A slew of Democratic candidates running in states and districts won by President Donald Trump are breaking with the party on transgender rights issues, especially on the question of allowing transgender girls to play school sports, often in the face of criticism from the party’s base.
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The most recent was Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who is trying to win reelection in a northwestern Ohio district Trump won by seven points in 2024. Kaptur, an 80-year-old who has spent most of her career in Congress as a stalwart populist liberal, touts her vote for a Republican bill that would require schools to obtain parental consent before changing students’ pronouns on official forms.
“I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools, because parents know what’s best for their kids,” Kaptur says in the 30-second ad. “And boys should not play in girls’ sports.”
Kaptur’s aggressive statement comes on the heels of similar positioning from two other Ohioans, former Sen. Sherrod Brown and gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, as well as from the party’s senatorial and gubernatorial candidates in Iowa and Texas.
The positioning is not sitting well with some of the party’s liberal supporters. Whengubernatorial candidate Rob Sand laid out his stance during a town hall in the university town of Iowa City this week, citing “fairness” and a broader desire to avoid culture war issues, a crowd of 1,000 met him with silence. A lone attendee yelled out that Sand was a “coward.”
In Ohio, the state’s leading LGBTQ rights group changed Acton’s candidate rating from an “A” to “pending” before downgrading it to a “B.”
The debate over how Democrats should approach transgender rights after a presidential election in which their largely unflinching support for them was turned into a political weapon against them, and in the face of public opinion surveys showing widespread skepticism, has often pitted emotion against strategy.
Transgender rights advocates say the party is abandoning an already-maligned group for limited political gain. But many Democrats have come to believe that deviating from liberal orthodoxy on the issue is necessary to win and enact policies that will benefit wider swathes of the public.
Citing its own polling research, the pragmatic Democratic think tank Searchlight Institute has recommended Democrats defend civil rights for transgender adults, which is broadly popular, and avoid going to bat for transgender athletes in youth sports, which is not.
“Most Americans never want to see discrimination or bullying or harassment against trans Americans. They want equality and equal treatment for these people. The only difference is in articulating the very common concerns and frustrations that voters have about fairness in sports and about kids,” Ahmad Ali, Searchlight’s communications director, told HuffPost.
Advocacy groups are nonetheless disappointed, believing the candidates should instead pivot to issues most voters find more important and agree with Democrats on, especially the economy.
“MAGA politicians have failed the American people and made everything more expensive, so they’re spending millions on fear, division, and bigotry,” Ramiro Sarmiento, a spokesperson for Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization focused LGBTQ+ equality, told HuffPost in a statement.
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“Turning on a vulnerable community is not a winning political strategy — and it’s exactly what Trump, [JD] Vance, and [Elon] Musk want,” Sarmiento said, referencing the billionaire tech mogul and GOP megadonor whose super PAC plans to spend $100 million on ads often focusing on anti-trans messaging. “It legitimizes their side and weakens ours. It won’t win votes. But it does harm transgender people — and it can weaken enthusiasm among an LGBTQ+ voting population that represents 12% of U.S. adults and strongly supports trans rights.”
So far, there’s little evidence that taking a more skeptical stance toward the community is affecting Sand, Kaptur and the other candidates’ standing with progressives in a way that could hurt them in November. But some transgender advocates worry that Democrats punching down at the trans community will ultimately leave them with no political support whatsoever, and no electoral benefit for Democrats.
“Democrats who decide to capitulate on transgender issues,” the journalist and trans rights advocate Erin Reed wrote this week, “risk alienating their progressive base while gaining nothing from Republicans, who will simply move on to hitting them on another trans-related issue.”
Overall, however, the backlash has been muted, with even most progressive elected officials keeping their grumbling to a minimum and giving leeway to their colleagues.
“I just don’t think it is kind to politicize kids’ bodies in this way; I don’t think it is kind for us to make it a political issue,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mich.), deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told HuffPost.
In Texas, U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico said this month that trans athletes should not necessarily be allowed to participate in school sports, while Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa cut an ad saying her pronouns are “Mom, Texan, and soon to be: Governor.” The spot said attacks on her supposedly “woke” politics were an attempt to distract a “broke” electorate.
“As a former public school teacher, James cares about our student athletes — that’s why he opposes trans athletes playing girls’ sports when it jeopardizes safety or fairness,” a spokesman for Talarico told HuffPost. “At the same time, he’ll always stand against discrimination, especially when the most powerful politicians in the country bully students to score political points, because his faith teaches him that every child is made in the image of God.”
That stance hasn’t stopped Republicans from attacking Talarico. A Republican super PAC hit him with a Spanish-language ad this week: “El liberal radical James Talarico. Por los nobinarios, no por ti,” language that echoes the Trump campaign’s “Kamala is for they/them” ads during the 2024 election.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who won reelection in 2024 with a hefty dose of anti-trans attacks against his Democratic opponent, told HuffPost that Talarico is “lying” about his disapproval of transgender athletes participating in sports.
“He realizes now that his radical record is far out of step with Texas voters, so he’s trying to deceive the voters,” Cruz said.
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