Tulsi Gabbard Wants to Put a Little ‘Aloha’ in the 2020 Race

Maybe it felt a little familiar—a young, telegenic progressive who grew up in Hawaii taking the stage at the Democratic National Convention.

For Tulsi Gabbard, who’d started a political career in state government, being invited to speak at the 2012 convention was unusual—she was only a candidate for Congress, not a member. Still, she’d caught the eye of party brass, and there she was in Charlotte, North Carolina, talking about her time in a war zone with the National Guard, and honoring the troops, and moving America forward.

Gabbard and the Democrats were there, of course, to celebrate and renominate Hawaii-raised President Barack Obama, who in 2004, as a young candidate for U.S. Senate, had given the rousing DNC speech that put him on the path to the White House.

In 2016, Gabbard was back at the DNC podium. This time, she wasn’t there to lend her voice to the party’s choice, Hillary Clinton; instead, she was there to formally nominate Clinton’s primary rival, Bernie Sanders.

And now, she’s kicked off her own bid to stand at that podium in 2020 as the Democrats’ pick to face off against President Donald Trump. At 37, she’ll be on one of the youngest Democrats in the mix (Julian Castro, who’s also making a run, is 44), which might increase her appeal to young, motivated voters.

Gabbard sat down with Glamour in New York prior to her formal announcement, which is scheduled for Saturday, January 19, and talked about what’s important to her, what’s not, and why she was considering getting into the race.

So, who is Tulsi Gabbard?

Why do this, and why now? “Ultimately, what this comes down to is having leaders in this country who are focused first and foremost on serving and fighting for the people in this country and fighting for our planet and fighting for peace,” she says. “This is what I'm focused on and I'm seeing how can I best be of service to the people of this country.”

Does she think America is finally ready to elect a woman president? “I do. But I think more people are looking for a president who will be a servant leader, who will be a champion for them, regardless of gender or race or anything else. I supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, and the challenge that I heard from people, some in the media and just others, [was], ‘How dare you not support someone who could become the first woman president!’ And my response to them was, ‘I'm offended that you are assuming that I can only think as far as my gender.’ Substance matters. Leadership matters. Judgment matters,” Gabbard says. “Having a leader and a commander-in-chief who's able to have foresight and think through what the consequences are of the policies and the decisions that they're making—I think this is what is more at the forefront on people's minds as they consider who our next president should be than is it going to be a man or a woman?”

Her tough talk—especially on foreign policy (she once memorably tweeted at the president that “being Saudi Arabia’s bitch is not ‘America First’”)—might seem jarring when laid out side by side with her frequent talk of living in the Aloha State. But she has no plans to dial down the intensity.

“You know, ‘aloha’ is most often used as a way to say hello or goodbye. But what a lot of folks don't realize is that the word aloha has a much more powerful deep meaning,” she says. “The fact is we use it to greet people because [when] I aloha you [it means] I'm coming to you with an open heart and with love and with respect, and a recognition that we are all interconnected.”

Gabbard has lived in Hawaii since she was a young child (she was born in American Samoa), and her father, Mike, was elected to the state legislature there. In 2002, when she was 21, Gabbard became the youngest person ever elected to the legislature. She stepped down in 2004 to deploy to the Middle East with the Hawaii Army National Guard, serving two tours. Between deployments, she worked for the late veteran Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), and later served on the Honolulu City Council before her 2012 election to Congress. She was one of the first female combat vets in to serve and took the Congressional oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita as the first Hindu member of the House.

Gabbard was 33 when she married cinematographer Abraham Williams (he was 26), after they bonded over surfing and their love of nature and the sea. “I'm so grateful to have the love and support from my best friend and my partner in my life. Every time I get back to Hawaii—he's based in Hawaii—we make it a priority to [get] in the ocean, usually as quickly as possible after I get off the plane,” she says. “We get out for a six o’clock in the morning surf and have that time without technology and the noise of life… Re-centering, replenishing. It makes everything better. Starting off the day that way and it's just spending that time in nature… it's a really powerful thing.”

Gabbard was previously married to Eduardo Tamayo (his surname appears on her uniform in some photos); she’s said her time away in the military strained their union to the breaking point. She described it the experience as difficult, “but unfortunately, not an uncommon story for people who go through being separated for nearly two years,” she told Vogue.

A Bumpy Start

Gabbard’s path to the Oval Office could also be difficult. She’s up against candidates—including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York—with better name recognition. Americans tend to choose their presidents from the ranks of governors and senators, not House members; and aside from President Obama, they have all hailed from the lower 48. Some in the party doubt she can go the distance. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who ran for president and once lead the DNC, recently said he sees most of the Democrats whose names are being floated as potential nominees as qualified for the job — with one exception: Gabbard. “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing,” he told CNN, in part because of her 2017 meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and controversial positions she once held on LGBTQ issues.

