Among the placards dotting lawns in northern Westchester County, N.Y., in the weeks before the November election are ones that do far more than simply remind passersby about the names of local candidates. Over the past few weeks, scores of white signs have appeared that instead prominently feature a pithy slogan: \u201cSave Girls Sports.\u201d Only below that, in much smaller print, is Republican state senate candidate Gina Arena named.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want signs!\u201d Arena celebrated when we met at a diner in the town of Hawthorne last week during a lunch break from her nearby job with the county. \u201cI mean, we ordered 250 signs and we had to order 500 more because people were calling, \u2018I want the signs!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Arena had signs out before the ones about girls\u2019 sports, normal ones that simply had her name and the position she sought. Those, it seems, didn\u2019t inspire similar demand. So now, by all outward appearances, her campaign is singularly focused around this vaguely articulated idea that sports for girls are under threat.<\/p>\n
Visit her campaign website and a landing page informs you that, yes, this is the website of all those lawn signs you\u2019ve been seeing. They\u2019re necessary, it explains, because \u201cideologues in Albany want to sacrifice Girls sports to achieve some type of genderless Utopia in New York.\u201d This, the page adds, is \u201cnuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arena\u2019s campaign has other areas of focus, too, she said, though she didn\u2019t exactly rattle them off in our conversation. There was an issue in Croton-on-Hudson where she opposed putting in an apartment building near the train station and a proposed lithium-battery storage facility in Somers that she also opposed. Her campaign website listed other older-vintage and national issues like immigration and inflation, but those didn\u2019t come up when we spoke.<\/p>\n
In one sign that the success of \u201cSave Girls Sports\u201d had caught the campaign by surprise, I noted that the \u201cIssues\u201d page on the site didn\u2019t mention it at all. (It has since been added.) I was assured that other campaign messages were coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur mailers have not come out yet,\u201d Arena said. \u201cThere will be more mailers coming on various topics.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the time being, though, the message is \u201cSave Girls Sports\u201d \u2014 a message that even Arena admitted wasn\u2019t immediately perceptible to voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt originally came from the New York State Board of Regents,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause they were trying to put in legislation to make it gender-neutral for sports for boys and girls. In other words, if a boy wanted to play on the girls\u2019 field hockey team, he could potentially bump a girl out of her spot. And I felt strongly that that\u2019s not why we have girls\u2019 sports and boys\u2019 sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposal would not allow boys to unilaterally play on girls\u2019 teams. It instead would have allowed students to try out when there was no team at their school that matched their gender.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know a lot of people talk about Prop 1 as well,\u201d Arena added. \u201cAnd it really \u2014 for us, for my team and for me \u2014 it started with the Board of Regents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Non-New Yorkers \u2014 and probably many New Yorkers \u2014 won\u2019t be familiar with Proposal 1, an amendment to the state constitution that\u2019s on the November ballot. Called the \u201cEqual Rights Amendment,\u201d it extends protections against unequal treatment based on race and religion to also include age, gender, \u201csexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression,\u201d and \u201creproductive healthcare and autonomy.\u201d And here we get to the heart of the thing. Whatever its purported roots in the Board of Regents, \u201cSave Girls Sports\u201d is a phrase that evokes the triggering issue of transgender identity.<\/p>\n
When she was explaining how popular the signs had become, Arena shifted from her tacit mention of Prop 1 to an acknowledgment of how the slogan stirred the passions of people opposed to having transgender girls play on girls\u2019 sports teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents \u2014 dads, especially even more than women, are finding \u2014 dads are so protective of their daughters \u2014 that they just don\u2019t like the idea of the possibility of a man, male being in the same locker room,\u201d Arena said. \u201cThey don\u2019t \u2014 It goes against what a lot of people believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
William O\u2019Reilly, an adviser to Arena\u2019s campaign, was with us at the diner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen an issue explode like this, and I\u2019ve done this for 40 years in New York,\u201d he said enthusiastically. \u201cIt\u2019s just: boom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reason it was so popular, he speculated, was that people had previously been \u201cafraid of being canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really what it comes down to,\u201d Arena agreed. \u201cYou\u2019re watching your words because you don\u2019t want to upset anybody, but you\u2019ve got this situation that needs to be talked about, and we have to bring it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following day, I spoke with retired police officer John DiNoia, 43, as he was vacuuming out his pickup truck. DiNoia was one of the sorts of fathers Arena mentioned, it turned out, but he did not seem to be particularly concerned about watching his words.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d asked about the election in general, with DiNoia expressing his support for former president Donald Trump. I then asked about local issues, without specifically mentioning Arena or her sign, visible on his lawn over my shoulder. But that\u2019s where he started.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe in a f\u2014ing dude walking into a girl bathroom or changing room with his junk hanging out, because I have a daughter,\u201d DiNoia told me. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in biological men competing in women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, it seems, would fall into the \u201cProp 1\u201d bucket.<\/p>\n
When Arena told me that the issue was so important that \u201cwe have to bring it up,\u201d I asked if there had been any examples of transgender students seeking to play on a school sports team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve heard yet of anything in our immediate district,\u201d Arena admitted.<\/p>\n
