To watch Kendall Martinez Wright in the halls of the Missouri Capitol is to be left breathless. She moves fast, with confidence, hips gently swaying. She towers in her highest high heels. You can hear her coming before you see her; not only do her heels clack with every step, she is met with a wave of delighted greetings from nearly everyone she encounters. People stop her for hugs, chats, maybe a selfie if it’s been a while since they’ve seen her. Through her tenacious lobbying and advocacy over the years, she knows — and is adored by — people of many, often conflicting, political persuasions.
Having strong relationships on both sides of the aisle doesn’t prevent Martinez Wright from getting angry. To watch her give testimony during legislative hearings is to see passion embodied — she knows what she wants to say, how she’s going to say it and all the right points to hit. Still, she manages to surprise even herself. In one moment of catharsis in February 2020, she came out as a transgender woman during testimony for a proposed bill that targeted transgender youth participation in sports. In high school, she had come out as gay, and then gender nonconforming toward the end of college. Her official testimony was the first time she named herself as a transgender woman to anyone but herself and her immediate family, and it brought a unique depth to the phrase “the personal is political” — the bill had been sponsored by Martinez Wright’s own senator, Cindy O’Laughlin of Missouri’s 18th District.
While Martinez Wright established a reputation in Jefferson City, her visibility soon exploded beyond the capital city: In December 2020, she announced her candidacy for the Missouri House of Representatives’ 5th District, which includes her hometown of Palmyra. From Missouri public radio stations to The Hill to the UK-based news site The Independent, Martinez Wright was lauded as the first transgender woman and Afro-Latina to run for state office in Missouri.
Missouri’s House District 5 is a rectangle whose eastern border is the Mississippi River, just across from Illinois, in the northeast part of the state. The district’s most populous and well-known city is Hannibal, an idyllic destination with cultural sites and events such as the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum, the annual Folklife Festival and the Hannibal BBQ Jeep Show. With just under 18,000 residents, it is larger than the combined populations of neighboring Shelby and Monroe counties, which also make up District 5. Rep. Louis Riggs, a Hannibal resident and Republican, was elected to his first two-year term in 2018.
Just 13 miles up the road from Hannibal on Highway 61 North sits Palmyra, population 3,606, which serves as the Marion County Seat. The town boasts sprawling, impeccable multi-level homes with manicured lawns and flower gardens. There is also a large mobile home park and several modest apartment complexes, like the one where Martinez Wright lives with her mother on the edge of town. A drive through Palmyra is to cross between worlds in just a few blocks.
“I grew up in Palmyra, and I noticed that when it comes to rural communities, sometimes they can be overshadowed,” Martinez Wright told the Missouri Times when she announced her candidacy, going on to note that while rural communities as a whole are marginalized, people within rural communities are, too. “With me being a very blunt minority — African-American as well as Puerto Rican and trans — I want to show individuals that no matter how you identify or where you are, your voice should always be heard,” she said.
Martinez Wright has a long history of making her voice unmistakably heard. She had visited the Capitol in high school through her involvement with extracurricular activities. But it wasn’t until December 2014, four months after the murder of Michael Brown, that Martinez Wright realized her calling. She was a student at Lincoln University, an HBCU in Jefferson City, and vice president of the school’s NAACP chapter when she co-led a student march to the Capitol to demand justice and policy change. As she marched with the NAACP national and Missouri chapter leadership by her side, something shifted. After that, she simply never stopped showing up. She began attending progressive marches, rallies and lobby days at the Capitol. As her comfort navigating the building and her understanding of the legislative process grew, she started showing up during her free time between work and school. She showed up and engaged with as many elected officials, legislative aides and lobbyists as she could on policies related to racism and policing, LGBTQ issues and access to mental health care. During this time of self-discovery, she changed her major from nursing to political science.
Soon, Martinez Wright became a fixture in the statehouse. Although she considers herself a progressive Democrat, she managed to forge genuine friendships with Republican elected officials, legislative aides and lobbyists. Even Gov. Mike Parson, who is solidly conservative, knows her on a first-name basis and goes in for a hug when he sees her at events.
