The hard choice Democrats face on Republicans’ anti-trans attacks

High energy prices, an unpopular war, and frustration with the economy are hammering Republicans across the country in competitive races.

But they have at least one more card to play: the trans card.

Republican groups, including Elon Musk’s America PAC, are spending millions to fund a blizzard of trans-focused attack ads against Democrats, focusing specifically on a few controversial sub-issues where conservatives believe public opinion is in their favor.

The ads accuse Democrats of supporting taxpayer-funded “sex change surgeries for children,” of wanting to “let biological men enter girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms,” and of letting “men play in girls’ sports.”

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz summed up the message pithily in an X post to a disillusioned Republican, writing: “Bro we need your vote. I hate the war too. But the Democrats want to trans your kids.”

This rhetoric has been commonplace for years in Republican ads and stump speeches. What Democrats are doing this time, though, is more notable.

Key takeaways

• Many GOP attack ads against Democrats in key races this year have focused on trans issues, saying Democrats support gender transition for children and letting trans women in women’s sports or locker rooms.
• Democrats have taken differing approaches in answering these attacks. Some have essentially tried to change the subject, calling the attacks an irrelevant distraction from the issues that matter.
• But others have said flat-out that they oppose “men in women’s locker rooms” or “biological males” in women’s sports — even though many in the party deem that language anti-trans.

In 2024, Kamala Harris chose to ignore attacks like these, hoping voters simply wouldn’t find them relevant (“Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” an infamous ad claimed). But Harris’s defeat convinced many Democrats that they needed a different approach. So they’re pushing back, in public statements and, especially, in their own response ads. In some cases, they’re adopting more conservative positions, in others more conservative rhetoric, and still others have tried to accuse their opponents of misleading voters with culture-war pandering.

These moves by high-profile Democrats are being closely watched by partisan strategists looking for a way to win, and supporters of transgender rights, who are anxious about just how much Democrats might concede and who might be hurt in the process. In conversations with people working on campaigns and in advocacy this week, the question of how, exactly, the candidates should handle the wave of well-funded attacks is intensely controversial.

“I think many of them are still working out how to respond in a way that is persuasive to swing voters and also protective of transgender kids,” Lanae Erickson of the center-left group Third Way told me.

The question of how Democrats respond to trans rights is, in many ways, a bellwether for deeper questions within the party. How far does the party’s longtime commitment to expanding rights extend, how much do Democrats actually disagree on the underlying substantive issues, and just how far do the outer reaches of the party’s big tent extend?

In a year where Democrats have the rare chance to push deeper into conservative territory than perhaps any time in the last decade, some have urged battleground candidates to concede whatever is necessary to local sensibilities, while others have raised concerns that certain Democrats have been going too far — for instance, in referring to trans women or girls as “men” or “boys,” as several candidates have done.

Some candidates, Jessica Arons of the ACLU told me, have been “piling on and echoing the conservative talking points, so they sound indistinguishable from their opponents.” She added: “I think that is the wrong thing to do both morally and strategically.”

The implications are broader than just what ads get run. Trans advocates had been tremendously successful at winning the Democratic Party to their cause; now, some fear that if breaking from activists is shown to be effective, then more and more in the party will do it — which would put the future of trans rights in further jeopardy.

What Democrats are saying in response to these attacks

While polls show most of the US public believes trans people should have equal rights and nondiscrimination protections, in recent years there’s been a backlash focusing on particular issues involving children or traditionally sex-segregated spheres of activity.

On these topics — medical interventions for children who want to transition, and trans athletes in girls’ or women’s sports or locker rooms — the positions of trans activists are more controversial, and poll badly. Naturally, Republicans overwhelmingly focus on these as their most promising lines of attack against Democrats.

One way candidates are responding this year is, basically, to dispute the premise — call the attacks an irrelevant distraction, and to change the subject back to the economy. That’s what Sherrod Brown, running for Senate in Ohio, tried in one recent ad. “With everything going on, that’s what they’re talking about?” one voter in the ad says. Then another is shown saying: “In Ohio, it’s against the law to perform transgender surgeries on kids” — a statement of fact, rather than one about Brown’s own opinion on the topic.

Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, tried a variation on this approach — by making a joke. A recent ad of hers says that her opponents call her “too woke” but that she thinks working people are “too broke,” and closes with: “I’m Gina Hinojosa. My pronouns are mom, Texan, and soon-to-be-governor.”

Supporters of this approach argue that it can work because polls show voters care about issues like the economy far more than trans issues. It’s a way to stick to topics where Democrats largely agree, both with each other and often with swing voters, without overly antagonizing vulnerable coalition members (though some transgender Texans did express concern about Hinojosa’s ad).

