Sarah McBride is running for Delaware’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. If you ask her what the most critical issues are for voters, she’ll cite many things: The cost of education, prescription drugs, housing, fear of gun violence, fear of the Supreme Court, the wave of anti-gay legislation across the nation.
What’s not among them? Her gender identification – the fact that she’s trans. However, we reporters always mention it; you’d be forgiven if you’re wondering whether we’ve got to know anything else about her. Yet at MSNBC, the comfortable cable house for liberals, her identification takes center stage.
“Sarah McBride strives to be the first openly transgender member of Congress,” the lower third blares during McBride’s July 15 MSNBC interview.
“McBride on groundbreaking bid for Congress,” another says.
“McBride would be the first trans member of Congress if elected,” a third reads.
And every time her interviewer mentions it, she makes a note that reads, “I’m running to serve Delaware and make progress on all the problems that matter,” as she once said to MSNBC anchor Katie Phang.
It begins to resemble a dance, but the two performers are actually performing two entirely different songs. If it annoys her, she won’t say so publicly.
In a recent interview with the Blade, McBride states that there will be debate about the potential of this plan to break this challenge, increase diversification in Congress, and ensure that a voice that has been completely absent from the halls of Congress is ultimately present in an elected capacity. While it’s not what electors are interested in, and it’s not what this plan is, it is undoubtedly related to the younger people who are currently afraid and feeling alone.
In a packed primary, she will face former Delaware State Treasurer Colleen Davis and rising Delaware political figure Eugene Young. Curtis Morris Aiken and Alexander Nevin Geise, a Universal Life Church secretary, have also filed to run, but neither has a campaign website. The primary is scheduled for April 2, 2024.
McBride, however, has a distinct advantage – national name recognition and a close relationship with the Democratic Party’s elite, including President Joe Biden. She forged that partnership working to elect Beau Biden, the president’s son, as Delaware’s attorney general in 2010 while studying at American University.
McBride continued to work in politics afterward, later becoming the university’s student body president. In the final days of her tenure in 2012, she announced something significant: She is a woman, she is transgender. Local and national media coverage of the announcement was extensive. Biden called her to let her know how proud he was of her. And then Joe Biden confessed to her that he was proud when she shared a photo with him.
“Hey, kid, I just wanted to let you know I am so proud of you, and Beau is so proud of you, and Jill is so proud of you,” Biden, then the country’s vice president, told McBride. “And I’m so happy that you’re happy.”
Some years later, after advocating for legislation protecting trans Delawareans from discrimination, she got the chance to speak at the Democratic National Convention. Her 2016 speech paid tribute to her late husband, endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and advocated for a better tomorrow. Some in the thousands-strong crowd were moved to tears, while others were moved to their feet.
“My name is Sarah McBride and I am a proud transgender American,” she told the crowd, beaming.
In her capacity as a Delaware state senator representing parts of Wilmington, she rose to the position of the highest-ranking transgender person in the nation in 2020. A year later, President Biden appointed her to the Democratic National Committee’s Executive Committee. Her deep entrenchment in politics is reflected in her fundraising: As of the last filing period, July 15, she had already raised more than $400,000. Her opponents haven’t had to open their books yet, so we can’t compare fundraising.
But if you’re holding your breath, waiting for the president’s endorsement in the Delaware house race — don’t.
“The president is focused on his own race,” McBride says.
And McBride is always looking for votes, wherever she can, to further her race. She “fully” expects to go up and down the small state, she says, to every town, municipality, and everything in between to talk to voters. She’s not shying away from Delaware’s conservative-leaning, rural Sussex County either — despite roughly 60% of Sussex voters voting for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
“No voter is going to agree with me on every issue, and there will be some voters who will disagree with me on most issues, but that won’t stop me from fighting for them,” she emphasizes. Nearly every bill I have passed in the Delaware state Senate has been passed by bipartisan majority members.
That’s Delaware though. National politics are a different color horse. McBride is not worried about that; she is progressive and will support progressive policies, she says, but she will work with Republicans as much as she can. Sure, she says, there are major disagreements, but beyond the drama and the fever-pitched headlines, there’s actually a lot of agreement – though not enough for her to expect any endorsements from Republicans.
Meanwhile, the so-called culture wars dominate the national conversation. The Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans in the country, counting a record number of anti-LGBT+ bills that were signed into law just six months into 2023.
McBride claims she hasn’t had a job where she hasn’t received transphobic attacks and death threats. She has also received some threats herself.
“One of the things I had to consider when deciding whether to run was the risk that came with it at a time when politicians have made it clear that they have tried to dehumanize the trans community,” she said. “I know that with dehumanizing rhetoric comes dehumanization. And with dehumanization, hate and violence become that much more possible.”
Still, she says, anti-trans politicians and activists shouldn’t be able to restrict trans people from participating in democracy, to scare trans people into silence. She claims that the LGBTQ community is more united than ever.
It’s clear the attacks won’t silence her – she expects to be a force to be reckoned with if she is elected to Congress, even as a first-term legislator. In her first term, she points out that she was able to pass a bill for paid family leave starting in 2026 through the Delaware Legislature, despite the political observers’ laughter.
On the issues, though, McBride is harder to pin down beyond the statements on her website. She’s running to represent a state whose fifth-largest industry is agriculture, for example, but her website doesn’t mention agriculture. McBride claims that it’s only a matter of time.
“We’re going to be further building out the policy agenda,” she says. I’m not aware that anyone has any specific information about agricultural or foreign policy on their websites yet.
She then pivots to a familiar talking point – farmers and agriculture workers, just like her, know what it’s like to be underrepresented in government. She knows what it’s like to be “unseen and unheard” by the government. She knows what it’s like to be attacked by her own government. She’s secured the endorsement of Delaware’s United Food and Commercial Workers. She is listening to all of them while conducting a tour through the state and is running to represent all of Delaware.
“A campaign is a conversation,” she emphasizes.
However, when it comes to addressing the climate crisis, time is quickly running out. Due to rising sea levels and flooding, Delaware is the lowest-lying state in the nation. The Sierra Club’s Delaware chapter has endorsed her twice, but McBride’s climate policy proposals are so far murky. By 2050, Delaware has already pledged to become carbon neutral, according to her.
We need “bold goals,” she says, to achieve carbon neutrality, to prevent the country from emitting more greenhouse gases than its forests, shrubs, grasslands, sea grasses, and more can remove.
Do emitters, therefore, need to pay for each ton of greenhouse gases they emit? She didn’t directly answer. A ban on new fossil fuel projects? She didn’t directly answer. Given how difficult it is to demonstrate that toxic gases weren’t released as a result of the purchase and the dubious investments that are made, do we not need to move away from carbon credits, which theoretically certify that one ton of carbon dioxide hasn’t been released into the atmosphere as a result? It’s not an issue that has come up yet, she says. In general, we need to invest in new technologies, figure out ways to reduce the climate crisis impact, find ways to emit less, she emphasizes.
An important step forward, McBride said, is the Inflation Reduction Act. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, it invested billions in clean energy, tax breaks for electric cars, and energy-efficient home improvements. Despite the fact that West Virginia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline has been approved by the law thanks to a deal struck with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, she backs the law.
“Look, I believe that the majority of bills passed have elements that many of us would not like,” she says. And “often, those elements are required to pass the bill.”
And she wants to pass legislation that will give Congress a different perspective. There are so many things that she seems to be unable to stop her; she is determined to put in the effort to succeed.
“This is a real race,” she says. “We’re leaving no stone unturned.”
