Marni von Wipert, currently a member of the San Diego City Council, is running for Congress from one of five recently gerrymandered districts in California, redrawn to add Democratic votes and, the party hopes, send a majority to the House of Representatives in 2027.
A pledge to “Flip the 48th” is von Wilpert’s mantra.
The councilwoman has a lot on her plate. As well as running one of the most-watched campaigns for Congress in 2026, she was engaged to her longtime girlfriend in December and went public in July with an early-stage breast cancer diagnosis.
“You never think it’s going to happen to you, and it did,” she shares.
Von Wilpert spoke with LGBTQ Nation about her personal and political battles — including the one pitting “socialist” progressives against moderates in her party — on a recent morning from her home in San Diego, before heading out on the campaign trail.
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LGBTQ Nation: There is a narrative being pushed in some quarters of the Democratic Party that candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America are some kind of threat to the party. Where do you agree with the DSA, what policies don’t you embrace, and why would establishment or moderate Democrats be threatened when you’re all addressing the same problems, like income inequality, the outsized influence of billionaires, healthcare for all, LGBTQ+ and civil rights, reproductive freedom, MAGA xenophobia, and the list goes on?
Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert: I do not agree with the Democratic Socialist America’s platform, but I do agree with them that we have to stop Donald Trump. And one of the ways we do that is by taking back the House of Representatives.
When I’m out talking to people door to door, there’s many strong Democrats, there’s many Republicans, and there’s many people in the middle. Universally, though, they all say, “We want government to work for us again. We’re sick of fighting and tearing each other down. We want our costs to go down. The cost of living is way too high. We want a government that respects people’s rights, whether they’re immigrants or people of color or women or LGBTQ. But mainly, we want government to get things done.”
I’m hopeful when we get there, we’ll all work together to get things done because that’s what my voters want to see. The most important thing I can do is win my seat, so I can be part of the majority.
How do you describe your own politics, if you had to put a label on them?
I run with my own values. I’m endorsed by the New Democrats, which many people see as moderate Dems, but then the Republicans are calling me an ultra-leftist. So it’s just all in the eye of the beholder.
The things that I care most about are what I’ve done. I wrote the first law in California banning the sale of untraceable ghost guns, because I care deeply about gun violence prevention in this country. I wrote a law to protect women seeking abortion services here in San Diego after Roe v. Wade was overturned because I believe in women’s rights. I wrote a resolution declaring San Diego to be a safe city for LGBTQ members, including our trans siblings, after Donald Trump’s attacks on our community.
And so when people ask me, “How do you identify?” I say, “Well, look at my record. That’s what I’m running on.”
You’re campaigning on three main planks: “Stop Trump. Stop ICE. Flip the 48th.” Let’s take the last one first. Your California congressional district is among five that were redrawn for Democrats’ advantage with a ballot initiative in the gerrymandering wars. The Times of San Diego wrote that your election is “among the most-watched contests in the nation and could determine partisan control of the House.” What kind of responsibility do you feel to voters desperate to retake the House and Senate and send a message that the Trump era is ending?
I feel the weight of the world in this election.
I mean, right now, the President of the United States is trying to pass a law that would disenfranchise the American people from even voting. I just know how much worse things are going to get if we don’t stop Donald Trump and this administration and the congressional Republicans who are just rubber-stamping it.
Both California’s 48th House district and San Diego County, where you serve as a member of the city council, share a long border with Mexico. Describe what you’ve seen as the Trump administration brought its immigration crackdown to the area, and why “Stop ICE” is a priority for you.
The Trump administration has been absolutely horrible for our vibrant community. I know we can have a strong, secure border that stops bad actors and drugs and guns from coming back and forth, but promote legal immigration and a binational economy and a cultural exchange. We can do those things if we focus on them. What Donald Trump is doing with the ICE raids is the complete opposite. We’re seeing ICE storm into crowded restaurants or storm into Home Depots on a Sunday. It’s just chaos in our streets. It’s not law enforcement. We’re seeing them shoot and kill people in the middle of the streets, and so that’s why I led the vote for the City of San Diego to join Minneapolis as a large sister city in going to court, and we’re suing ICE to stop them and stop what Donald Trump is doing.