Sen. Holly Rehder, a Republican who represents the 27th District in the southeastern corner of the state known as the Bootheel, is struck by Martinez Wright’s doggedness. “She really stays in for the long haul,” Rehder said in an email, recalling how Martinez Wright would remain late into the night if the Senate was debating a bill on her radar. “I would say she’s incredibly dedicated.” Yet Rehder sees more than just Martinez Wright’s work ethic. Though the two have vastly different stances on key policy issues, Rehder says, “you’re never going to agree with anyone 100% of the time. However, in politics, you often find that it really bothers folks when you don’t. Kendall checks in with our office and is always a joy to be around. Her kindness is unmistakable.”
Martinez Wright’s relationships with elected officials and staffers go beyond obligatory pleasantries. After she graduated from college and moved back to Palmyra, she was still committed to being present during the legislative session. She doesn’t drive, so she had to get creative with the two-hour commute. While she stayed with family members in Jefferson City for two-week intervals, she also arranged a carpool with an unlikely friend: the lobbyist for the Missouri chapter of Concerned Women for America, an organization dedicated to the promotion of “Biblical values and Constitutional principles through prayer, education, and advocacy.” The lobbyist lived in neighboring Warren County and gladly assisted Martinez Wright with transportation.
It’s hard to really imagine what their bi-weekly two-hour car rides were like. There’s no escape in a car. You can’t scurry away to the bathroom or pretend that you’re running late to an urgent appointment. It’s just you and your fellow passenger, trapped in a moving box — maybe it’s a microcosm of what it’s like to grow up in a town like Palmyra. But Martinez Wright was unfazed. “Our conversation would range from how we’re doing to, you know” — she uses air quotes here — “super ‘controversial’ topics,” she says. “We formulated a really good friendship and I cherish it, actually.” She pauses with a hint of a smile on her lips and takes a long drag of her cigarette. “The way social media, and media in general, will villainize one side or another … It’s like, I can sit there and have a conversation with a person, and we may be feeling we have our hardline beliefs. But at the same time, we’re taking that chance.”
It makes sense that Martinez Wright is gifted at forging connections with people she disagrees with. For an Afro-Latina transgender woman to grow up in a majority white, highly conservative town like Palmyra, getting along with others becomes a matter of survival. She doesn’t have the option to retreat to a progressive activist-run coffeeshop or an LGBTQ community center. There are no Palmyra equivalents to Action St. Louis or One Struggle Kansas City, two city-level organizations dedicated to building local Black political power. In a town the size of Palmyra, it’s simply not possible to avoid coexistence, even some amount of community-building, with people from the other side. To even find a bit of joy in it is nothing to feel guilty about, nor is it politically selling out. For Martinez Wright, the joy she manages to tap into with her opponents makes life a bit more bearable in a place like Palmyra, Marion County, House District 5.
To spend a day with Martinez Wright in Palmyra is to feel like you’re with a celebrity. Everywhere we went — the restaurant where we had lunch, her high school where she took me on a tour, even the gas station for a fountain soda pick-me-up — she was greeted with big smiles and open arms.
Martinez Wright, now 28, was born in Chicago. She moved to Palmyra with her family when she was 3. While they moved to be closer to family members in the area, leaving the predominantly Black Chatham neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago for a town that’s nearly 90% white was a culture shock. “I didn’t have that representation growing up. I didn’t have anyone showing me that it was OK to be trans. That it was OK to be Black,” she says. “This area is very conservative. It was controversial when my mom was hired at the school,” she says, referring to her mother’s 25-year tenure as a special education paraeducator. In 2020, 74% of Marion County presidential votes went to Donald Trump.
The lack of representation in Palmyra hasn’t deterred Martinez Wright from purposefully taking up space she knows she deserves. One small example is reclaiming her ancestry. Both her mother and father are Black; her father was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He died when Martinez Wright was young. As a way to honor him and her Latin-American ancestors, a few years ago she decided to start including his last name, Martinez, as part of her own.
The most constant source of love in Martinez Wright’s life has been her mother, Patrice Wright. When Martinez Wright was kicked out of the family’s church after she initially came out as gay, her mom left, too, no question. When she came out as gender nonconforming, and soon after as a transgender woman, her mom was unwaveringly supportive. Her mom was admittedly surprised when she learned that Martinez Wright had grown an interest in politics during college, but asked questions, learned along the way and championed Martinez Wright’s candidacy for the House of Representatives.
