On the heels of launching her bid for Assembly District 42, today Palm Springs Mayor Christy Holstege received the unanimous support of her current City Council colleagues. Yesterday, Holstege announced her campaign for Assembly with a powerful endorsement from the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus. 
 
Those backing Mayor Holstege’s campaign today include:

  • Palm Springs Mayor Pro Tempore Lisa Middleton
  • Palm Springs City Councilmember Geoff Kors
  • Palm Springs City Councilmember Dennis Woods
  • Palm Springs City Councilmember Grace Garner


Each released a statement with their endorsement:
 
“I am very pleased to endorse Christy Gilbert Holstege for the State Assembly’s 42nd District.  I have served with Christy on the Palm Springs City Council for four years.  I have seen her passion for our community, its future and the history of our community.  She is committed to a future that embraces the potential in each of us.  Christy has the drive and work ethic to make a difference in Sacramento for all of us.”
-Palm Springs Mayor Pro Tempore Lisa Middleton
 
“Christy Holstege has done an incredible job working with community leaders to make Palm Springs a more livable city for everyone, particularly in the fight to deliver more affordable housing, protect our environment, and advocate for our entire region and state. She’s extraordinarily effective, knows how to build coalitions, find common ground, and get things done. I know she’ll be a great Assemblymember and I’m excited to support her campaign.”
-Palm Springs City Councilmember Geoff Kors
 
“The people of the 42nd District need and deserve a proven leader in Sacramento. Christy Holstege is the candidate we need. I know that in the Assembly, Christy will build on the successes we’ve made on the Palm Springs City Council to produce even more results for our city and the region as a whole. I’m with Christy 100%.”
-Palm Springs City Councilmember Dennis Woods
 
“I’m proud to serve with Mayor Christy Holstege on the City Council and am delighted to endorse her for State Assembly. Christy is an effective community leader who is a passionate and fierce supporter of the most vulnerable in our city. We deserve an Assemblymember who will have this drive and priorities in Sacramento, and I look forward to helping her get elected.”
-Palm Springs City Councilmember Grace Garner
Notably, in 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in California’s AD-42 overlap by 3-points. The district also has been following statewide voter registration trends, becoming more Democratic and now has a 2.3% Democratic voter registration over Republicans.
Christy Holstege works as a civil rights attorney and community leader and currently serves as the Mayor of Palm Springs. She was first elected to serve on Palm Springs City Council in 2017 as part of the first all-LGBTQ city council in the country. Christy was re-elected in a landslide in 2020, serving as the city’s first-ever female mayor, the city’s first millennial mayor, and the first openly bisexual mayor in America.
As the Mayor of Palm Springs, Christy has led the city safely through the COVID-19 crisis, addressed homelessness with innovative solutions, passed pro-housing policies to build more housing at all income levels, invested in green energy and worked to protect the environment, supported small businesses and created jobs with living wages, expanded healthcare and social services, and enhanced economic development to build an equitable economy that works for everyone.
During the pandemic, Christy led the charge in enacting strong worker protections, supporting small business relief, and providing healthcare and other critical social services to the community. Christy led the way in approving hero pay for essential workers, providing $1 million in small business relief, and converting the Palm Springs Convention Center to a COVID-19 testing site, a mass food bank with the national guard, and later a vaccination site that administered 42,000 vaccines and hundreds of thousands of free meals for residents most in need.
Christy has worked to address the housing crisis by securing $10 million in state resources for housing and homelessness services specifically for the city of Palm Springs, spearheaded new programs to house over 200 formerly homeless people, and approved the first affordable housing developments in the city in 10 years, using city land to build housing and investing millions of dollars to create hundreds of new affordable units for seniors, families, and low-income residents.
As an attorney, Christy has represented hundreds of local residents, often helping people facing the most serious issues of their lives: tenants facing eviction, victims of discrimination losing their livelihoods, disabled clients thrust into poverty, domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, low-income workers, local non-profits and businesses, homeless clients, LGBTQ clients, seniors, veterans, Spanish-speakers, and minority groups seeking legal advice and assistance.
In 2012, Christy earned a Stanford Law School-Stanford Public Interest Foundation Fellowship and secured funding to establish a legal aid clinic for domestic violence survivors within the Coachella Valley’s only domestic violence shelter, Shelter From The Storm. Christy has also represented farmworkers in civil rights, housing, and employment litigation at California Rural Legal Assistance.
Christy has a wealth of experience as a community organizer and community leader, including serving on the board of directors for Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest and Eastern Coachella Valley (ECV) for Change. She also served on the Palm Springs Human Rights Commission and the City of Palm Springs Homelessness Task Force.  Previously, Christy organized the No on Proposition 8 and No on Proposition 4 campaigns in 2008 at Planned Parenthood, and served on the board of directors for Democratic Women of the Desert, the Human Rights Campaign, Coachella Valley Housing Coalition, Well in the Desert, a resident-owned mobile home park, and Women Leader’s Forum.
Christy earned a Juris Doctorate from Stanford Law School and a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from UC Santa Barbara. Christy is proud to live in Palm Springs with her husband Adam Gilbert, a small business owner and third-generation resident of Palm Springs, their new baby Aden born in October 2020, and their dogs Ollie and Layla in a home that their family has resided in for over 50 years.
For more information please visit: christyholstege.com.