Voters in Delaware elected the nation’s first transgender member to Congress on Tuesday, with NBC News predicting a victory for Sen. Sarah McBride in the race for the House of Representatives’ sole seat.
At the same time, voters in the United States opted to return Donald Trump to the White House, NBC News predicted, choosing a presidential ticket that many advocates warned would be the worst in American history for transgender people.
When asked what she would do in that scenario on Tuesday afternoon, before either race was called, McBride said she would be willing to run back another Trump term.
McBride said she doesn’t want to downplay “the danger that a second Trump administration poses” to LGBTQ people, but that that hope “only makes sense if there are hardships.”
“It has always been our community’s greatest challenges where we have taken our most important steps forward,” she said after her vote in Wilmington.
In a second Trump administration, she said, the country could see what one lawyer in Florida described to her as “a slingshot moment.”
“We are being pulled back, but the force and pressure of being pulled back ultimately drives us to destinations we haven’t been to yet,” she said. “We will have to keep fighting for it, and that means raising our hopes to continue the efforts, to open hearts and change minds, to push back a Trump administration and to honor the hard work of democracy, to strengthen our coalition even further, to win the next elections and install elected officials for equality at every level of government across the country.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on some advocates’ concerns that a second Trump term would be dangerous for transgender Americans.
McBride will enter Congress after an election year in which Republicans, including Trump, spent more than $200 million on network television ads targeting transgender people, according to data shared with NBC News on Tuesday by AdImpact, an analytics firm that tracks political ad spending.
Trump has promised to reinstate his ban on transgender people serving in the military, as well as a Title IX policy that bans trans students from using restrooms that align with their gender identity. He has also said he would ban transition-related care for minors nationwide, and his platform said he would declare that any doctor who provides transgender care to minors would be fired from Medicare and Medicaid.
Some transgender people told NBC News ahead of the election that they had plans to leave their states or even the country if Trump won another term.
McBride said she was not running to be a spokesperson for any community other than her constituents in Delaware. Unlike an advocacy group, she said, she wouldn’t send out a tweet or press release every time an official said something hurtful or offensive.
“My job is to be a damn good member of Congress and thereby hopefully earn the respect of both people who aren’t quite sure what they think about transgender people yet, and people who think transgender people don’t deserve it. the same dignity and rights as anyone else,” she said. “At the end of the day, that’s the only way I’m going to fulfill any obligation because if I take every fight, if I take every poke and prod they try to force on me, I won’t be around much longer. And so my job will be to stay focused on the work at hand. If that means defending my LGBTQ constituents, I will.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
