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Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), facing a tough reelection campaign in a heavily Republican House district, responded head-on after her opponent bombarded her with ads painting her as too far left on transgender issues.
"I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools," Kaptur said direct-to-camera in a recent campaign commercial. "And boys should not play in girls' sports."
Local and national LGBTQ+ groups vowed in response to no longer support Kaptur, reflecting broader tensions within the Democratic Party over how to respond to GOP attacks that they are radical and out of step with public opinion on transgender issues.
Several Democrats running in conservative-leaning areas have sought to blunt the effect of Republican attacks on transgender issues by publicly opposing transgender girls playing in girls' sports or adopting more conservative rhetoric. Some have gone so far as to refer to transgender girls as "boys."
In an Iowa congressional swing district, Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott vowed in an ad to "oppose letting men in women's locker rooms." In Alaska's Senate race, Democrat Mary Peltola said in a commercial she doesn't want "men in girls' bathrooms."
Some progressives accused these Democratic candidates of betraying the LGBTQ+ community, which has long been loyal to the party. (Exit polls found more than 8 in 10 LGBTQ+ voters backed Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.) Transgender people have had to weigh how much moderation on their rights they're willing to tolerate from Democrats while many Republicans entirely oppose recognition of their identities.
Kaptur's Republican opponent, former state representative Derek Merrin, sponsored bills in Ohio's state legislature to bar transgender girls and women from competing on female teams and to ban gender transition care for minors. Kaptur has six times sponsored a Democratic bill to expand civil rights protections for transgender people, but she recently voted with Republicans in Congress to require parental permission for teachers to use a transgender student's preferred name and pronouns.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP-aligned super PAC, also launched an ad Monday saying that Kaptur had voted to "let men play girls' sports," referring to her votes against legislation barring transgender girls from competing in girls' sports.
Several local Democratic and LGBTQ+ groups urged Kaptur to take down her ad. "There is no difference between whether Marcy Kaptur or Derek Merrin serves as our next Congressperson - you are both united against the LGBTQIA+ community," Lucas County Stonewall Democrats, a local LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said in a public letter to her.
Equality PAC, the fundraising arm of the pro-LGBTQ+ Congressional Equality Caucus, said in a statement that it would "absolutely not" support Kaptur, saying her "weaponized language ... crosses a bright red line," even while touting the importance of "imperfect allies."
In response to criticism, Kaptur spokesperson Kylie Blitzer said the congresswoman "supports parents having more insight into their children's education" and that parents, coaches and local groups "should set the rules in their communities to ensure girls' sports stay fair."
Some Democratic consultants and LGBTQ+ activists urged voters unhappy with Democrats who have drifted right on transgender issues to set their misgivings aside. Republicans are still much worse on transgender issues, they said, and it's critical to help Democrats retake control of Congress.
"In terms of personal comfort, I'm trans, and I would have trouble voting for a candidate calling me a biological man," said Ari Drennen, a transgender woman and activist who now runs Pink and Blue Strategies, a political communications firm. "But I think we also have to recognize that elections are a choice between two candidates, and that the Democrat in almost any race is going to do a better job of protecting trans folks in that state than a Republican."
The way Kaptur and some other Democrats have characterized transgender issues "seeks to make trans people's existence ideological and is dehumanizing," said Alejandra Caraballo, a transgender rights activist. "They cannot take our donations, our support, our work on campaigns for granted and expect that we'll back them even when they propose policies that are hostile to our existence."
Caraballo and some other activists are urging Democrats to withhold their votes from candidates they view as threatening, including Kaptur and Democrats' nominees for the Iowa and Ohio governorships, Rob Sand and Amy Acton, warning that Democrats might continue moving rightward on the issue if they do not face political consequences.
LGBTQ+ rights activists have a long history of supporting Democrats who oppose causes that may not yet be politically palatable. Some cite Barack Obama's stated opposition to same-sex marriage during his initial 2008 campaign for president as an example of politicians saying one thing in public while holding different beliefs in private. Obama publicly supported same-sex marriage during his reelection campaign after public opinion shifted, and the Supreme Court, including several Obama-appointed justices, eventually legalized same-sex marriage nationally during his presidency.
