Transsexual Mayoral Candidate Tells Yountville: ‘Change Will Do You Good’

Things have been pretty lively around the veterans home since Terri Pohrman, a transsexual Brigitte Nielsen-look-alike, starting running for mayor in tights under the banner “The Change Will Do You Good.”

The former Las Vegas showgirl was a regular entertainer at the California Veterans’ Home before she entered the race, but the stakes have gone up because more than 700 of the 1,800 registered voters in this wine country town live there.

The big-shouldered blonde with spiky hair faces two opponents in the April 10 election. She wants an additional 500 residents of the home to register to vote. In the 1988 Yountville elections, only 535 people bothered to vote.

Pohrman visited the home on a recent weekend wearing roller-skates and a tight body stocking with huge red cardboard hearts over her front and back. Later, she donned a red sequined cocktail dress with a plunging neckline.

“All the guys got a big kick out of her,” said Gene Sockness, 61. “She’s really welcome up here and shows us a good time. So what the heck, live and let live.”

Pohrman’s ambitions have panicked some residents of this conservative town of 3,200, situated in the Napa Valley about 40 miles north of San Francisco.

“I’m very serious about this,” said Pohrman, 37, a costume jewelry saleswoman who calls herself “Miss Terri.”

“I’m going to be mayor and these people are scared,” she said. “They think I’ll open a bunch of massage parlors and adult bookstores.”

Pohrman moved to Yountville two years ago. A native of Portland, Ore., Pohrman was a teen-age female impersonator before having a sex change operation in San Francisco in the 1970s.

She opened a jewelry and dress shop and hit the road last year as a sales representative. She first entered politics after the town’s design-review committee questioned the appropriateness of the advertising on her boutique.

City Manager Bob Myers says she violated ordinances by placing colored, plastic flags around her shop and in the trees. She also had flashing neon lights and a sandwich-board sign not allowed under local codes. The name of her shop was Such a Deal.

Pohrman said she wants to bring the town together as “one big family,” and takes innovative stands on issues. On flood control, for instance, she says the first thing she’d do is buy pink lifeboats for everyone.

“She’s flamboyant for up here, but maybe not by San Francisco standards,” said 60-year-old veteran Walter Allen, who lives at the veterans home.

Pohrman’s critics include Carlee Leftwich, the mayor pro-tem and a six-year council veteran who is running against Pohrman.

“Anyone who assumes that because the veterans are elderly and have health problems that they are also stupid is making a terrible mistake,” said Leftwich. “I would never attempt to garner their votes by entertaining them.”

Richard Kessler, a 65-year-old resident of the home, said of Pohrman: “She’s trying to work the vet’s home for votes. To me she is nothing but a burlesque queen. A lot of these old senile vets are taken in by her.”

But Pohrman’s conscience is clear: “I love those people,” she said.