Sarah McBride is elected to Congress: Wilmington, Delaware — According to NBC News, Sarah McBride, a state senator from Delaware, became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress on Tuesday after winning the state’s sole House seat.
With 95% of the vote cast, Democrat McBride defeated Republican John Whalen III with 57.8% of the vote.
At Tuesday night’s Democratic election night party in Delaware, McBride stated, “Tonight is a testament to Delawareans that here in our state of neighbors, we judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities.”
She expressed gratitude to her family, friends, and her late husband, Andy Cray, who passed away from cancer in 2014, a few days after they were married.
Why Sarah McBride is elected to Congress?
“I learned a simple truth from my time with Andy: hope as a feeling and a phenomenon only makes sense when faced with adversity,” she added. “We must never forget that we are the beneficiaries of seemingly impossible change, even though hope can be difficult to find at this point in American history.”
Expanding access to affordable health care, defending reproductive rights, and raising the minimum wage were among McBride’s top goals throughout her congressional campaign. As she became well-known during her tenure in Delaware’s Senate, she told NBC News in September that her objective in Congress was to collaborate with colleagues in order to overcome the partisan impasse and enact legislation. She assisted in passing universal paid family leave during her first term.
At a meet-and-greet in August, Jake Carpenter, 42, who works in finance at a college close to Lincoln, Delaware, said he asked McBride, “What have you promised, and how have you done it?” He claimed that she “won me over” after taking him through the policies she worked on while serving in the state Senate.
“I wanted to see someone like me, someone from my community, succeed because I knew she was transgender,” Carpenter said. “I consider her to be a hero.”
In Sussex County, the state’s sole predominantly Republican county, he knocked on dozens of doors to discuss McBride’s agenda with local residents. He claimed to have convinced six Republicans to support McBride.
“For my trans students, this is a really big deal,” he continued, adding that he serves as an adviser to an LGBTQ club at the college where he teaches.
Sarah McBride victory was hailed as “a landmark achievement on the march toward equality” by Kelley Robinson, head of the Human Rights Campaign, the biggest LGBTQ advocacy group in the country.
Robinson said in a statement that HRC is pleased to see McBride, who was once the group’s national press secretary, “reshaping the halls of Congress.” “This historic victory reflects not only increasing acceptance of transgender people in our society, ushered in by the courage of visible leaders like Sarah, but also her dogged work in demonstrating that she is an effective lawmaker who will deliver real results,” Robinson said.
Making history is nothing new to McBride. She first gained notoriety in April 2012 when, at the conclusion of her tenure as student body president, she came out as transgender in the student newspaper at American University.
According to her 2018 memoir, “Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality,” she worked with the Obama administration that year, making her the first trans woman to be out and working in the White House.
Then, when she spoke at the Democratic National conference in 2016, she became the first transgender person to speak at a major political conference.
She was chosen to serve in the 1st Senate District of Delaware in 2020, which encompasses Claymont, Bellefonte, and portions of Edgemoor and Wilmington.
From an early age, McBride developed an interest in politics. She had helped or worked on at least three political campaigns by the time she was eighteen, including Beau Biden’s reelection campaign in 2010 and his campaign for attorney general in 2006. Joe Biden provided the foreword to her memoir almost ten years later.
McBride said she was thinking about the impact of voting for Kamala Harris as president, Lisa Blunt Rochester, who won her Senate election and would be the first Black person and woman to represent Delaware in the Senate, and then herself as she cast her ballot on Tuesday.
“That ticket is not an ultimate destination, but it is a reflection of how far we have come,” McBride stated. “It shows that you can live your truth and dream big dreams at the same time, regardless of who you are, how you look, where you are from, or what gender you identify with.” “This is the beginning, not the end.”
Republicans have resorted to anti-transgender language and political advertisements throughout this election year, which coincides with McBride’s historic victory. According to statistics released to NBC News on Tuesday by AdImpact, an analytics company that monitors political ad spending, the GOP spent over $200 million on network television advertisements that targeted trans persons this year. According to an NBC News analysis, at least a dozen speakers at the Republican National Convention in July made disparaging remarks about gender or sexuality, and former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have adopted anti-trans rhetoric on the campaign trail.
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