Her mother has modeled leadership and an ability to remain steadfast in her own identity and political life for as long as they’ve lived in Palmyra. Wright describes the pressure she’s felt at times to assimilate to, or at least passively accept, the conservative status quo of the town: “Everybody’s like, ‘Come on, Patrice, why don’t you ….’ No. Just because I live amongst you, I’m not you,” she says. “I’m Patrice Wright. African American. Proud to be a Democrat. Mother of a transgender child. I’m not a follower. I try to be a leader.”
Another source of transformative love was Diane Crane, who goes by Nana because, Martinez Wright says, “she’s everyone’s Nana.” While Martinez Wright’s mother expresses her resistance to the conservative status quo only after you get her talking, Nana drives an SUV sporting “Fuck Trump” and “Black Lives Matter” bumper stickers. About 50 feet up the road from her mobile home, a Confederate flag billows in the wind from the front stairs of another trailer. Martinez Wright first met Nana when she was a customer at County Market, a grocery store where Martinez Wright worked during high school and summers between college semesters. Their friendship really kicked off when they ran into each other as neighbors at the apartment complex where Martinez Wright still lives. “In a sense, we became family,” Martinez Wright says.
“I prefer her as family more than I do a lot of my blood relations,” Nana adds with a smile.
On the surface, Nana and Martinez Wright don’t have a lot in common. Martinez Wright is 28, single, childless, Afro-Latina, a transgender woman and deals with bipolar disorder, anxiety and Crohn’s disease. Nana is 57, divorced, has five kids plus a few grandkids, white, cisgender and deals with an array of chronic health problems. What they share, beyond a familial love for each other, is how it feels to be politically isolated.
“In a way, we’re yin and yang,” Nana says, “but at the same time we’re the same in a lot of ways. And this community here is so judgmental.”
“It’s nice to have someone you can trust,” adds Martinez Wright, who’s been adding emphatic “mmm-hmmms” as Nana talks.
One day, several years ago, the two hopped into Nana’s SUV to grab a few things at the grocery store. “So I pull out on Main Street,” Nana says. “I got a guy behind me. ‘Pew, pew, pew.’ You know, doin’ that little gun thing with his fingers toward us. Pew, pew. Like that’s going to hurt us or something. We were in the middle of the damn Trump parade!”
They were stuck in slow-moving parade traffic, surrounded by vehicles decked out in Trump gear.
“I loved every minute of it,” Nana says, accompanied by a belly laugh. “I just put my finger out and waved.”
“I was having a meltdown, internally,” Martinez Wright chimes in through her laughter.
“We both were in a way,” says Nana. “We had a lotta people in from outta town. A lot of people in town, they know me, and they already know I’m that way.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” says Martinez Wright with a bit of an eyeroll, insinuating that Nana is making an understatement. She cracks up all over again.
While Nana shares her wisdom and stories with Martinez Wright, listening through every step of her coming out process, Martinez Wright has provided hands-on caregiving and helped with household tasks as Nana’s struggled with her health. “If it wasn’t for Kendall, I’d probably be in assisted living,” says Nana. “She was there for me when my blood family wasn’t.”
Through conversations with Martinez Wright and her loved ones, it’s clear there are two Palmyras.
“Now, I’m dirt poor. Dirt poor,” Martinez Wright says. “But it’s expensive to live here. We pride ourselves with a very good, outstanding school district, and it attracts folks with money.” Around 18% of Palmyra families earn more than $100,000 per year, while just under 19% live below the poverty line. The Palmyra School Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to raising private donations to support the elementary, middle and high schools, announced in March 2022 that it sought to establish an endowment by raising $50,000 by the end of the year — a striking goal for a town of fewer than 4,000 residents.
Martinez Wright felt uniquely isolated as a youth, particularly during adolescence. Not only was she a low-income student navigating the culture of a well-funded school district, she didn’t see herself, or anyone like her, when she looked around. High school was the “best-worst time” of her life, she says. On the one hand, she was discovering herself and growing into her femininity. And yet, with no possibility models to turn to, she felt alone. Some school educators and staff in Martinez Wright’s life, sensing her feminine self-expression before she had fully formed the words for it, looked out for her. Martinez Wright recalls how her P.E. teacher embraced what she describes as her “fabulousness” and made sure she was safe and secure in gym class.
