Nobody on the ballot has fought to represent California’s 30th District in Congress as long or as hard as Maebe A. Girl has.
The 37-year-old member of the Silverlake Neighborhood Council is competing against a slew of better-funded and more seasoned politicians, including a state senator, a state assemblywoman, the former Los Angeles City Attorney and the current mayor of West Hollywood, to fill U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff’s big shoes as he makes a run for U.S. Senate.
But Maebe is the only one who was bold enough (or crazy enough, depending on whom you ask) to challenge Schiff himself — not once, but twice.
Since 2020, when she ran against him the first time, Maebe has arguably become the congressman’s most vocal critic on the left, regularly skewering the revered and untouchable elder of the Democratic Party for failing to live up to the expectations of the progressive wing.
Two years later, her outspokenness — and her notoriety as the first drag queen and one of the only transgender persons the country had ever seen running for office — began to gain traction.
Maebe stunned the political world as the results of the 2022 general election rolled in, when she secured nearly 30 percent of the 200,000+ votes cast in the race, leaving Schiff with less than the landslide win you’d expect for one of Capitol Hill’s tallest titans.
But with her longtime rival now running for Senate, the 2024 race won’t be the David-and-Goliath-style boxing match Maebe is used to. Her new opponents are not exactly household names but each comes with a unique appeal and a formidable fanbase.
On this very different battlefield, crowded with more than a dozen capable candidates, Maebe will face her toughest fight yet.
WEHOville caught up with Maebe on Friday afternoon as she wrapped up her first day of canvassing. She spoke with us about her past, her passions and her path to victory in this exclusive interview.
WEHOville: How does this campaign feel different from your prior campaigns so far?
Maebe: So this is our third time running and first of all, we started a lot earlier this time around. We announced shortly after Adam Schiff announced that he was running for Senate. When I say shortly after, I think it was literally the same day just because I knew so many people would be jumping into the race. But it’s been great. So far, we have a great team developed already. In terms of advertising and outreach, you know, we have a really great email campaign going, a text campaign going already. Fundraising has been going well. You know, we’re a little bit behind some of the other candidates, but we have reason to believe that we may have the most number of individual donors. Unfortunately, they’re not donating three dollars a piece, but you know, we have a lot of small donors. So it’s, you know, a lot of twenty-five-dollar donations, fifty-dollar donations. We just hit our fifty-thousand-dollar mark last week, and it looks like we’re projected to double what we made in the first two quarters, this particular quarter. So I’m excited about that.
WEHOville: It’s been a rough year for LGBTQ rights and for the transgender community. How will that affect the race?
Maebe: A lot of people have noticed I’ve been campaigning for this seat since 2019, and every single year, I find myself saying this is the worst year in modern history for LGBTQIA legislation. The same thing happened in 2020 and 2021. And again, it’s the worst year in modern history for anti-LGBTQ legislation. So, I think people are finally starting to take notice, and I think that people recognize that we do need more queer representation in office to counter all of the anti-LGBTQIA legislation.
WEHOville: Where do you place yourself on the scale from moderate to progressive compared to the candidates that are running against you?
Maebe: There are certainly a number of moderate and corporate Democrats. There are a few that I would consider to be center-left, but I definitely consider our campaign to be the most progressive. Some of the biggest parts of our campaign since we started in 2019 have been universal health care, housing for all, education for all, environmental justice, racial justice, LGBTQIA rights, and reproductive rights. A big one though is keeping corporate money out of politics, and we’ve pledged since the beginning to only take contributions from individual donors, from working-class people, the people that we want to actually represent. So we don’t take any super PAC money, and we don’t take money from dirty industries like big oil and pharmaceuticals.
WEHOville: Issues like crime seem to be driving some Democratic voters back toward the center. How is your campaign approaching that?
Maebe: I don’t think it’s fair to blame crime in general on progressive policies. I think what’s happening is the media is sensationalizing and really playing up particular elements of it.
WEHOville: Have you moderated your message on Adam Schiff now that he’s no longer your opponent?
Maebe: Deciding to challenge sitting incumbents, first of all, I think is incredibly democratic if you feel as if you’re not being represented in the way that you want to be represented or if you feel your community is not being represented. Our focus this time around has drastically shifted away from Schiff. When we ran in 2020 and 2022, we had to focus on Schiff and let folks know why we were the better candidate. This time around since he’s running for Senate, I’m definitely moving my messaging away from, “We’re not Schiff and this is why.” I know he’s running for Senate, and I won’t be voting for him, but even from the get-go with running against Schiff and now running in 2022 against 18 other candidates our focus has always been on we don’t want to run a smear campaign. We don’t want to bring down other candidates. We want to be elected based off of the merits of our campaign. And what we envision and how we want to do things rather than, “This person’s bad.”
You: How do you feel about accusations that Schiff pressured social media companies to silence dissent over the government’s COVID restrictions and discredit reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop?
Maebe: In many regards, I don’t think the government should have a role. But at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of ugly turns on social media, particularly on the platform formerly known as Twitter. I think it’s a shame that so much hate can be spewed. I don’t consider hate speech to be protected speech, so I do think that action needs to be taken in that department. But overall, I am cautious about government involvement.
WEHOville: If both you and Trump win your races, you may find yourself in an adversarial position with the president similar to Adam Schiff. How would you approach that scenario?
Maebe: I think it’s very important to be vocal about opposition to Trump and to the Republican party in general, especially when it comes to LGBTQIA issues. So, I think you can’t place it all on the president. I think a lot of it is party objectives, and whether it’s Trump winning re-election or ends up being Biden or another Democrat, I think it’s important to focus on the issues and the party as a whole rather than placing the blame on the President.
