Sarah McBride, a Delaware state senator running for Congress, speaks to the LGBTQ+ Caucus at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 21, 2024. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom)
CHICAGO — Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, who in November is expected to become the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, told LGBTQ delegates to the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday that her candidacy marked a milestone for trans representation.
McBride, a candidate for Delaware’s at-large U.S. House seat being vacated by U.S. Senate candidate Lisa Blunt Rochester, said she was running not only to “make history with an election, but to make historic change on all the issues that matter.”
But she also emphasized at an afternoon LGBTQ+ Caucus meeting the importance of the example she would set if elected to the seat considered by election forecasters safely Democratic.
Just as Vice President Kamala Harris’ election to the presidency would show “a young Black girl and a young South Asian girl that she can have dreams that reach for the stars,” McBride’s election would send a similar message to trans people, she said.
“We can show a young trans person that no matter what extremists say or do, that here in America, they belong,” she said. “They belong in our schools, they belong in our communities, and yes, they even belong in the halls of Congress.”
She also marveled at how unlikely her candidacy may have been considered in the recent past.
“If you could have told my 10-year-old self that there’d be a room full of amazing Democrats chanting my chosen name, I never would have believed it,” McBride, 34, said after taking the stage to a standing ovation.
McBride pledged to advance LGBTQ rights in Congress, but also to work toward other issues, including making health care and child care more affordable and protecting reproductive rights.
Chasten Buttigieg, husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who became the first openly gay candidate to win the most delegates in a presidential nominating contest in the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses, echoed McBride in discussing the feeling of belonging for LGBTQ people in the party.
“I keep thinking about what it was like walking the halls of high school as a closeted teenager, and had I ever passed a room like this that said LGBTQ Caucus, how I would have ran away, that I would have never have had the courage to walk through that door,” he said.
“How remarkable it is today to be surrounded by friends and family, to look at our neighbor and know that not only do we belong here, not only should we take up space here, but we have power here,” he added. “I think that’s pretty remarkable.”
Pete Buttigieg is scheduled to speak as part of the convention’s prime-time program Wednesday at the United Center.
McBride, Buttigieg and other speakers at the meeting described Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as LGBTQ allies.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said Harris still bore a scar from a childhood fight against a bully who picked on a friend. The episode showed she was a forceful ally who would fight for justice, he said.
Walz, as a high school teacher and football coach before entering politics, helped start the school’s gay-straight alliance, Harrison said.
“He was a pioneer standing up to be an ally to the LGBTQ community, helping to create an atmosphere for a young gay person who could stand up and be themselves,” Harrison said. “That is who we have leading us in the Democratic Party.”
Chasten Buttigieg said he thought of young people today who would be scared, as he was, or didn’t feel safe enough to live openly.
“So let’s go out there and show them that there can be a better way,” he said. “And I know we can do that by electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this November. They are your ally. They are our allies. And I hope that we can remember to be pro-family is to be pro-every-family.”
Texas state Rep. Julie Johnson, the Democratic candidate in a safely Democratic U.S. House seat who said she would be the first openly gay member of Congress elected from a Southern state, called on LGBTQ people to continue being politically active and for LGBTQ candidates to embrace their identity.
She amended a Harris campaign slogan to drive home the point.
“When we fight, we win,” she said. “And gay people fight like hell.”
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