TX-23: Texas Democrat responds to Trump-backed opponent's 'transgender agenda' attacks
She’s now running in an entirely new environment, amid a global pandemic that has forced her campaign to shift almost entirely online — and at a moment when politics has become more polarized than perhaps any time in modern American history.
Unlike Hurd, who occasionally spoke out against Trump’s style of governance (despite largely supporting his political agenda), Gonzales has seemed to embrace the president’s campaign tactics of hitting his opponents with incendiary claims. Gonzales recently stirred controversy when said Jones has a “transgender agenda” during a podcast interview.
“We’re up against a social Democrat that wants to have a socialist agenda,” Gonzales claimed, “This transgender agenda.”
The terms “gay agenda," “homosexual agenda” and “transgender agenda” were reportedly introduced by Christian religious groups on the right to undermine advocacy efforts for the LGBTQ+ community. The Jones campaign has described Gonzales’ rhetoric as “homophobic,” a charge the Gonzales campaign strongly disputed in an interview with The Independent.
Matt Mackowiak, a representative for the Gonzales campaign, said in a phone call: “It’s not homophobic, and it certainly wasn’t intended to be. If you listen to his comments, what he said was right after that, he explained that her position of having taxpayers pay for the military to cover gender reassignment surgery, that’s Gina — Gina supports that, and Tony does not. That’s what he means by transgender agenda.”
As Gonzales made those claims, the National Republican Campaign Committee was also busy highlighting Jones’ sexuality on its website. The committee later removed references to “Jones and her female partner” and advice for outside groups to include her sexuality as a talking point in attack ads on television and mailers after its instructions surrounding Jones were reported by HuffPost.
Jones told The Independent she was not seeking an apology from Gonzales, saying: “I learned a long time ago that you can’t teach courage, and you can’t teach class.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/texas-congress-election-trump-gina-ortiz-jones-tony-gonzales-campaign-b421306.html
