Ashley Brundage, a transgender woman running for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives, is looking forward to shaking hands with Governor Ron DeSantis.
Brundage, a Democrat, credits DeSantis, a Republican, with inspiring what could be political history: If she wins, she would be the first trans woman elected to public office in Florida. Brundage said she hopes DeSantis — who has made anti-LGBTQ education and health care bills a cornerstone of his second term in the governor’s office — attends her so-called swearing-in ceremony and comes face-to-face with one of the Floridians whose lives are increasingly under scrutiny under his watch.
“To come up with all kinds of culture war bills, literally drafting bills to try to eliminate me from society, I think is a waste of the state of Florida’s time, resources and money,” Brundage said.
NBC News spoke with seven transgender candidates running for seats in the state legislature about what they hope to accomplish if elected. They listed a variety of policy issues that motivated them to run for office — from affordable housing to climate change. Nearly all said they were inspired or felt compelled to run for office because of the wave of anti-LGBTQ bills proposed and passed by state lawmakers in the chambers they want to join.
“The transgender community has been targeted and under attack, and these have been coordinated attacks going back several years. And when a community is under attack, it is important that individuals from that community speak out and take leadership positions in response to the attacks,” said Lisa Middleton, a Democratic candidate for the California Senate.
A steady increase
There are at least 18 trans candidates running for seats in the state Legislature this election cycle, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a super PAC focused on electing LGBTQ candidates. They operate against a national political backdrop in which transgender people have come to play an outsized role.
At the state level, 75 anti-LGBTQ bills became law last year, and 21 of them specifically targeted transgender people and their ability to receive gender-affirming care or play on sports teams that align with their identity.
On the national stage, former President Donald Trump spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising that negatively portrayed or excluded transgender people and their allies, even though transgender health care and sports participation are not among the top 10 issues that matter to voters. polls are boosting for both parties, according to a study Pew Research published last month.
Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science focused on LGBTQ politics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said that while trans issues rank low for voters compared to immigration or the economy, they “can be a successful way to a small but potentially important sector of the electorate.”
Trump himself said last year that when he brings up transgender issues at rallies, “everybody goes crazy.”
But Magni said there is also a financial incentive to focus on such issues.
“Every time a new anti-trans bill was introduced at the state level, there would almost always be a fundraising email the day after saying this was being done to protect children and girls at school and so on,” he said.
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The presence of trans candidates on ballots has only continued to rise since 2017, when Danica Roem of Virginia became the first trans person elected to a state legislature. Roem, who is now a state senator, is one of at least eight transgender lawmakers in state legislatures, according to research by the LGBTQ Victory Institute.
“I’ve never spoken to one transgender person running for state legislature who hasn’t said so [Roem] was an inspiration for them to step forward and fight for their community. Now that is being combined by Sarah McBride,” said Sean Meloy, vice president of political programs at the Victory Fund. McBride is expected to make history as the first transgender member of Congress after serving two terms in the Delaware Senate.
‘Bread-and-butter problems’
For Roem, a former journalist, local traffic congestion was a central campaign issue, despite national attention to her gender identity. The story is similar to many of this year’s candidates who disagree with bills targeting LGBTQ people but also care deeply about a range of other issues.
Most candidates were involved in community involvement or local politics to some extent before running for office, giving them portfolios of other issues to fuel their political futures. Nathan Bruemmer, a Democrat who would be the first trans man in the Florida Legislature if elected, was previously appointed LGBTQ consumer advocate for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Middleton has worked in local government her entire adult life, most recently as mayor and city councilor in Palm Springs.
“The credibility I have built on some of the foundational issues of local government has served me well when the time comes to talk about issues specific to the LGBT and transgender community,” Middleton said. whose campaign website lists abortion care, rebuilding public infrastructure and increasing funding for local police and firefighters as top issues.
Brundage is clear that her campaign is “not about LGBTQ rights at all.”
“Being transgender literally has almost nothing to do with my running for political office. If anything, it’s just part of my identity,” she said. “My campaign is about addressing the property insurance crisis, which is only exorbitantly worse because of the storms we are experiencing here in the Tampa Bay area.”
In Hawaii, Kim Coco Iwamoto, who has already been elected because she has no challenger, is particularly concerned about homelessness in her state.
Indiana Senate candidate Veronica Pejril lists “health care freedoms” as a top priority on her campaign website. Pejril made history in 2019 by becoming the first openly trans elected official in Indiana after winning a seat on the Greencastle City Council.
Wick Thomas, a librarian and candidate for the Missouri House, is particularly concerned about right-wing efforts to censor or ban books from school libraries, especially if they contain material about LGBTQ people.
“The anti-trans laws and the anti-library laws go hand in hand. If you’re trying to present a single story, it’s dangerous for a library to have multiple points of view,” Thomas said.
Transphobia on the campaign trail
Iwamoto, who has run for local office several times over the past two decades, said she has experienced virtually no hostility in her liberal state for being a trans woman of color campaigning. However, she did recall an instance during the height of the pandemic, when someone left her a transphobic voicemail. She said she called back, pretending not to hear, to check if the caller needed support.
“We got to talking, and at the end he said, ‘You know, I’m glad you didn’t hear the voicemail message because it was very hostile, but now I was actually going to vote for you.’” Iwamoto recalled what the husband said.
None of the candidates who spoke to NBC News said such confrontations dampened their political ambitions.
Thomas, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, added that most of the vitriol they’ve received online has come from people they don’t believe live in the state. Thomas said they don’t “tend to lead the way” with their gender identity, but they noticed an uptick in hate comments on their social media accounts after being recognized by Gun Sense, a division of Everytown for Gun Safety that singles candidates who have vowed to govern in favor of stricter gun regulations.
Pejril said she has personally experienced verbal attacks. She said she knocked on doors of people in her state saying things like, “I know who you are. I know what you are.’
“The fact is that I have to exist. It will not stop me from being who I am and living my most authentic self,” Pejril said of such interactions. “I keep coming back to it, but our Pledge of Allegiance is: ‘Liberty and Justice for All.’ And it’s a promise that, quite frankly, goes unfulfilled for so many.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
