and for adults. It's truly scary what is kind of happening right now and what we're seeing said about the trans community and the efforts that they're going to vilify us, to outlaw us, to do all kinds of pretty horrible things to people of the community for them just being themselves. So there's a lot of fight that I've got to do.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be doing it running for office in Nebraska, at least not this election cycle. I am definitely going to continue to stay involved. I am going to continue to have my voice heard, going to continue to stay involved. I am going to continue to have my voice heard. I'm going to continue to go to the unicameral and the legislature, talk with state senators, talk about the issues, and the nice thing is, when I go there I don't always talk about trans issues. There's actually other things that I am quite capable of talking about, and I have testified already this year in the legislature on a number of issues, including the ability to ease some of the restrictions on individuals who have factual innocence, trying to get their convictions overturned.

Speaker 1: 8:54

I've testified in relationship to being able to excuse jurors, a peremptory challenge on them based solely on their gender identity or their sexual orientation. So I testified against that bill, and just the other day I was in testifying in favor of a bill that has been introduced here to protect the recipients of 340B money. To protect the recipients of 340B money, which, if you're familiar with how federal health centers and some of the smaller hospitals and other things, how they do their funding, part of it is through the 340B program, and there have been attempts by manufacturers to change the way in which 340B money can be earned by nonprofits, and so it was a very important thing that I felt I had to testify on. Additionally, I testified against a bill that they have proposed to replace school counselors with chaplains and of course I doubt that they thought that anything like this could possibly ever happen. But I pointed out to the senators that this bill, if passed, would permit a school district to choose a chaplain from the satanic temple, and I don't think that that is really what they were looking at, trying to do, and it was definitely an intrusion, trying to force religion into the schools, a definite overreach by the state government here, and we will see what happens in relationship to that.

Speaker 1: 10:34

But I have been getting actively involved. I've been at the legislature numerous times so far this session. I am going to continue to fight for the people of the communities and so it's with heavy heart that I say I'm not running, but it's probably for the best at this time. It is something I would really really be able to do at some point and if I can get to the point where financially, it would make sense for me. But giving up $30,000 a year in pension income to get a job that pays $12,000 a year just did not make economic sense at this point in my life and as much as I want to be involved in the election fight, I will be, just not as a candidate.

Speaker 1: 11:28

So thank you everybody for all of your support over the last few months and I really and truly do appreciate everyone's support. I wish I could do it at this time. I think I would make a heck of a senator here in Nebraska, because it is something that I, you know, kind of trained to do my whole life and something that I kind of looked forward to eventually being able to do. But I am definitely potentially looking at a statewide race in two years, so 2026,. There is a real potential that I could go for something even better than a state-centered race. So anyway, thank you everyone for your support, as always, everyone for your support.

Speaker 1: 12:19

As always. It has meant so much to me to have people encouraging me, to have people supporting me, and it's not over. It's just temporarily delayed for a year or two, but I am definitely going to keep up the fight and I am definitely going to keep supporting the trans community of the state of Nebraska with everything that I have, because nobody deserves to be discriminated against just because of who they are. And that is what's going on and that's what is wrong, and that is incredible overreach by the government telling us who we can and cannot be. That is something that I am going to fight against and I am going to make sure that we don't end up getting carted off into the camps.

Speaker 1: 13:16

Actually, look at what's going on now and at some point I will probably do another political presentation going into some of the things that have been proposed in some of the statements that the far right has made about what they intend to do if they win this election coming up, and it's truly frightening. And it's not frightening just because I'm a trans person. It's truly frightening as a human being on what it is that they're going to do, and no one is going to be safe, and especially women in America. You need to start listening to what they're actually saying. They are going to ban birth control. They are already severely restricting right to reproductive health care and it's not going to stop. It's going to go even deeper and they're going to look at potentially criminalizing, even going across the state line to be able to do something which is legal in another state. So if you care about what is happening to this country, if you care about what your wives, your daughters, your sisters have available for them to protect their reproductive rights. You're going to have to pay attention because they are coming for all of those things and it's not going to be pretty so. Anyway, I am not fighting that fight personally as a candidate this year, but I am definitely going to be supporting everyone who does support those positions and I'll be going around the state a little bit and trying to get people to sign the petition to get reproductive health care on the ballot in the fall so that we can get a constitutional amendment protecting women's rights to bodily autonomy. That is so very, very important and it's something that we all should be fighting for. I wanted to let everyone know that today was a pretty good day here in Nebraska At the legislature starting this morning around 10 o'clock, the Nebraska legislature started first round arguments on LB 575, which was the anti-trans bill for sports and spaces, where they wanted to outlaw trans individuals from being able to participate in sports and being able to use the restrooms of their gender identity, and it has been a long, hard fight.