Republicans have emphasized the topic this year, spending at least $76 million about transgender issues in competitive races, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact. In the Senate races in Texas and Ohio alone, Republican super PACs have spent $51 million attacking Democrats James Talarico and Sherrod Brown for supporting "sex change surgeries on kids." Genital surgeries are almost never performed on children, and Talarico and Brown, both of whom have opposed broad legislation to ban hormone therapies and other forms of gender transition care for minors, reject the characterization.
Democrats spent far less, about $2.9 million, on ads about transgender issues, and those who did were distancing themselves from their party.
While frequently used throughout the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, GOP attacks over transgender issues gained prominence when Trump's campaign blanketed the airwaves with ads declaring "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you" in the fall of 2024.
Afterward, many Democratic operatives concluded that the party needed a different approach to transgender issues.
The Center for American Progress, an influential liberal policy group, called in a July white paper for the party to accept some restrictions on transgender athletes while supporting transgender people serving in the military and gender transition care for youth.
But several Democratic consultants who support making some concessions on transgender issues, particularly when they have narrow reach, say it's unnecessary and harmful to call transgender women "boys" or otherwise use Republican framing. Candidates should try to speak more about kitchen-table issues that affect voters, they said.
"The common take in 2024, whether it was consultants or advocacy groups, was that Democrats should not engage on these issues, and that was dead wrong," said Lanae Erickson, the senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. "There are a lot of things that are very effective to meet the concerns of swing voters while still using respectful language."
Some said Brown in Ohio and Lindsay James, a House candidate in Iowa, struck a good balance in their response to Republican attacks.
Brown spent at least $1.4 million on a commercial dismissing GOP ads on transgender issues as a distraction from gas prices and health care costs and described "transgender surgeries on kids" as a settled issue already illegal in Ohio.
In James's ad, she said that "all children are made in the image of God" and that "we need to protect kids, and we need common sense rules to keep sports fair for boys and for girls."
A digital $1 million advertisement that launched Monday in five battleground House districts across Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona by the liberal group Priorities USA makes this contrast even more bluntly. "Republicans talk about trans people a lot," the ad says. Republicans in 2024 "spent $215 million on ads just about trans people that won't make your groceries or utilities cheaper."
Multiple Democratic candidates in red states, though, have concluded that deflection isn't enough.
Acton, the Ohio gubernatorial candidate, said in a July statement that she doesn't "support boys playing in girls sports." She was criticized by progressive groups and transgender activists in the state, with LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Ohio lowering her grade from "A" to "B." Ohio Democrats' Progressive Caucus wrote in a statement, which it later deleted, that its members would now be less willing to door-knock for her.
Arienne Childrey, a transgender Ohioan and vice chair of the Ohio Democratic Party's Pride Caucus, said she wouldn't back Acton. "If a candidate is, in my view, willing to throw trans folks under the bus, then they are not entitled to our votes," she said, adding that she was not speaking on behalf of her group.
Iowa Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand faced multiple questions about transgender issues at a recent town hall, with an attendee twice interjecting to call him a "coward." Sand said he agrees with Republicans on the "sports question."
Becca Mallon, a 32-year-old dietitian who pressed Sand on whether he had statistics to back up a ban on transgender participation in sports, told The Post she was "frustrated and disappointed" with his responses and felt "a little hesitant to put my full backing behind him." Mallon, who is not transgender, said the issue mattered to her because she has close friends who are transgender.
"This is a conversation I'm open to having," Sand said in response, adding that he wanted everyone in Iowa to feel welcome. Later, he said he opposed a recent GOP law that stripped gender identity from civil rights protections.
"That's wrong, also, for the same reason - it's not fair," he said in front of a 950-person crowd in Iowa City's suburbs. "I want state government to get back focused on the issues that impact 100 percent of Iowans."
Mallon ultimately decided the stakes of the midterm election are high enough that she will "begrudgingly" vote for Sand.
"But I'm not going to campaign for him," she said.
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