Her opponent, incumbent state Sen. Pete Harckham (D), didn\u2019t indicate that he\u2019d heard about any such issues, either. We spoke at a different Westchester County diner the same day, surrounded by clinking glasses and chattering kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not an issue in our local communities,\u201d Harckham said. \u201cIt\u2019s driven by this obsession with transgender people.\u201d The issue, he said, was \u201ccoming from the fringe. This is the Moms for Liberty crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harckham and Arena faced off two years ago, as well. Then, he won by about seven percentage points, an improvement over his 2020 victory over a much-better-known Republican opponent. He has also outraised Arena significantly, with $38 on hand at the end of July for every dollar of Arena\u2019s. But he understood that this was no guarantee of victory. \u201cJust by the nature of the district,\u201d Harckham said, \u201cbecause she has the R next to her name, 45 percent of the folks in the district are going to vote for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He admitted that voters brought up Arena\u2019s signs, saying that they were often confused about what they meant. Once he explained, he said, they viewed the effort as \u201ccrazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the Hudson Valley may be fiscally conservative, for the most part, it\u2019s a very tolerant and diverse community,\u201d Harckham told me. \u201cSo this notion that we need to protect ourselves against trans kids \u2014 who are the most fragile kids in our society, highest rates of suicide, highest rates of mental health disorders, substance use disorders \u2014 we should be wrapping our arms around these kids and not demonizing them the way they do in the Deep South.\u201d<\/p>\n
A May poll from Siena College found plurality support for enshrining protections for transgender people in the state constitution, with a plurality in the New York City suburbs \u2014 including Westchester County \u2014 also expressing support.<\/p>\n
Karen Svoboda, 53, lives just a bit farther up the Hudson River Valley from the district Harckham represents. She\u2019s the executive director of Defense of Democracy, a nonprofit organization focused on promoting inclusive environments in public schools and libraries. Earlier this year, Defense of Democracy was involved in counterprotests at a high school in the Wappingers district after a student complained about the bathroom being used by a trans student.<\/p>\n
Svoboda is also a mother to a nonbinary student at that high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of buzzwords that certain members of extremist organizations or groups have used to create a misguided sense of fear and panic in the community,\u201d she said when we spoke by phone this week. \u201cAnd \u2018protecting women\u2019s sports\u2019 is another one of these.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFear is a big motivator, and I think they know that,\u201d she added. So, they choose \u201cto say \u2018it\u2019s X,\u2019 but really what it is is Y.\u201d<\/p>\n
When we spoke, Arena insisted that her focus wasn\u2019t really on transgender students, despite the enthusiasm from those fathers. It was, instead, on \u201cprotecting the girls and making sure girls still have their rights.\u201d So I asked her what legislation she planned to advance once elected to the state senate, given the importance of the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a good question,\u201d she said, stopping to consider it briefly. She came back to an idea she\u2019d offered earlier, to create something akin to the Special Olympics but for transgender students. She had a daughter with autism, she explained, who\u2019d participated in the Special Olympics, and she saw how her daughter had benefited.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody needs a fair shot at living their life and having things fair for them,\u201d she said of the proposal to create new teams for transgender students. \u201cI think that would be the logical answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like the bathrooms,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ve found ways to make that work.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked Svoboda how she felt about the idea of a Special Olympics-style accommodation.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we were talking about segregation, and ultimately we are talking about making these children, who are already a little different, the absolute other,\u201d she said, \u201cso that they are not participating in the same sports as their friends, their peers. Absolutely not. No. Hell no.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, I\u2019d asked her how she would respond to seeing a lawn sign carrying Arena\u2019s slogan.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust grief. And sadness,\u201d she said. \u201cNot for the kids like mine who have supportive families who love them and will go to bat for them, but to all of the children who are in elementary school right now whose futures are so in question.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 3 percent of New York teenagers identify as transgender, according to research from the Williams Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. That\u2019s the highest percentage of any state in the country.<\/p>\n
I live in the district. The day after I met with Arena, I received my first mailer from Arena\u2019s campaign as promised \u2014 a piece of literature addressed to me rather than my wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cPETE HARCKHAM wants to END girl\u2019s sports and force females to compete against biological males,\u201d it read on one side above a photo of a girl carrying field hockey equipment. (A representative for Harckham forcefully rejected this claim.) \u201cWho will fight for her \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
On the reverse, Arena was pictured standing with a group of women and girls, all holding \u201cSave Girls Sports\u201d signs. Down in one corner, under the headline \u201cPRO FAMILY,\u201d something other than girls\u2019 sports was mentioned: Arena also opposes congestion-pricing plans like the one recently derailed in New York City.<\/p>\n
She has not yet featured this on lawn signs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Among the placards dotting lawns in northern Westchester County, N.Y., in the weeks before the November election are ones that do far more than simply remind passersby about the names of local candidates. Over the past few weeks, scores of white signs have appeared that instead prominently feature a pithy slogan: \u201cSave Girls Sports.\u201d Only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}