Caitlyn Jenner Finally Comes Out... as a California Gubernatorial Candidate

Americans of a certain age will remember when Caitlyn Jenner was the most famous person in the world. Every kid in the country wanted to eat their Wheaties every morning, dreaming of the day they’d grow up and be just like the person on the box.

That was back in the days when we were all still calling Jenner a “man” whose name was “Bruce,” cruelly misgendering and deadnaming a person who was obviously female from birth. Just because Jenner looked like a man and called ~~himself~~ herself a man and performed feats of strength and speed achievable only by a man, my generation ignorantly assumed that he she was in fact a man.

It was a different time, and we didn’t know any better. Back then, we all believed in a dimwitted backwoods superstition called “chromosomes.” Now we’re much more enlightened, and we realize womanhood is so precious that you can attain it just by saying so. And, well, you need to be rich enough to afford probably half a million dollars’ worth of surgeries and hormone therapy, stylists and makeup artists and photographers, etc. And it doesn’t hurt to have the assistance of a fawning media, eager to tell you how brave you are for breaking the bonds of biology.

And now, just as it was inevitable that the gold medalist of the 1976 Olympic men’s decathlon would turn out to be a broad all along, today we realize Jenner’s amazing journey was all leading up to one inexorable outcome. After weeks of whispers and rumors, it’s official. Lachlan Markay, Alayna Treene, Jonathan Swan, Axios:

Former Olympic decathlete and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner has filed her initial paperwork to run for governor of California and will officially announce her bid later today, her campaign tells Axios…

Jenner, a longtime Republican, is seeking to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in a recall election, hoping her celebrity status and name recognition can yield an upset in the nation’s most populous state.

But in deep-blue California, she’s decidedly not branding herself as a Trump Republican even as she’s counting on some of the former president’s advisers to drive her strategy.

And in 2021, it ain’t true till you tweet it:

I’m in! California is worth fighting for. Visit https://t.co/a1SfOAMZQ3 to follow or donate today. #RecallNewsom pic.twitter.com/9yCck3KK4D

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) April 23, 2021

Boy oh girl, this one is gonna confuse pretty much everybody. Remember all that glowing media coverage Jenner has received for the last half-decade? Yeah, that’s over now. All that was before Jenner was considered a threat to the Democrats. Now, the same people who’ve spent years screaming about “transphobia” will have to stop on a dime and tell you why a proud trans woman is unsuitable to run a state better than Gavin Newsom has.

It’s already starting. The Democrat Party hacks are lining up and goose-stepping just like they’re told:

Caitlyn Jenner is an unqualified, selfish hack who cares only about protecting her wealth and that of her family. Her views on the issues are horrible. Let's hope that being rich and famous won't be enough this time.

— Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) April 23, 2021

Reminder that two of Caitlyn Jenner's children are reality show billionaires. Haven't we tried this kind of thing before?

— Jake Lobin (@JakeLobin) April 23, 2021

Jenner is not only using Russian agent Brad Parscale, but Tony Fabrizio, the GOP pollster whose internal polling data went straight to Russian intelligence through Konstantin Kilimnik. https://t.co/gKJmXLAq4J

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) April 23, 2021

Ooooh, and I can’t wait for the late-night hosts to prove that they don’t care about anything but helping Dems win elections. Transphobia is about to become cool again!

Can Jenner win? If you had asked me as recently as five years ago, I’d be skeptical. But in the post-Trump landscape, crazy is the new normal. So… maybe? Trump won by playing all the other Republicans against each other and strolling across the finish line while they were fighting it out. This seems like a much different scenario. Jenner would need to bring together pro-Trump and anti-Trump Republicans, which seems like quite a feat of coalition-building for a secondary character on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. That’ll be some balancing act, even for somebody who has taken on as many different personas as Jenner has.

But it’s not as if Jenner would be the first Californian to go from hyper-masculine celebrity to governor of the state. Remember this guy?