ATLANTA (AP) — After losing the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to deal with transgender politics and policies after a campaign that included scathing and often misleading attacks from the Republican Party on the issue.
Doubts abound after President-elect Donald Trump anchored his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris with far-reaching promises on the economy and immigration. But Democrats also won’t soon forget the punchline in anti-transgender Trump ads that became ubiquitous on Election Day: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”
“Week after week when that ad hit and stuck and we didn’t respond, I think it was the beginning of the end,” former Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said of the 30-second spot that was part of $215 million in anti-transgender advertising by Trump and Republicans, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
“They portrayed her as something I don’t think she is,” Rendell said. “They portrayed her as a far-left liberal.”
The fallout leaves some progressive and moderate Democrats struggling between the party’s modern identity as a champion of civil rights and its electoral fortunes in parts of America where these attacks have resonated.
“There are just some issues that we’re out of touch with,” Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Democrat from Massachusetts, said in an interview, days after drawing criticism within his party for saying he didn’t want his daughters would play. in sports against biological males. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s statements about liberals “allowing men to compete in women’s sports.”
“I think Republicans are taking a hateful position on trans issues,” Moulton told The Associated Press, but emphasized that Democrats are still losing voters because of the party’s “attitude.”
“Instead of talking down to you and telling you what to believe,” he argued, Democrats should “listen to hardworking Americans.”
LGBTQ+ advocates, meanwhile, argue that the 2024 election was more about economic issues than Trump’s transgender rhetoric. They are urging political leaders to counter disinformation that they say threatens the health and safety of transgender Americans, who make up less than 1% of the U.S. population.
“Transgender people have been co-existing and co-existing for years,” receiving health care and participating in society for years, says Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. “Nothing new has happened,” Ellis said, except that Republicans picked them in a presidential campaign year.
“It hasn’t changed a single vote,” Ellis argued. “But it has made the world much more dangerous for transgender people.”
Another Democratic Massachusetts lawmaker, Ayanna Pressley, did not mention Moulton by name but said some responses to the election “scapegoated and dehumanized” transgender people. “This congresswoman sees you and loves you,” Pressley wrote on the social media platform X.
It is certainly difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint individual issues that could tip a national election, and there are mixed findings about what voters think about transgender rights.
According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 people who cast ballots this fall, a total of 54% of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 2 in 10 said the support did not go far enough and another 2 in 10 said it was about right. But among Trump voters, 85% said support for transgender people had gone too far.
Yet just over half of all voters, 52%, oppose banning gender-affirming medical treatments such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers, while 47% support such proposals.
About a quarter of Harris voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 4 in 10 said it was about right and about 4 in 10 said it didn’t go far enough.
Trump and the Republicans were ruthless in their attempts to capitalize on the issue. They piled on transgender athletes, with Trump wrongly labeling two Olympic boxers as transgender women. They used Harris’ comments as a presidential candidate in 2019 — before she became vice president — to effectively blame her for laws providing transgender health care to federal prisoners and detainees.
And Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that “your child goes to school and a few days later comes home with gender reassignment surgery.”
In reality, the Biden administration has ruled that Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity — but the Department of Education’s rules do not explicitly cover transgender athletes. The federal law cited in Trump ads requires that people in U.S. custody have access to gender-affirming medical treatment. That policy was in effect during Trump’s 2017-2021 term; they are not something the Biden administration has specifically instituted.
And it is not legal in any state for a school to determine and administer surgical treatment for underage students.
“You have to fight back” with these statements, Moulton said, adding that the silence increases the negative effects on transgender people. “What have we shown about our willingness to stand up for trans people by simply remaining silent and ignoring the issue and the attack?”
Still, Moulton said Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in statehouses should give individual elected officials and voters the space to take more conservative positions, and he defended his own comments that he doesn’t want his daughters to compete against men in athletics.
“I don’t want them to be run over on a playing field by a male or former male athlete, but as a Democrat I should be afraid to say that,” Moulton told The New York Times last week.
Before leaving his post as Texas Democratic chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa said supporting transgender rights does not necessarily have to include public funding for gender reassignment surgery.
“We can say, ‘OK, we respect people’s right to say, we don’t want my tax dollars being used for that,’” Hinojosa told Texas Public Radio. Hinojosa later apologized on social media, saying LGBTQ Americans “deserve to feel seen, valued and safe in our state and our party.”
Ellis, the CEO of GLAAD, pointed to Delaware voters who chose to make Sen. Sarah McBride the first transgender member of Congress as evidence that Americans “don’t hate transgender people.”
For her part, McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, noted that she was not relying on her identity — even though it wasn’t a secret — and was instead talking to voters about “affordable health care, housing and child care” for all.
“The party that focused on culture wars, the party that focused on transgender people was the Republican Party,” McBride told reporters on Capitol Hill after her victory. “It was Donald Trump,” she added, who “tried to sow division and distract from the fact that he has absolutely no policy solutions to the issues that are actually keeping voters awake.”
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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.
