Sarah McBride, a state legislator, won the Democratic primary for Delaware’s only U.S. House seat, The Associated Press reported, making her the heavy favorite to win in November in the deep-blue state. If elected, she would become the first openly transgender member of Congress.
Ms. McBride, a Delaware native, easily defeated three other Democrats on Tuesday and was widely expected to win in the general election against the winner of a Republican primary to replace Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester. Two candidates, Donyale Hall, an Air Force veteran, and James Whalen III, a former police officer, were facing off in the Republican primary.
Democrats have held the seat since 2010, and President Biden, who wrote the foreword for Ms. McBride’s 2018 memoir, won his home state by 19 percentage points four years ago. Ms. Blunt Rochester, a Democrat, is pursuing a Senate seat that is being vacated by Thomas R. Carper, who is retiring.
Transgender issues have become a political flashpoint. Lawmakers in Republican-led states have pushed to set limits on gender-transition medical care for minors, bathroom use by trans students, and the makeup of sports teams. The Biden administration has pressed to expand transgender rights in schools and federal health care programs but has faced court challenges from conservative states and legal activists.
In an interview, Ms. McBride said she hoped to be a voice for L.G.B.T.Q. rights in Congress, where the Equality Act, which would amend existing federal anti-discrimination laws to make gender identity and sexual orientation protected classes, has stalled since passing the House for the first time in 2019.
“It’s difficult to hate someone whose story you know,” Ms. McBride said. “And when we are proximate to one another, whether it’s across gender or across race or the partisan divide, it can help to bring down the temperature in our politics, because we realize that people who are impacted by these issues are people, and we see that humanity.”
In her memoir, Ms. McBride, 34, recounts the anxiety she experienced when she came out as trans in a Facebook post during her senior year at American University, where she had held a public role as president of the student government.
She has since been recognized in a series of firsts: in 2012, the first openly trans woman to intern at the White House; in 2016, the first to speak at the Democratic National Convention; and in 2020, the first to be elected to a State Senate.
But Ms. McBride also said she saw her primary win on Tuesday as evidence that voters were most concerned with her record and what she could deliver on issues unrelated to gender identity. Since winning her State Senate seat in 2020, Ms. McBride said, she was proud of leading efforts to pass a measure for paid family and medical leave and another that increased funds for Delaware’s Medicaid program.
“The only way that I can guarantee that while I may be the first, I’m not the last, is to be the best member of Congress that I can be, to have the identity that I’m most known for be my identity as a Delawarean, not anything else,” Ms. McBride said.
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