We can have a strong, secure border and have a pathway to citizenship at the same time for people who have been here, including our Dreamers, who’ve done nothing other than go to school and be good members of society. They should be citizens, too.
Researching your campaign, I get a sense that you are, and are running as, a kind of everywoman. You’re 43. You have a good education. You’re accessible and friendly, and not overtly ideological. And you’re looking to solve the problems your constituents face. With the third plank, “Stop Trump,” your campaign is making an appeal to a lot of women like yourself, who are just incensed over the inhumanity of the current administration. Maybe you’ve sat with some of them over a glass of wine or two. What are they saying are the worst excesses of Trump and his enablers in his second term?
The thing I hear the most about is that Donald Trump is making money off the back of the American people. Corruption in D.C. has risen to the top among concerns of my voters.
When I speak to women in particular, they’re incensed that they can’t afford childcare, and that women’s rights to any kind of healthcare and their right to choose have completely been abolished by Trump. They’re worried their daughters wouldn’t get life-saving care in an emergency room, like we saw in Texas when an 18-year-old girl died of sepsis after Roe v. Wade fell. And Trump’s been found guilty of sexual assault by a jury of our peers.
People are livid and they’re mad and they’re angry and they want someone who’s going to stand up and fight back. And that’s why people are resonating with our campaign because I will stand up and fight back. I’m not going to sit and rubber stamp everything coming out of Trump’s White House. At the same time, we are all Americans, and if there’s a way I can work across the aisle in a bipartisan way to get things done for my constituents, I would happily do so.
You’re an out and proud member of the LGBTQ+ community. What’s it been like campaigning in Murrieta, in the northern part of CA 48, where the board of the school district there defiantly voted to ignore a law signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) banning the outing of trans and non-binary students to their parents? “A packed audience in the ruby red district cheered the result,” is how I wrote about it. One, why shouldn’t parents know if their children are identifying differently at school and home? And two, is the school board still defying that law?
The law was not intended to protect children or parents. The law was intended to empower teachers who have certain views on the LGBTQ community to act on their own accord and out students, and it’s absolutely horrible. There’s also a school board member in the city of Temecula who decided to stand outside and prevent a school district truck from dropping off history textbooks because they mentioned Harvey Milk and his legacy.
I mean, it’s really appalling seeing what is happening in parts of our country against our LGBTQ community, and it’s being empowered by the Commander-in-Chief himself, who has wiped off the term “LGBTQ” from nearly every federal website. The 998-suicide hotline number that the nation is starting to embrace, he took away the option for someone to speak specifically to an LGBTQ counselor. I know that our rights are on the chopping block.
So being out and proud and telling everyone that I’m engaged to my fiancé Sarah has become part of my campaign, because I want people to see a very successful litigator who’s taking on Trump who just happens to be gay. I know that if I don’t fight this fight, there’s people who are going to come after me who are not going to have the rights I did. Just like the people at the Stonewall Inn, who literally had broken bodies from the beatings they took from the police 50 years ago just for being gay. They fought for my rights now.
And it is scary. We’ve gotten increased threats, as many politicians have. But at the same time, it’s scarier to think that I could live in a world where my identity could be erased by my own government, and so I’m going to stand up and fight back.
Over the last month, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, Amy Acton, earned intense backlash from LGBTQ+ and progressive party members over describing trans girls who want to play sports as “boys.” She said, “I do not support boys playing in girls’ sports” after the Supreme Court sided with Idaho and West Virginia’s bans on trans girls playing school sports. Where do you come down on the issue, and should Acton’s comments be a deal breaker for LGBTQ+ voters in Ohio?
I mean, I will let the kind folks of Ohio deal with their own candidates. But where I come down is, I believe that everyone should have equal rights, including our transgender siblings. And I also believe that government shouldn’t be regulating sports. I completely disagree with the Supreme Court [decision] allowing banning people from any sport, but we shouldn’t be regulating school sports, as long as there’s protection for civil rights. We already have the agencies that regulate sports. Let them continue to do their work.