Speaker 1: 16:29

This bill was first heard in committee last year. I had come back to Nebraska to testify against this bill and what it was, and so I was able to be there today as we went through the rounds of debate and finally made some sense to at least a couple of senators who, even though they did not vote necessarily against the bill they did not vote and that caused the bill to not cease debate. Not cease debate and effectively the filibuster killed the bill. So it is dead for the session. They're going out of session, and so that means that this is done. Oh, church is Watching me, hey, churchy. And it's a good feeling that we were able to defeat this bill and that we were able to protect the trans kids of Nebraska from the harassment that's been going on by these legislators over the last two years. It truly was seeing the kids and their parents, and their parents were so relieved that this was finally done, and there's so many great families here in Nebraska.

Speaker 1: 18:03

And I want to say thank you to the state senators who so valiantly fought for these last two years, you know, led by, uh, michaela Kavanaugh, her brother, john Megan Hunt, uh, uh, daniel, uh, conrad, uh, carol Blood. Uh, it was very interesting, uh, and I did, uh, my, I did wear my shirt today. I was trying to figure out what to wear, and I figured I would wear my trans veteran. I fought for your right to hate me shirt today and it actually got apparently some notice, because I was talked to by the Omaha World Herald, the Lincoln Journal Star. The Journal Star has me on their Instagram page. There's a series of 10 photos from today, and one of them is me looking rather not happily, rather kind of angry, looking out on there, and so it was such a good day, and thank you to the state senators who fought for this, and there's more state senators I just don't want to have to go through and name all of them but they were true champions and they made some incredible arguments today that did sway at least two of the senators to not vote to advance the bill and that killed it, and so I know that those of us here are just so extremely happy over this being defeated, because it truly is something that weighs heavily on these trans kids, and you know the feeling of unacceptance and you know the rejection by your government.

Speaker 1: 19:56

That's not something any kid should have to live through, and we put the kids of Nebraska, the trans kids of Nebraska, through that for two years now, and I am glad that this nonsense has stopped and now that means that we are going to have to go forward and make sure that the lady who introduced this bill does not get reelected, because she had to admit today that I don't know if you would say that she lied when she talked about the impetus of this bill coming from her constituents, because she was called out on that video, that blog that she did, where she misgendered me and came after me. She also mentioned on there that the people in her district didn't know that this was an issue until she raised it with them. So it was Couth raising the issue, couth making this a issue here in Nebraska, where there wasn't a need for it. There wasn't an issue here. The people of Nebraska were not complaining about this of Nebraska were not complaining about this. In fact, over the last 10 years, there have been, I believe, 10 trans kids who have applied to participate in sports and eight of them were accepted, two were not, but that's it, and we have had no complaints about trans athletes anywhere and the policy that we have is good, and so, thankfully, the senators realized that. Thankfully, they were able to see beyond that. Senator Blood was great today. She asked direct questions of Senator Kauth and it was so good to get her to get Kauth to admit that she basically does not like trans people and that this is based on trans animus, and part of that was from where she was talking about refusing to acknowledge me as a woman and acknowledge me as a trans person, and so it was good and I'm going to try to get the video of that and get the piece and post that later today. But it was just so good to see at least a couple of senators stand up to these Christofascists who want to take over the legal government education system of America and and make it a Christian nation.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Well, I'm a Christian and and my Christianity may be different than someone else's Christianity, and that doesn't mean that I get to decide how everyone else rules. There are Muslims, there are Jews, there are agnostics, there are Satanists. They all have a right to exist in our society and our communities, and so I am just frustrated about these culture wars and they're trying to make this all you know about God, god, and I believe in Jesus and I am a Christian and I know that God made me this way and God made me this way and because he made me this way. I'm very special, and so I'm not denying God's gift of my life. I'm embracing who God made me. So, anyway, I am so excited that we were able to get that done today and I may be on the news tonight, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 23:33