Gabbard disclosed that she had met with Assad, who is considered a war criminal by the United States, after the fact in an interview with CNN. Asked about the meeting by Glamour, she said, in part, “As a veteran, I know the cost of war, and the need to secure our country. If we are serious about peace and our national security, we must be willing to meet with not just our friends, but adversaries and potential adversaries as well. Otherwise, the only alternative is more war, more suffering, more lives lost.”

In the early 2000s, she opposed same-sex marriage, and when she ran for state office, as CNN reported, she emphasized her work with an anti-marriage equality political action committee run by her dad. Her entry into the 2020 arena quickly led to the resurrection of her anti-gay comments, and she’s moved to apologize and explain how she’s evolved on these issues.

“In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, hurtful to the LGBTQ community and their loved ones,” she told Glamour. “Many years ago, I apologized for my words and, more importantly, the negative impact that they had. I remain deeply sorry for having said them. My views have changed significantly since then, and my record over the last six years in Congress reflects what is in my heart: A strong and ongoing commitment to fight for LGBTQ rights.” While in Congress, Gabbard has supported legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment, and education, and has publicly opposed banning transgender people from the military.

Gabbard says her time in the military was critical to her change of heart. “I served shoulder to shoulder with people who became some of my best friends—gay, straight, and trans—people I was willing to give my life for, and them for me,” she says. “Through both of my Middle East deployments, I saw and experienced firsthand how dangerous it is when government attempts to act as a moral arbiter for their people—telling them who they can and cannot love, what they must do with their bodies, what kind of clothes to wear, or how to worship—or face punishment for not complying.  I realized just how dangerous it can be to allow our government to dictate or get involved in the most personal parts of our lives—telling us who we can and cannot marry, or dictating to a woman what she must do with her body.”

Gabbard is far from the first presidential hopeful to defend a shift in her views on such social wedge issues over time—neither Democrats Obama nor Clinton initially supported gay marriage; on the GOP side, Mitt Romney went from pro-choice to opposing abortion after what he called a personal epiphany. How it will affect her nascent campaign remains to be seen.

Her Plan for the Win

Gabbard knows she can’t rely on being the most experienced lawmaker in the game, the most well-known, the best financed, or the least controversial. So why does she think she can win over voters? “I've talked to people who voted for Donald Trump, and I've listened to them,” she says. “And there's not enough of that listening going on. And look, there are people who are racist and who are bigots and that's not who I'm talking about. … There are people who have lost their jobs because of destructive trade deals of the past and whose fear and insecurity not just comes from the loss of that job, but the loss of the pride and the security that comes from maybe working in a trade or an industry that their father and their grandfather had worked in before, and [who] don't feel represented.”

The feeling of being forgotten or unchampioned, isn’t a partisan thing, Gabbard says: “That's where I see is there's great opportunity… There's a great hunger from people who want somebody to fight for them and someone to care for them, and not feel like they've been left behind.”

Her military experience is also playing a key role in shaping her platform. On international affairs, Gabbard has spoken extensively about getting the U.S. out of the role of global cop, including pulling military support in the Middle East: “We should end our all U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia in this genocidal war that's being waged in Yemen,” she says—a stance that gives her a chance to lay into the president.

“We see Donald Trump talking about how he doesn't want to risk a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia and therefore, he's willing to, whatever it is, turn a blind eye. He doesn't want to break this ‘alliance’ with Saudi Arabia,” she says. “He's an example of someone who's a businessman without a conscience and who is essentially willing to ‘make the deal’ no matter the cost of the consequence.”

At home, she mentions a wide range of issues she’d put at the forefront of domestic policy—first and foremost using the money the U.S. spends on military action overseas and to deal with problems here: “whether they be infrastructure or health care, education, housing—the things that people are focused on in their everyday lives.”

Gabbard speaks of criminal justice reform, protecting the environment, improving health care for veterans, and making headway on combating the opioid crisis. She also supports the legalization of marijuana: “In many states where they have legalized either medicinal marijuana or full legalization... [we’ve] seen a direct correlation in reduction of opioid-related deaths and opioid addiction,” she says.

Big picture, Gabbard sees the fabric of the nation as frayed or tattered, if not torn, by the exploitation of “bigotry and divisiveness for political gain” by those in power.

“This is the threat in our country today,” she says. “This is what is so dangerous for us as United States of America and for our future. And this is what must be addressed, and the only way that we can address this is to combat this hatred and this darkness with the most powerful force of love and what we in Hawaii call ‘aloha’.”

“You know, unfortunately, too often people mistake love with weakness or being passive, but the fact is there is no force more powerful than love,” she says. “And we look to examples like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, who were facing such dark and divisive times and challenges and who chose to fight back and defeat those forces of darkness with their own message [and] leading with love and aloha.”

How much love, how much aloha, will voters show Tulsi Gabbard in the battle of Election 2020? She’ll soon find out.

Celeste Katz covers politics and elections. She’s @CelesteKatzNYC on Twitter and reachable at CelesteKatz@protonmail.com.