Trump’s first State of Union marks rancorous moment for California’s liberal North Coast

Lynda Bengtsson-Davis, a transgender Marine Corps veteran from Fort Bragg, will be seated in the House of Representatives visitors gallery Tuesday night for the biggest regular address in American politics - and her presence will be part of the politicking.

Bengtsson-Davis, whose bid to re-enlist in the Air National Guard has been stalled by President Donald Trump’s attempted ban on military service for transgender individuals, is the guest of North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman at Trump’s first State of the Union speech to a joint session ?of Congress.

“I think he’s wrong,” Bengtsson-Davis said of the man she refers to as the commander-in-chief.

Transgender service “goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War,” she said, referring to Deborah Sampson, a Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man to serve in the Continental Army for 17 months.

Huffman, D-San Rafael, said he invited Bengtsson-Davis, the information technology manager for the city of Fort Bragg, to send Trump a message.

“There are real people out there who are hurt by his hateful rhetoric and actions,” he said.

“I wanted to serve my country like anyone else,” Bengtsson-?Davis said.

Political theater will hit a peak Tuesday night when the ornate amphitheater of the House chamber fills with more than ?500 lawmakers, plus generals, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices and hundreds of guests in the galleries. A television audience likely much larger than California’s population of 39 million will be tuned in as all major broadcast and cable channels carry the address, which will also be streamed on Facebook, ?Twitter and YouTube.

Front and center will be a man who won the presidency as a brash and showy real estate developer and reality TV star, and who has sought to reshape the office with his confrontational rhetoric and volatile approach to governing.

Adored by the right wing and reviled by the left, Trump rarely speaks in public but dominates the news cycle via Twitter, including his July tweet on transgender service that caught the Pentagon by surprise and was struck down by the courts.

On Tuesday night, he is expected to read from a teleprompter and stay on script as he did in his first address to Congress in February.

That speech and his demeanor were widely described as “presidential,” winning kudos from Fox News commentators, Republicans and even some Democrats.

“A home run,” House Speaker Paul Ryan declared as he walked from the House chamber.

But Huffman, a vocal critic of the current administration, said last week he was unimpressed by the notion that Trump had behaved as a president should. “That’s a low bar,” he said.

Nearly a year later, Trump will address the nation - and the world - at a critical juncture at the start of his second year in the White House.

With the success of his tax reform measure and an ongoing economic surge for momentum, he faces a trio of daunting challenges in the next two months: the expiration of the short-term federal funding bill; the deadline for extending a program that protects immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children; and the debt-limit deadline.

David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist, said Trump needs a “devilishly large grand bargain” to overcome those hurdles.

On immigration, he needs a plan that satisfies Democratic demands for preserving DACA, the Obama-era program that offered work permits and deportation reprieves for about 800,000 young undocumented immigrants, while also passing muster with the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-right bloc with enough members to thwart any Senate bill it doesn’t like, McCuan said.

Immigration policy looms large in Trump’s plan to pour billions of dollars into rebuilding the nation’s roads, airports and bridges, an initiative that has bipartisan support but, according to McCuan, will falter without a labor force bolstered by undocumented workers.

Sonoma County’s post-fire rebuilding is already hitting obstacles with a shortage of construction workers, while the immigration front has been roiled by federal workplace sweeps that this month included four 7-Eleven stores in Sonoma County.

Expectations for Trump’s performance Tuesday night vary with political perspective. About the only agreement between Huffman and Edelweiss Geary, Sonoma County Republican Party chairwoman, is that Trump will devote considerable attention to his achievements.

“All presidents take credit for the good stuff,” Geary said.

For Trump that includes the tax reform bill he got through a Congress “that is rather divided,” she said. Whether the modest tax cuts for the working class will afford him and his party an election-year boost is a subject of debate.

Geary said she appreciates the administration’s whittling down of federal rules and regulations imposed by a “bloated bureaucracy” at the expense of personal freedoms.

On foreign affairs, the president can point to taking a hard line in dealing with North Korea, recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel and sharply reducing funding for Palestinian refugees, she said.

Critics say the same actions have risked nuclear war in Asia and renewed violence in the Middle East.

Geary acknowledged that Trump’s blunt approach, often at odds with longstanding U.S. policy, has alienated many. “He fights back and has people off balance,” she said. “Unfortunately I think that’s how a Republican president survives.”

George W. Bush didn’t fight back “and got mangled,” Geary said.

Contradicting critics who say Trump lacks ideological mooring, Geary said she thinks he “has definite principles. Maybe he gets to them a whole lot differently than most people do.”

“I’m really happy with his projection of strength for the United States,” she said. “I think the man really loves the country.”

Geary hopes Trump’s speech will include tributes to veterans and first responders.

Huffman, whose politics match the deep blue leanings of his district, said he will sit attentively through the president’s speech, not joining in the “fawning applause” that will come from his Republican colleagues on issues like offshore oil drilling, an anathema on the West Coast..

“I’m going to listen to what he says,” Huffman said. “I stopped believing the things he says a long time ago.”

Trump is unlikely to offer any substantial “olive branch” to Democrats nor attempt to unite the nation, he said. “That’s not his style,” Huffman said, adding that “a lot of people in Congress still don’t know what he wants.”

“I’m sure we’re going to hear about the border wall,” he said.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, will be reprising his role as designated survivor, required to stay away from the Capitol just as he was for Trump’s address in February.

Thompson did not respond to several requests for comment on his expectations for Tuesday’s speech.

Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles is one of five House Democrats who have said they will boycott the State of the Union.

“Why would I take my time to go and sit and listen to a liar,” she said in a television interview.

McCuan said he doesn’t expect any “blatant disrespect” of Trump, like the infamous “You lie!” interruption by South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson during Barack Obama’s address to a joint session in September 2009.

Instead, there will be “transparent hostility” from his opponents in the form of stern looks, heads shaking and withheld applause, McCuan predicted.

Geary said she enjoys the evening’s ceremonial aspects, and will be waiting to see if Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is at her usual place along the House aisle, poised to personally greet the president as he makes his way to the podium.

Not to be missed, Geary added, is the outfit First Lady Melania Trump wears for her husband’s big night. She stole the sartorial show in February, wearing a black sequined Michael Kors skirt suit that cost nearly $10,000.

It is, Geary said, a night of great theater.

“You could not have politicians and be without political theater,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457.