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This article was originally published by Them.
Sarah McBride has been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, making her the first out transgender member of Congress in the country’s history.
As expected, the 32-year-old lawmaker claimed a commanding win in the race for Delaware’s at-large Congressional District. McBride, currently in her second term as a state senator, led her Republican opponent, retired police officer John Whalen III, taking 57.6% of the vote when NBC projected her the winner on Tuesday. The outcome was all but assured in a heavily blue state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one, according to data from Pew Research. Outgoing incumbent Lisa Blunt Rochester (D) won the seat by more than 15 points in each of the past three election cycles.
Many major news outlets had already declared the race all but won in September following Delaware’s Democratic primary, which is often viewed by pundits as more competitive than the November general election. That was not the case this time around, as McBride trounced the second-place primary finisher, long-shot candidate Earl Cooper, by more than 62 points. En route to her win, McBride had earned a vast array of high-profile endorsements, including from progressive and LGBTQ-aligned organizations like Emily’s List, Everytown for Gun Safety, National Education Association, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and the Sierra Club.
This isn’t the first time McBride has rewritten the record books, claiming a number of historic firsts throughout her storied career. While student body president at American University in 2012, she came out as a trans woman in the final week of her term, making her the first out trans person to hold the position. Her 2016 speech to the Democratic National Convention made McBride, then the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the first trans American to ever address a major party convention. In 2020, she became the first trans candidate ever elected to a state senate in the U.S., making her, at the time, the highest-ranking trans official in the country’s history. As a member of Congress, McBride will still claim the title of America’s most powerful trans elected leader.
In shattering the glass ceiling once more, McBride will join several other historic LGBTQ+ trailblazers in the U.S. House when the 115th Congress meets in February. Other out lawmakers include Reps. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), and Mark Takano (D-Calif.), all of whom were historic firsts in their respective states.
While McBride’s election to the House helps increase LGBTQ+ representation at the highest levels of government, the community still has a long way to go before reaching an equitable level. A 2022 survey from the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a political action group focused on electing out pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ+ candidates, found that openly queer and trans officials hold just 0.2% of all elected positions across the 50 states — a figure that is notably lower than Gallup estimates showing that 7.6% of the American public identifies as LGBTQ+. Currently, there are just 1,021 LGBTQ+ electeds serving nationwide. In order to achieve parity in politics, more than 35,000 queer candidates would need to be elected to office.
In a September interview with Semafor, McBride recognized the importance of furthering equal LGBTQ+ representation but said her primary aim is to “ dive into the details, bring people together, [and] deliver real progress.”
“To do right by the LGBTQ community, I need to simply be the best member of Congress that I can be, and show that when you elect trans people or LGBTQ people or people of any underrepresented background, they can do the job as well as anyone else,” she said at the time. “That’s the only way I can actually fulfill that responsibility.”
In her U.S. House race, the issues that McBride ran on included criminal justice reform, climate sustainability, common-sense solutions to gun violence, reproductive justice, and strengthening unions. McBride has also presented herself as a staunch supporter of Israel and has been criticized for not addressing the country's devastating assault on Gaza over the past year, aside from posts on social media about Israel’s right to “self-defense.”
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