I got interviewed by a few folks, but my trans veteran shirt apparently stood out and some of the senators you know recognized me and I was able to talk to some of them and I hope that I had a little bit of sway with Senator Riepe. But there were some families that went and talked to Senator Riepe and Senator Brandt the two senators who voted not to advance the bill by just not voting on it and they were visited by some type of demonic possession. This is not some type of failing of a human, that this is not somehow satanically inspired. This is not somehow satanically inspired, even though our governor thinks that, you know, being trans is somehow Satan's greatest work. So, hearing from those families and those kids, it was important, and so thank you to the senators who fought back on this and thank you to the families who put yourself out there to support your kids. That is so incredibly brave of you, and I know how much you love your kids, because I see it year. They're not going to have to worry about whether or not they are going to be subjected to governmental oppression. We can breathe at least a little easier for a little bit.

Speaker 1: 25:24

But we have work to do because come November we need to make sure that Kathleen Kauth, the sponsor of this bill, who did this purely on trans animus, is not reelected, and that Marianne Fulchard, who is a incredible woman who I wholeheartedly support she would make a much better senator than than Cal, because she only cares about herself and Cal does not care about the kids of this state called, sent letters, sent emails to the senators to make them come to the realization that this was not the proper vehicle for what it was they were trying to do. And so we won. I'm happy. I am going to go celebrate a little bit. I'm probably going to have a beer, so, uh, and so thank you everybody for watching. Uh, everybody, thank you. Uh, this is been a great day.

Speaker 1: 26:43

I feel so proud of of the work that all of the people here did to defeat these, this horrible bill, and hopefully this is the last time we're going to have to fight this in the state of Nebraska and that finally they'll realize that we are trans, we exist, we have rights and you can't legislate us away. Try as you might to pretend that we don't exist. We do and we have the right to enjoy life just like anybody else does. So just wanted to shout out today that something very important happened today, and, um, it's something that all of us who are over 18, who qualify, are able to do. And so today, for the first time since God I guess it is 1986, I did something in Nebraska yesterday, today, that I haven't done since 1986. And no, I did not get married, which is what I did in Nebraska in 1986. But it was also the last time that I was able to vote polls at Nebraska voting location and I got to cast my vote in the primary for the upcoming primary election, which will be held next month. But I wanted to get it in early and get it done, because it was that important to me. Important to me Also, on a side note, I also submitted today my declaration of candidacy to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, and so one of the requirements that you have to do in order to be able to be a delegate is, number one, be registered to vote in the Democratic Party, and number two, actually vote in the primary, which I took care of today.

Speaker 1: 28:52

So I killed two birds with one stone, and, yes, I am still wearing my no hate campaign sticker on my face, because I thought what a better way to spread the message of no hate than voting for people who don't hate. It's really that simple. Some of the people who are on the ballot here in Nebraska are people I would not vote for because they have expressed and while they don't call it hate, they call it care and concern. Their care and concern involves doing away with my right to be able to do some basic civil liberties that occur within any country, and so, yes, I will not vote for them.

Speaker 1: 29:36

So today, I got to vote in the primary election for my legislative candidate.

Speaker 1: 29:43

I got to vote for Marianne Fulchert, who is a fantastic candidate.

Speaker 1: 29:48

It is somebody who does not have hate in their heart, unlike Kathleen Pouth, who has done nothing but bring misery to the trans community here in Nebraska, and so I want to do everything I can to make sure that she's out, and so, yes, I voted today.

Speaker 1: 30:04

Yes, yay me, ok, anyway. So I just wanted to give people an update in relationship to that and just to say thanks to everybody who's following along on this incredible journey that I'm on. That is my life and hopefully I'm starting to make a difference and it is certainly something that I'm going to continue to do. It is certainly something that I'm going to continue to do and hopefully that we can get a change in direction in this country and we can get back to having conversations about real issues that are important and not social justice issues that are manufactured on the basis of fear, which is what the anti-trans legislation is all about. So, anyway, thank you everybody. I am so happy that I got that taken care of today and, yes, I am again officially a Nebraska voter who has voted. So, yay, okay, everyone, have a great one, thank you.