Calexico voters resoundingly ousted the city council’s first transgender member and his council ally after a bitter impeachment campaign riddled with accusations of transphobia and political cronyism in the troubled city on the U.S. border. United and Mexico.
Nearly 74 percent of voters in the April 16 special election supported the removal of Councilman Raúl Ureña, according to initial results released Wednesday evening by the Imperial County Registrar of Voters. Ureña, who uses all pronouns but prefers “she,” publicly came out as transgender after taking office, becoming the target of harassment online and in person.
Nearly 73% of voters supported the recall of Councilor Gilberto Manzanarez, another outspoken young progressive.
About 77% of the ballots received had been counted as of early Thursday, said Linsey Dale, the registrar of voters.
Ureña, 26, and Manzanarez, 30, said they believed the recall campaign — which plunged the almost entirely Latino city of 38,000 into America’s culture wars over gender identity — was largely motivated by transphobia. Recall organizers said their campaign was rooted in concerns about rising homelessness and stunted 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 abandon social justice in the Imperial Valley,” Ureña said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Calexico City Councilman Gilberto Manzanarez says recall organizers unfairly blamed him and his political ally Raúl Ureña for the downtown decay that preceded their term.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
At a city council meeting Wednesday night, Manzanarez said the city’s political old guard, some of whom were leaders in the recall movement, had unfairly blamed younger council members for problems – such as the deterioration of the downtown and understaffed police, fire and public works departments -. which existed years before the election of Manzanarez and Ureña.
“It’s very easy to point the finger at downtown and make sure people understand that it’s not OK. How long has it been like this? Did it start to be like this in 2022? Absolutely not,” said Manzanarez, elected in November 2022.
Maritza Hurtado, leader of the recall campaign and former mayor, declined to comment on the results.
In a previous interview with The Times, Hurtado, a city council member from 2010 to 2018, called Ureña and Manzanarez “toxic” left-wing activists. She said they brushed aside downtown merchants’ concerns about crime, public drug use and rampant homeless encampments, focusing instead on what recall supporters saw as more frivolous projects , such as installing electric vehicle charging stations that most city residents cannot afford.
Hurtado, 58, said Ureña has used gender “like a card this whole time,” calling people with legitimate political grievances transphobic and racist.
Turnout for the special election — which cost Calexico more than $128,000 — was about 23 percent, with about 4,933 votes cast. Dale said that number could fluctuate, with additional ballots arriving by mail in the coming days.
“Unfortunately, in Imperial County, and I hate to say this, we’re generally at the bottom of the state when it comes to turnout,” Dale said. In the March 5 presidential primary, she noted, 22 percent of registered voters in Imperial County cast ballots, the lowest turnout rate in California.
Still, she said, Calexico’s special election “was very heated on both sides, and I feel like it encouraged a lot of voters to come out who might not have otherwise done before.”
Maritza Hurtado, a local businesswoman and former mayor of Calexico, helped lead the effort to recall two young progressives to the city council.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
When they came to power, Ureña and Manzanarez were hailed as young changemakers in Calexico, a poor 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 appointed to finish the term of David Romero, a council member who was incarcerated in federal prison after accepting bribes in exchange for a guaranteed city permit for a cannabis business. Another council member at the time, 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 detector in her vehicle. She later lost her re-election bid.
In October 2022, state auditors released a scathing audit that found Calexico was in the midst of a decade-long “financial crisis” and was at high risk of waste, fraud and mismanagement. Previous city councils, the audit found, approved budgets based on unreliable financial data, and the municipality overspent, pushing its general fund into a deficit between fiscal years 2014-15 and 2018-19.
Ureña was re-elected in November 2022, a month after the audit was released. She and Manzanarez were the first vote-getters in an at-large race for two seats.
Soon after, Ureña publicly came out as genderfluid and transgender and began wearing dresses and makeup in official appearances. Ureña and Manzanarez received recall papers the following May.
Supporters of the recall cited a visible increase in homeless encampments in downtown Calexico as a major concern.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
Manzanarez and Ureña regularly clashed with other city council members and citizens, particularly when they criticized the police. They and another council ally, Gloria Romo, often spoke at public meetings in Spanish without translation — infuriating some prominent recall supporters, who called it exclusionary.
In January, Hurtado handed Romo recall intent 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 will then have 60 days to decide whether to fill the seats through special elections or appointments.
Ureña said she and Manzanarez watched the first set of election results together Tuesday night. They had “a great party,” she said, even though it quickly became clear they were going to lose.
“I didn’t stop dancing,” Ureña said. “Nothing crosses my happiness.”
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