Copyright The Boston Globe
“Not fit, workaholics, and not taking finding a wife seriously,” Housley says. If she had it her way, she’d be married and expecting her first kid. She says a lot of her colleagues at the American Principles Project, a conservative advocacy group whose website says “in order to save America — we have to save the family,” are settling down and having children. But it’s rough out there. When the Washington Post reached Housley by phone, and she told a co-worker that she was discussing dating in D.C., a voice at the other end of the line could be heard saying, "Oh nooooo!" “I felt like, being in conservative politics, there would be more like masculine men in the conservative movement,” Housley says, “and I find that a lot of them aren’t as masculine as I would have hoped.” Newly arrived MAGA singles face a percentage problem: 92.5 percent of the city voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election. President Trump’s decisions to cull the federal workforce and flood the streets with troops and federal agents have created an atmosphere where dating across the aisle might not be as cute as it once was. Especially for the many liberals in the Washington dating pool. “They’re kind of like the villagers to Frankenstein,” says Susan Trombetti, CEO of Exclusive Matchmaking, who describes the environment as “political polarization on steroids.” “Before 2016, I did not even have a question on my intake form about politics,” says Michelle Jacoby, founder of DC Matchmaking and a dating coach. “It was just a nonissue.” Where a person might’ve wanted to appear more moderate in the past, they wear their beliefs on their sleeves now. Earlier this year, during the DOGE days, Trombetti says, one liberal man asked her not to pair him with any Tesla drivers. Liberal women whom she’d typically call “wallflowers” — open to dating anyone — were now against any Republicans. “I have a really open guy, and they’re like, What? He’s a Republican?” Trombetti says. “And automatically they go to: ‘Did he go to the insurrection? Did he attend the insurrection?’” Most conservatives the Post talked to for this article said they’d be willing to date someone whose politics aren’t perfectly aligned with the conservative movement, but that comes with some caveats. “There’s a lot of talk around the word ‘fascism’ and people on the left calling people on the right ‘fascists’ and ‘Nazis,’” said a 27-year-old Republican staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because her employer did not allow her to speak to the press. “I think if somebody genuinely thought that, they probably wouldn’t want to date me anyways, but like, that’s a red flag, because then you think that I’m that, which I’m not, whatsoever, and never will be. But I mean, my partner can’t think I’m a fascist. That’s crazy." Rather than dealing with all that mess, many conservatives just choose to date among themselves. Like a small college in a larger city, the new conservative dating scene is insular but active. It started to develop before Trump was sworn in. The day before the inauguration, hundreds convened downtown at a party sponsored by TikTok that Raquel Debono helped to host. Debono, a political consultant, has been hosting “Make America Hot Again” mixers for conservatives in New York. In Washington, the scene as MAGA returned to power was rowdier. And — surprise! — supplying a bunch of young people with limitless booze didn’t necessarily yield wholesome, chaste courtships. “Let’s not beat around the bush,” Debono says. “… A lot of people got lucky that night. I don’t know if anyone got married from that, but, yeah, people got laid. To me that’s a success.” But some conservative women are looking for more than all that. Something much more wholesome. Taylor Hathorn, a 33-year-old defense contractor and political commentator who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, has been on some 50 dates in the past six years, looking for a good conservative Christian man to no avail. Hathorn says she has tried to date with noble intentions. She stays away from Tinder — too hookup-oriented — and instead wants to get to know the person she’s out with. She tries to ask thoughtful but revealing questions: Where does he go to church? What is he reading? Last November, she celebrated Trump’s victory with optimism not just for the president who would be returning to Washington to take charge of the White House, but also because of all the president’s men. “My girlfriends and I really did have this conversation, where I was like, there’s going to be a lot more guys up here that we agree with politically and that are going to be conservative and whatever,” Hathorn recalled in an interview. “Maybe dating will be a lot easier.” Eleven months and six or seven first dates later, “I don’t know that that has been the case,” says Hathorn, with a note of disappointment. Maybe the dating pool has expanded since January. But that doesn’t solve the nonpartisan challenge of trying to find something permanent in an Official Washington full of transient professionals. What good is an influx of conservatives, Hathorn wonders, when many of the career-obsessed don’t even think they’ll be here for long? “I think it is hard no matter what,” she says. “I don’t know that a change in administration makes that any easier.” So where does a MAGA Republican go to find love? No, not just Butterworth’s. According to those who spoke to the Post, they’re just as likely to be found sipping espresso martinis at the chic bar Jane Jane on 14th Street NW. On Wednesdays, Hill staffers might pack into the Navy Yard bar Scarlet Oak and glug on half-price wine bottles. For more traditional crowds, an animal farm in Virginia hosted a “Harvest Moon Hoedown” in October. Dating within like-minded political circles means each potential match is constantly undergoing a vaunted D.C. tradition: the background check. “Your friends have already vetted these people for you,” said the Republican staffer. “Like, somebody has worked for that person before, somebody has dated that person before, he’s somebody’s friend.” Christopher Byrne formed the DC Social Collective in 2021 in part because he wanted the vetting to happen face-to-face — the old-fashioned way — rather than through a phone screen. On top of his full-time job in marketing for a nonprofit, Byrne, 28, is also the collective’s full-time president, arranging events like the aforementioned “Harvest Moon Hoedown” or a “Strawberry Soiree” dance. He doesn’t check party affiliation at the door, but the collective started as a group for young Catholic professionals, so most of his guests lean conservative (and Byrne himself says he voted for Trump). He says he knows couples who have tied the knot after meeting at his gatherings, some of which have had more than 500 guests; since the new administration, he says he’s consistently sold out his events. Byrne himself hasn’t been so lucky. He estimates that he’s gone on about 40 to 50 dates in recent years, and he describes his experiences as “very dismal.” (One woman, he says, dumped him because he grew out his facial hair and didn’t keep his mustache.) This summer, he was going out on a second date with a woman who worked in software development and seemed like she could be a keeper. “She was the most humble girl I’d ever met in my life,” he recalled. He admired that she had two children, which fell in line with his family values, and she had a willing heart to help him with his event planning. She was blond and “drop-dead gorgeous,” he said. Politics hadn’t really come up. They were waiting to be seated at an Italian restaurant in Georgetown when, he says, someone dressed in drag walked by. She casually mentioned that she’d helped curate a drag event at one point — something he was entirely against. He felt a pit in his stomach. Nothing against her as a person, he said, but: “We did not go on the third date, after that.” In April, her first month here, Housley went to an event hosted by the Conservateur, a conservative lifestyle publication. A tall, blue-eyed blond man who worked in crypto came up to her and struck up a conversation before asking to take her out on a date. She liked that he made the first move. First it was sushi at Shoto, then a Nationals game. But then she heard through some friends that he wasn’t really Christian. She says he grew up Catholic but told her he wasn’t going to church. And so her search continues. The Post asked Housley about the other kind of guy walking around Washington: the military men patrolling the streets in fatigues. “Clearly, they’re taking care of their bodies, they’ve got masculine traits of leadership and protection. Definitely admire that,” she said. “Would not be opposed to dating or talking to a National Guard.”
