Thousands of people voted to elect Raul Urena to Calexico council, hoping the young politician would bring a fresh approach to the California border city’s long-standing problems with unemployment, crime and deprivation.

But when Urena started pushing ideas popular with progressives across the United States, some voters changed their minds.

The fact that Urena also took to wearing a dress and high heels to council meetings left some of them feeling duped.

Urena, who uses she/her pronouns, sees transphobia in an effort to recall her in a referendum on Tuesday.

But her opponents say it is about ideas and what they say is progressivism’s tendency to push the wrong issues.

“I voted for him because he is a young man who seems to have good ideas…