There was also a school nurse Martinez Wright calls “one of her guardian angels.” After she initially came out as gay and was kicked out of church, a teacher encouraged her to start attending the Cornerstone Church of Marion. Martinez Wright was excited to learn that the church had a summer camp just 10 miles outside of town. Before long, and before she could fully process what was happening to her, Martinez Wright found herself the subject of prayer circles as her fellow campers tried to “pray away the gay.” Confused and terrified, but unaware of what “conversion therapy” was and that advocates across the country were working to ban the practice, she hid what was going on from her mother, afraid of drawing attention to herself. She didn’t want to get kicked out of another church for who she was. It was common for the pastor at this new church to espouse racism; Martinez Wright remembers the pastor making comments supporting George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin in 2012. When the school nurse found out Martinez Wright had been attending that church — and in particular that church’s camp program — she pulled Martinez Wright aside and carefully yet firmly suggested perhaps Martinez Wright should stop going.
It was the love and support she received throughout her life in Palmyra that drove her desire to represent Missouri’s 5th District. Because Martinez Wright could see issues facing the multiple Palmyras — the wealthy and the poor, the conservative and the progressive, the queer and trans and the cis-heteronormative — and she knew how to engage with people across all of these dualities, her platform intentionally centered the needs of her whole community. She describes her approach as one that is both “pragmatic and empathetic,” and emphasizes how important it is for a candidate’s priorities to benefit her own personal platform yet maintain a commitment to look outward, beyond herself. She promoted educational policies that would guarantee effective public schools for all residents of the 5th District, not just the well-resourced Palmyra schools. Her commitment to improved infrastructure for rural communities reflected her awareness of how important physical connections are among isolated townships. With many jobs in the 5th District tied to agriculture, she championed the needs of family farms. Among her human rights priorities, she focused on support for people re-entering society after incarceration, more funding for social safety net programs and passing the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, which would protect LGBTQ people under Missouri’s Human Rights charter.
If she could find a way to truly see, love and find community with everyone from her own mother and beloved Nana to the lobbyist for Concerned Women for America and the Republican governor, surely her community at large could trust her to represent Missouri’s 5th House District.
Martinez Wright’s ability to connect with her political allies as well as her opponents is not lost on her. In fact, she has some strong feelings about performative activism she observes coming from larger cities. “I call it, you know, ‘actor-vists,’” she says, making air quotes with her hands. “Yes, they want to act like they’re activists. But when it comes to the work, the true work, they’re nowhere to be found,” she says, referring to the reluctance of many activists to engage with the state-level political process. “I can go down to Jefferson City from little Palmyra, Missour-uh,” she says wryly, “and go to various events at the Capitol where there won’t be a lot of Democrats, the places where people are like, ‘What’s she doing here?’ It’s because I want actual change. I’m doing the nitty-gritty work that people don’t want to do because it gets them out of their box.”
Martinez Wright’s lived experiences, demonstrated tenacity and strong relationship-building skills, along with her political science degree, uniquely qualify her for policy work. Yet none of this has been enough to convince Missouri-based progressive advocacy organizations to hire her permanently. While the occasional short-term contract with the ACLU of Missouri or temporary gigs with candidates’ campaigns would pop up, the majority of her work was pro bono. She started to notice she was being taken for granted as she watched employees at these organizations come and go, yet a steady paycheck was always out of her reach. “I have a sense that I was a convenience to them because I’m Black and Latina. I’m trans. I’m disabled. I’m from a rural area. I check all these boxes,” she reflects. When I asked whether she felt taken advantage of, she replied immediately, “Oh, yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, I realized, I had big enough balls to show up when other people wouldn’t. There would be protests, and people would come out to those. But when it comes to having an actual meeting with electeds who are proposing horrible legislation or who are fighting good legislation, you don’t see them.”
