Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford was declared in early April the winner of the race for alder of Madison’s Fifteenth District, making her the first openly trans woman ever elected to public office in Wisconsin’s history.
Martinez-Rutherford ran on a platform of affordable housing, improving neighborhood infrastructure, and social justice issues. She brings a commitment to LGBTQ+ representation and the rights of the underserved.
Away from her new political career, she is also a comedian and the owner of the award-winning Lady Laughs Comedy production company. We spoke by telephone for WORT-FM Community Radio’s 8 O’Clock Buzz after she won the April 4 election. Excerpts follow.
Q: I spoke to you the morning after the election. You said you were still swirling in emotions. How are things now? Settling down a little bit?
Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford: Slightly. It’s quite a whirlwind, let me tell you, but man, kind of exciting.
Q: When you were a child, and even as a young adult, did you ever think that you would get into electoral politics?
Martinez-Rutherford: No, not at all. I think it was really when I was well into my adulthood, and really after transitioning and becoming more [politically] savvy and looking at the world around me and how it related to me. And I’ve thought about it, but I’m a comedian, so I was kind of nervous about . . .
Q: A vote count?
Martinez-Rutherford: And governing.
Q: When people become “first,” in your case, the first out trans elected official in Wisconsin, the nature of the first tends to sometimes overshadow all the other things about them. That’s why I wanted to name some of your platform [issues] in your introduction. What does it mean to you and the rest of us that we have elected a trans woman to the city council?
Martinez-Rutherford: Well, it says we’re pretty darn awesome. It’s so important at a time when there’s so much hate and division and attacking of transgender people and especially children. What it says to me about Madison is that you care about us, and that makes me so proud to be a part of the city, and even prouder to serve the city.
Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford was named by Autostraddle as one of the “Fifty-eight Trans Women Actors You Should Know and Also Love.”
Q: You mentioned your childhood and a reckoning with your own eyes, looking around and seeing a world that needed to be changed. On your website, you say you began to explore your gender in your twenties, within the drag community in your native Texas. What was that like?
Martinez-Rutherford: I was very steeped in evangelism and all that means, so I had a couple of years of coming out and started exploring gender through drag . . . . I came out as gay, and the first thing I could do was to get into a dress, like that was all I wanted to do.
And so, especially during the nineties when things were a lot different than they are now, there was no visibility, no positive depictions of who we are as people. So it was fraught with self-hatred and societal pressure, and then I finally felt the freedom to become who I was much later, when I had moved away from where I grew up in Texas . . . . That was in the mid- to late-aughts, and I still remember hearing and thinking over and over again, “There’s no place for a trans person in public discourse. There’s no place for a trans person in entertainment. There’s no place for a trans person in politics.” So watching what has happened, the positive depictions of who we are, wonderful people like Candis Cayne and Laverne Cox—and the list is endless now—gave me hope.
And being a trans comic, starting when there were probably five of us around the country, and seeing trans comedians now sprout up from all over, all parts of the country, it just feels great, and it feels [like it’s] time for me to be in a space that is able to make a bigger difference.
Q: Do you still have family and friends and enemies in Texas? And if you do, what do they think of the fact that you’re now an elected member of the Madison Common Council?
Martinez-Rutherford: I do have all of the above. My mother told me, “I never thought I’d have a politician in the family.” And I was like, “Even worse, a progressive politician.” So they’re supportive—as supportive as they can be in a world where they have little interaction with anyone who’s trans or queer outside of myself. And I love my family so much.
My friends, they are solid, and that was another reason after seeing what Texas has been doing to trans people and families of trans children—running them out, targeting them, doxxing them. It felt like, before I see that starting to happen in Madison, I wanted to do something.
Q: I want to come back to comedy. I worked in political news at PBS for thirty-two years before I retired in 2021. I’m boring you with that because, in my experience, the least funny environment in the galaxy is the political arena. In fact, I’ve covered only a handful of politicians, at least career politicians, who even have a sense of humor. How will your skills as a comic come in handy and be deployed in the political world?
Martinez-Rutherford: I believe humor unites us. The one thing that we all do is laugh, and it’s a great way to break the ice. It’s a great way to break tension, and it’s irresistible for me.
Q: I think we’re going to have a lot more residents watching common council meetings live online now, so be careful what you’re good at with that. I do want to talk about issues for a bit. Briefly, what is your vision for better, more affordable housing for District Fifteen and around the city?
Martinez-Rutherford: There are so many possibilities, and I’m still grappling with what it all looks like, but look, we need to start prioritizing housing of all types and all income levels without siloing people in neighborhoods. We really have to start making it more accessible, especially to those who are low income. It should be near child care, groceries, and transportation. So going forward, looking at those things and working with all of the teams—they’re doing the hard work already in the area—I will team up with them and fight to keep Madison what it is—an arty, quirky, fun, and amazing city where everybody can live, create, and afford to raise their family here.