As Democrats continue to grapple with former President Donald Trump’s decisive victory in last week’s presidential election, Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE) is breaking down how she pulled off a historic win in a campaign season that saw Republicans lean hard on anti-transgender fearmongering.
McBride, who after serving four years in the Delaware state senate became the first out transgender person ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives last Tuesday, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes last week that she is grateful to her home state “for giving me this opportunity to serve.”
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The 34-year-old added that she’s “incredibly determined” to defend both Delaware and American democracy in Congress.
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“I think this victory is a testament to Delawarians,” she said, “that in our state of neighbors, we are fair-minded, that we judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities. And I think voters across the state of Delaware — Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike — responded to our message of building a government that respects all of us, that respects all of us across all of our different backgrounds and of course across all of our different beliefs.”
In contrast to the GOP’s anti-trans ads, McBride pointed to her own record in the Delaware Senate fighting for working families as the source of her appeal to the state’s voters.
“I was really singularly focused on bringing down costs facing workers, their families, and retirees. I helped pass paid family and medical leave, I helped secure the largest investment in our state’s Medicaid program since the Affordable Care Act passed, and I was able to do all of that with bipartisan support,” she explained. “We put forward a positive, inclusive message during the course of this year-and-a-half-long campaign, and I think voters really responded to that.”
While some commentators and Democrats have pointed to Republican ads attacking trans people, McBride insisted that trans rights issues were not on many voters’ minds. “I was hearing about the cost of childcare, the cost of housing, the cost of healthcare,” she said.
“I think those ads were part of a long-term strategy by the far-right wing in this country, which is a strategy to pick a small and vulnerable misunderstood community to fear-monger and scapegoat around in order to distract and divide from the fact that those far-right wing politicians have absolutely no policy solutions for the issues that are actually keeping people up at night,” she explained.
The anti-trans ads, she said, were meant to distract voters from Trump’s unpopular policies, including his proposal to implement a 20 percent tariff on all overseas imports into the U.S., which experts have said would result in increased prices for many household goods.
At the same time, she resisted the idea that anti-trans GOP ads were what swung the election in Trump’s favor. “When I was hearing from undecided voters,” McBride said, “they felt like the economy was better under Donald Trump and that we survived four years. And obviously I disagree with that perspective, but that seemed to be driving people.”
As The Advocate notes, post-election polling data from the Human Rights Campaign backs up McBride’s theory of the case. According to the HRC, a mere four percent of voters said the GOP’s anti-trans talking points influenced their voting decision.
“While the results of this election are deeply disappointing, this polling shows that strong majorities of Americans want elected officials to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination and to stay out of the health care of trans people,” HRC president Kelley Robinson said in a statement. “It also confirms that once again, anti-trans attacks were not a motivating issue for voters — all they do is sow hate and division toward a community that just wants to be their authentic selves.”
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