Watching a Drag Show With a Freshman House Member
Robert Garcia, a 45-year-old former Long Beach, California, mayor and newly elected Democratic U.S. representative, is hardly the first openly gay member of Congress, but there’s something unique and irreverent in how he has approached his first few months on the job. He’s publicly celebrated drag culture, casually criticized Republican colleagues on Twitter, and paid tribute to Beyoncé on the House floor. Although some of his commentary is cringe—after a recent jobs report, he tweeted that “President Biden’s economy is SLAYING”—Garcia embodies something new and welcome in American federal politics: an eagerness to embrace the pop culture and institutions made by and for gay people.
On a Friday night in mid-February, I met Garcia and three of his friends at Hamburger Mary’s, a drag bar and restaurant in downtown Long Beach. “We have a celebrity in the house, y’all,” the hosting queen hooted. The lights fell on Garcia. “You giving all those crazy bitches hell for us, Congressman?” she asked, sidling up to him. Garcia laughed and handed the queen—stage name Mia Farrow—a wad of dollar bills, which she slipped between a black-velvet dress and a pair of shiny silicone breasts.
The location was Garcia’s idea. His hair combed to a Clark Kent sheen, Garcia greeted the Hamburger Mary’s staff with kisses on the cheek. As he and his friends chatted about an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race the bar had shown on TV, they arranged three neat piles of cash to give to the queens strutting by. “I’ve been to every gay bar in Long Beach tons of times,” Garcia told me over a double Tito’s soda.
There are more openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual politicians in Congress than ever, but Garcia stands out among his political contemporaries, many of whom have public images that seem to resist gay stereotypes. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ran for president as a married veteran. Colorado Governor Jared Polis was once described in The New York Times as a “who-cares gay” with a schlubby tech-nerd vibe. Former Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who emerged from the macho politics of New York State, was known for his combative style.
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