What I hear about from most people is that they want to make sure that their kids’ schools are funded, and that they’re not going to get measles in an outbreak somewhere because our public health system is breaking down. I’m not going to play into the right — who have absolutely no policies to help alleviate the economic burden in this country — and just demonize trans people as the only way they can hope to get elected.
Earlier in your career as a civil rights attorney, you represented people living with HIV and AIDS in the Deep South. What did you see then that was indicative of the kind of harm the Trump administration is inflicting on the healthcare system now?
Thank you for that question. When I was in the Deep South, I helped people who had HIV and AIDS who were fired from their jobs when their employer found out they were HIV positive, or evicted from their apartment when their landlord found out, or just needed access to a dentist who wouldn’t force them to book a hospital room to treat a cavity. And this was in 2011 to 2014. I mean, I could not believe the stigma and discrimination I saw.
HIV is not just a disease confined to the LGBT community. There are plenty of people who are straight who also contract HIV. And so, the more we stigmatize and take away medication access to healthcare for any one group, that makes it so that all of us are sicker. And that’s what we’re seeing not only here in our country, but abroad.
I served in the Peace Corps, helping children born HIV positive whose parents had died of AIDS in Botswana in the height of the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. And when Elon Musk decided to come in with DOGE and crush USAID, we are now seeing a spike of children dying from AIDS-related causes again worldwide. Elon Musk is the richest person in the world, and he’s taking food and medication away from the poorest children on this planet. That is not the America that I want the world to see.
Let’s talk a little about your engagement. I’ve gone online to look for any kind of a public announcement, and I don’t see one. Are you breaking news here, or do people already know what’s up?
(Laughing) People know. I mean, believe me, I flash my engagement ring around all the time. It’s actually my grandma’s ring, so yes. And Sarah’s amazing. She’s fantastic. But we don’t put a lot of our private life on social media just because we get so many threats and harassment. It’s just not worth it. And that’s the sad part about being in politics right now.
Understandable. Who proposed to whom?
So I proposed to her first, and I then got a proposal back. Our birthdays are a day apart. Her birthday is December 26. Mine is December 27. And so, on our joint birthday celebration this year, at her big 40th, we had all our friends and family in the same backyard, and we were blowing out the candles on our joint birthday cake. That’s when I got down on one knee and surprised her and popped the question.
When’s the wedding?
We are planning it for next year. We got wise advice from some of our mentors to not add wedding planning on top of a congressional campaign if we want to stay married. Let’s not do that. We think October of 2027 is when we’ll tie the knot.
You went public with your diagnosis and treatment for early-stage breast cancer in July. What prompted you to share that news, and did the diagnosis change your perspective on life, or your career, or the people you love?
We waited to announce it until I could grapple with it personally.
I wanted women to know, “Please go in and get your early screenings,” because I’m young. I’m otherwise healthy. You know, I’m a runner. I do yoga. I had no idea I had cancer, and so it saved my life. And so I want other women to do that, and not put their screenings off. That’s one reason I told people.
But the other reason is, I sat there in waiting rooms and refreshing the app for test results and talking to doctors, and I realized how lucky I was because I could afford my mammogram, my sonograms, my biopsies, and my surgery, without wondering if it would bankrupt my family. And so, I want to tell this story publicly because if we don’t stop what is happening in Washington, D.C. and these impending healthcare cuts, there are going to be millions of women in this country who are not going to be able to afford the care that could save their life.
And it has changed my perspective, in terms of doubling down. I was always campaigning on healthcare and affordability, but now I realize how quickly your life can change in an instant. And I want to be able to say this on stage next to my Republican opponent, who has pledged his loyalty to Donald Trump, and is endorsed by the MAGA right wing. I want to look him in the face and say, “What are you going to do when 32,000 constituents in our congressional district are going to be cut off healthcare in January because of the Big Ugly Bill?” You know, the person who sits in this seat will get to decide who gets healthcare in this country and who doesn’t. And that chills me to the bone and gives me more motivation to run harder every day.
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