As Democrats look to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, one of the candidates that may help them do that is a gay former federal prosecutor. That candidate, 38-year-old Will Rollins, is again running against Republican incumbent Ken Calvert in California’s 41st Congressional District in Riverside County. Rollins narrowly lost to Calvert in 2022. Photo: Will Rollins for Congress
As Democrats look to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2024 election, one of the candidates that may help them do that is a gay former federal prosecutor.
That candidate, 38-year-old Will Rollins, is again running against Republican incumbent Ken Calvert in California’s 41st Congressional District in Riverside County. Rollins narrowly lost to Calvert in 2022. National Democratic leaders have identified the district as one of the most flippable in 2024.
It includes the cities of Palm Springs, Menifee, Calimesa, Norco, Lake Elsinore, Wildomar, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, and most of Corona.
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While Rollins was processing the news that he’d lost the 2022 election, he saw Donald Trump’s announcement that he’d once again seek the presidency in 2024. That drove home to Rollins why he’d run for Congress in the first place — that democracy is under threat.
“All of the reasons I originally did this came back to me,” Rollins tells The Advocate.
If he’s elected to Congress, Rollins plans to work to assure LGBTQ equality, including passage of the Equality Act; to secure abortion rights; to combat climate change; to fight inflation; to prevent gun violence; to expand access to affordable health care; to improve public education; to make the criminal justice system more fair and equitable; to protect voting rights; and above all, to support democracy.
Protecting democracy is key, and Calvert, Rollins says, can’t be trusted to do that. Calvert, who has been in the House since 1993, voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and against establishing the committee that investigated the insurrection that took place at the Capitol as the certification vote was taken Jan. 6, 2021.
Calvert has been cozy with Trump, having received the former president’s endorsement in 2022. This year, Calvert responded to federal charges against Trump by condemning the “weaponization” of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The congressman also has a poor record on LGBTQ issues, gun control, and reproductive freedom, although he changed his tune somewhat on LGBTQ rights during his campaign against Rollins in 2022, when their district had been redrawn to include Palm Springs.
Calvert endorsed marriage equality after having opposed it for years, and he voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, which wrote marriage equality into federal law, protecting it in case the Supreme Court reverses its 2015 decision for equal marriage rights.
What’s more, supporters of Calvert outed an opponent of his in 1994, Mark Takano, and Calvert’s campaign amplified it with a mailer full of innuendo that said Takano had a “secret agenda.”
In July 2011, Takano announced he would run for the House in the newly redrawn 41st Congressional District, established in the redistricting following the 2010 United States census. Takano won in 2012 and became Congress’ first non-white gay member. Since 2023, Takano has represented the 39th Congressional District.
Rollins says he offers a clear alternative to Calvert in a district that’s trending more and more Democratic. Registered Democratic voters outnumber registered Republicans in the 41st.
Rollins grew up on the Southern California coast and lives in Palm Springs with his partner of 12 years, Paolo Benvenuto.
In his youth, Rollins feared coming out.
“In high school, I knew that I was gay,” he says. “I just had a lot of trouble accepting it.”
After he finished college, Rollins realized what he was really afraid of was what other people would think. Once he got past that, he came out in his early 20s. His family has consistently been supportive of him, and he’s also benefited from the “family” of LGBTQ activists who’ve paved the way for him.
After the terrorist attacks of 2001, he wanted to enlist in the military, but “don’t ask, don’t tell” was in force then. So he found another path to working in national security — he went to law school and became an assistant U.S. attorney, prosecuting white-collar criminals, drug traffickers, sex offenders, and more, and eventually joined the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, where he prosecuted several offenders who posed security threats, including some of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
Rollins would be the first LGBTQ member of Congress from a law enforcement background.
“Government should be used to solve complex problems that we cannot solve alone,” Rollins says.
He’s racked up a long list of endorsers, including most Democratic members of California’s congressional delegation and numerous local public officials; LGBTQ+ groups such as Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign PAC, Equality PAC, Equality California, and the Stonewall Democratic Club; several labor and environmental groups; and the California Democratic Party.
Under California’s election system, candidates from all parties compete in the primary, and the top two advance to the general election.
There’s an independent in the race, Kyle Penna, and another Democrat, Brian Hawkins, who also is a former Republican. Hawkins was arrested in July on charges of child assault. The felony counts have been reduced to two misdemeanors. He’s pleaded not guilty.
The primary will be March 5 and the general election Nov. 5.
This article originally appeared on Advocate.com, and is shared here as part of an LGBTQ+ community exchange between Q Voice News and Equal Pride.