She holds both progressive activists and organizations to task when it comes to her tokenization. The contemporary progressive zeitgeist is full of messages such as “Trust Black women!” or “Trans women of color threw the first bricks at Stonewall!” Yet Martinez Wright sees a disconnect between progressive messaging and the material reality of her world. “Because I know for sure when everything’s said and done, when you get your X amount of likes on Facebook or Twitter or, you post something and it gets you viral, you’re onto the next thing that’s trendy,” she says. “And in reality, my life isn’t a trend. My life deserves more than a two-second blurb. My life is something that is serious. And my experience is something that needs to be seriously considered because there are other people out there that are hurting.”
A few months into her campaign, Martinez Wright’s mother began to observe dramatic changes in Martinez Wright’s behavior that seemed out of character. Her mother, worried for her daughter’s health, encouraged Martinez Wright to step down. “At least for the first few months, I thought she had a staff that was in her corner. Next thing you know, later on that summer, I was like, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening here?’ It looked like Kendall was doing everything herself,” Wright says. She says it was painful to watch her daughter seize such an incredible opportunity, only to see people not follow through on their commitments of support and watch donations dry up. From a place of love, her mother made it clear: “Just suspend. Close it out. And take care of yourself.”
It wasn’t just her mother’s concern that influenced Martinez Wright to step down. Despite her ability and intentional effort to connect with conservatives who disagree with her “lifestyle,” hate-filled comments flooded her campaign’s social media feed. During a fundraising visit to St. Louis, she was sexually assaulted. To cope with these compounded traumas, she abused alcohol and substances. Eventually, she made an attempt at suicide. Shortly after that, in September 2021, Martinez Wright publicly announced the end of her campaign. She subsequently received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. While many news outlets were eager to cover Martinez Wright’s run for office, there was considerably less coverage — one story, by St. Louis Public Radio — when she suspended her campaign 10 months after she announced her run.
After taking time to tend to her health, Martinez Wright returned to her independent lobbying and advocacy work. Yet as she reflected on everything that had happened, she knew she had to get out of Palmyra, and out of Missouri. She set her sights on Washington, D.C., having felt that pull since she’d gone to the International LGBTQ Leadership Conference there in December 2021. She’d attended as a Victory Institute Fellow, taking part in a leadership program designed to support LGBTQ people who pursue roles as elected and state appointed officials.
She accepted the role of government relations and policy associate with Treatment Action Group, where she will broker relationships between elected officials and people impacted by HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C. After everything she’s given to Missouri and everything she has fought for, it was not a decision she took lightly. “I talked with my mom, I talked with everybody, and they all said, ‘Kendall, you do what is gonna make you feel good, what is gonna make you feel safe.’”
The things that will make Martinez Wright feel good and safe in D.C. are numerous. For one, she’ll have much easier access to gender-affirming healthcare than she does in Missouri. Yet other things are incredibly important to her that can’t necessarily be quantified. “I won’t have to constantly be concerned that I will be killed for being an Afro-Puerto Rican trans woman. It will mean not having to deal with constantly giving my blood, sweat and tears and possibly not seeing real results. Or recognizing mainly the fact that the world of politics here in Missouri is very toxic, very toxic,” she says. She directly attributes her alcoholism and substance abuse to the stress of running for office.
When I ask Nana how she feels about Martinez Wright’s big move to D.C., she says, “I’m very happy. I’m very excited. And I’m very sad and very scared.” She pauses to consider her words. “I’m getting older. I’m one of those worrywarts. What happens when no one’s here with me? She’s the one who’s been here for me every time. But I know I’ll make it.” Turning toward Martinez Wright and leaning forward, she says, “I know it’s gonna be a new transition where you can grow even more.” Her voice turns forceful, eyes unblinking as she goes on. “And it’s about time. It’s about time that you get recognized for all the work you’ve done.”
This is not the story of triumph we might wish for. We don’t get to celebrate Martinez Wright as the first transgender elected official in Missouri state government. We don’t get to celebrate her as a hometown hero for winning over her largely conservative, pro-Trump district. Nor do we get to applaud a commitment that she’ll bite the bullet and run for office in Missouri again. Yet to bear witness to Martinez Wright, and the people who show up for her, is to see love — radical, urgent love — as an act of everyday resistance.