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WEHOville: The Democratic Party seems ready to have Senator Dianne Feinstein resign because of her age and doubts about her mental capacity, but the same pressure hasn’t been put on President Biden, whose age and mental capacity have also been questioned. Do you think he is ready for another term?
Maebe: I definitely think somebody else ought to step in. I don’t think age necessarily matters, but you have to look at the individual and start to recognize if they appear to be fit for office. With Senator Feinstein, I think it’s become evident that her time in the Senate should have been over a few years ago. The same goes with President Biden and other representatives like Mitch McConnell. When you have people of that age making decisions for younger generations that are going to be affected years after they’re gone, that really has to be considered. So, I do think Biden should not seek another term. I supported him in 2020, but for the reason of him being “not Trump.” Out of all the candidates that ran in the 2020 primary, he was at the bottom of my list. I was disappointed to see so many more progressive candidates exit the race, and I think it seemed very planned to me. I think he should not seek re-election. There should be an opportunity for another Democrat to step in, and I think there should be Democratic debates because there is going to be a primary election. I wouldn’t be surprised if Biden does decide to run again, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if he decides not to and backs somebody else. But I would prefer that he doesn’t. I’m currently endorsing Marianne Williamson.
WEHOville: What do you like about her?
Maebe: She supports universal health care. That’s probably the number one issue for me. It’s so interesting that so many people who claim to be pro-life don’t support the idea of everybody having universal health care. So, that’s a big thing of hers that I support. She’s also really supportive of LGBTQIA people. She’s endorsed my campaign as well, and during the 2022 election cycle, she endorsed my campaign as well as a number of other progressives who are running for either the U.S. House or for Senate, or also some state positions like governor. And I really admired the work that she put into trying to get other progressive candidates elected. I think she’s being treated very unfairly in the media and by people who don’t really even know much about her. They take pieces of information and warp them into something that she is not.
WEHOville: Do you feel like you get pigeonholed in a similar way?
Maebe: I do. In some regard, people believe that our campaign and our platform is only about LGBTQIA rights. That’s a huge part of our platform, but it’s certainly not the only thing. And I think that there are so many elements of our platform that are actually appealing to a very broad base, not just in District 30, but all across the nation. It’s so fascinating to me that people again can’t afford healthcare, housing, education, can’t even afford groceries. And yet people on the other side are coming after trans people and drag queens. And it very much seems like a distraction from the real issues that Congress can tackle to actually improve the lives of all Americans. So, I do think that people sort of pigeonhole me as just being the LGBTQIA candidate; they pin me as the drag queen running for office and often leave out the fact that I’m a trans person. I tell people don’t vote for me because I’m a drag queen, don’t vote for me because I’m a trans person, vote for me because you want to see policies in place, such as Universal Health Care, Housing for All, Education for All, environmental justice, and the rest of our platform.
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WEHOville: When did you think America was ready for a drag queen or a transgender person as an elected official?
Maebe: We’ve already had several states that have elected transgender state representatives, and I think it is incredibly important now, given the political climate that LGBTQIA people have to suffer through. There has been over half a thousand anti-LGBTQIA bills, with more than half of them specifically targeting trans people. And then you look at the fact that there’s never been an openly trans person in either the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate. It seems very unfair. I don’t feel represented, and you have all these cisgender heterosexual people trying to write laws dictating what we can and cannot do, how we can and cannot be. It’s incredibly unfair; it’s not representative. So, I do think that America is ready for a transgender representative. I think they probably have been ready since at least the mid-2010s.
WEHOville: How are you going to appear on the ballot?
Maebe: When you register with the state, they require that you have at least your legal first initial and then your legal last name, and then in parentheses, you can put what you consider to be a nickname. So, last time it was Gene “Maebe A. Girl” Pudlow, and this time I dropped the “Gene.” It’ll say G “Maebe” Pudlo. The reason for that is I am trying to not be seen as the drag queen running for Congress but as Maebe, the person running for office.
This person appears to have little consciousness about the world beyond their personal pod. Can appreciate the “need to serve” but one must have one’s life together first.
Computer says no.
Hard F. N. Pass
I’ll second that. #AlexForCA30
BRANDON: That illustration is excellent! You are very talented. You should pursue that talent more!
Mr Garcia is a sharp mind AND a prolific artist!
Hard NO.
I try and support under represented candidates when I can….but today that means I might have to vote for a straight white male.
Or for Alex Balekian for Congress. #AlexForCA30
Hard NO for you, Alex.
First of all, Mr Schiff is not a “revered elder.”
Secondly, how a person who is part of the New Dem Coalition is expected to legislate like a Progressive, is unreasonable.
(Granted, he calls his agenda progressive, but he is NOT.)
And thirdly, Schiff had been winning his district with around 70% of the votes for as long as I can remember.
Fourth: Good luck.
Sorry. No. Drag is entertainment, not for the House floor. That the LGBTQ+ community is under fire from all sides this type of candidacy is depreciating to our cause and movement. I believe completely to live authentically; however running for office under one’s stage name and in stage character is not authentic. It’s distracting and self promoting.
Maebe A. Girl’s name at the Federal level is George Pudlo, and that is what they will call Maebe on the House floor. It is unbecoming of a member of Congress to be miming to songs and having dollar bills shoved in their bra during unlimited mimosa brunches. #AlexForCA30
I think it’s pretty cool! I’d rather have Maebe instead of the geriatric bunch we have already.
You may think your response is funny, but your depreciation of this worrisome. I’ve read your various asides/answers here and elsewhere. Drag is under fire as is my community. Use your suggested humor elsewhere; you are not funny. You are being gross.
No. Absolutely not. Hard pass.
Great questions, and I’m glad this person is engaging with this platform. That said, Alex Balekian 2024!
Thank you for your support! #AlexForCA30