Some Democrats argue, though, that it doesn’t directly answer the doubts voters may have after so many Republican attacks. Like it or not, they say, voters in red states especially do have real policy differences with national Democrats, who have often signed onto far-reaching antidiscrimination bills that touch on related issues. These voters may fear Democratic candidates will be beholden to their base’s demands if they’re elected.

So at the other end of the spectrum are Democratic candidates — often in red states and districts — who are now saying they don’t actually support the most unpopular parts of the trans rights agenda, and using language that’s anathema to trans rights supporters.

“No, I don’t want kids getting surgeries to change genders, or men in girls’ bathrooms,” Mary Peltola, running for Senate in Alaska, said in one ad.

“I oppose letting men in women’s locker rooms,” said Sarah Trone Garriott, running for a congressional seat in Iowa, in an ad of her own.

“I don’t believe that biological males should compete against females in sports,” Josh Turek, running for Senate in Iowa, told reporters this summer.

“I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools, because parents know what’s best for our kids,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur, running for reelection in Ohio, said in an ad, adding: “And boys should not play in girls’ sports.”

In addition to the actual policy positions, some trans rights supporters find the choice of language here disturbing. To them, the use of terms like “men,” “boys,” and “biological males” in such ads is an ominous rejection of one of the fundamental trans rights principles: that trans women are women and should be recognized as such.

Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio, said this summer that she did not support “boys playing in girls’ sports,” earning backlash from local activists that her campaign struggled to address.

Journalist Erin Reed, who has covered this topic quite closely on her Substack Erin in the Morning, has said that she advocates for “withholding your vote from the leading anti-trans Dems, the ones calling us biological males and/or declaring they will be in favor of healthcare restrictions.” Reed’s fear is that, if such tactics are shown to be effective, more and more Democrats will opportunistically turn against trans causes.

Other supporters of trans rights, though, argue that the stakes of this election for trans rights specifically are enormously high, and that Republican victories would mean far worse policies on the causes they care about. They argue Democrats should be judged on what they do, not what they feel they need to say to get elected in a state run by Republicans who’ve already pursued or enacted policies targeting trans people’s access to healthcare. 

“I personally would have trouble pulling the lever for a candidate calling me a biological male,” Ari Drennen, founder of the messaging firm Pink and Blue Strategies, told me. “That said, I think elections are fundamentally a choice between two candidates. And very often, the Democrat will have better positions on trans issues than the Republican.”

Can James Talarico find a middle ground?

In between those two poles — changing the subject and rejecting pro-trans positions on certain issues — some have pointed to James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, for trying to stake out a middle ground.

Gender has been a major issue in Talarico’s race, with attack ads heavily featuring his past comments that “God is non-binary” and that there were at least six genders. (He said more recently that those comments were “cringey” and “missed the mark,” and that there are “two sexes” plus “a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities.”)

Gillian Branstetter of the ACLU wrote on Substack that, while “multiple Democratic candidates have sought to separate themselves from transgender people and our rights,” Talarico has done so “more gently than others.”

For instance, this month, Talarico told Fox News: “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness.”

That’s not a blanket ban, and it uses more sensitive language. For that, Drennen gave Talarico some credit: “He talked about ‘trans athletes.’ He didn’t say, ‘I don’t like boys in girls’ sports,’ or ‘I don’t want men in women’s sports.’”

In the same Fox interview, Talarico said that he would support a national ban on trans surgeries for minors. But Branstetter wrote that such surgeries are “already vanishingly rare.”

“Talarico’s position on surgery is consistent with where Andy Beshear was in 2023. Beshear is often spoken of in our community as an example of how to support trans people as a red state politician,” Drennen told me. She also argued that “Ken Paxton is one of the most extreme anti-trans politicians in the entire country.”

Reed, however, characterized Talarico as an “anti-trans Democrat” on her Substack, arguing that surgery bans “can include top surgery for older teens as well as hormone pellet implants” (a therapy in which hormones are placed under the skin), which are more common than the more controversial and rare bottom surgeries that come up in political debates.

Arons of the ACLU told me that Talarico’s comments were “kind of a Rorschach test. Some people are going to think that’s still harmful, that it contributes to stigma, and that it might be an indication of how he will vote. Others are going to see it as maybe a smart, savvy political thing to say, and are going to care more about how he votes than how he talks about it.”

Of course, fudging the issue can only work for so long. If Talarico and these other candidates win, they’ll have to take stands, take votes, and develop records on the substance of these issues eventually. And many advocates are still optimistic that, when they do, they’ll stand with trans rights.

“I think Democrats are committed to being the truly most trans-affirming party within our peer countries,” Tré Easton, vice president of the center-left Searchlight Institute, told me. “And in order to lay claim to that mantle, they’re going to have to navigate this hard moment. But I think a lot of people are committed to making sure that this gets done right.”

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