Among the candidates hoping to take Gov. Gavin Newsom’s job in the recall election this September is Caitlyn Jenner.
The former Olympic athlete and self-described political outsider has never held office, but insists she’s the right person for the job.
She sat down with Inside California Politics’ Frank Buckley this week for a wide-ranging interview.
The 71-year-old Jenner — who won the men’s Olympic decathlon in 1976 and decades later became a reality TV star and came out as a transgender woman — announced her candidacy back in June in a written statement on Twitter.
She said immigration issues inspired her to run, and she’d aim to finish Trump’s border wall.
On homelessness, she suggested the unhoused could live in “big open fields.”
“We have to provide some place for those people to go, whether it’s an open field out some place, or if you notice at the veteran’s facility, there’s these big open fields and a lot of places there,” Jenner said.
Running against not only Newsom but other Republicans such as John Cox, Kevin Faulconer and Doug Ose, Jenner is drawing on her experience as an underdog at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
“I went up against the Soviet Union, the greatest athletic machine in the world. And all by my little lonesome in San Jose, California, and beat them,” she said. “This time I want to go to Sacramento, take on a teachers union, and I want to win for your kids. So there’s a lot of fight still left to me.”
She plans a bus tour of the state in August. The election is Sept. 14.
