Desperate for answers on what went wrong on Election Day, finger-pointing among Democrats and media pundits has been swift. Many — in private — are holding President Joe Biden responsible. Others are blaming the operatives who have run the party’s last several campaigns. But some are pointing to an issue with far less power in American politics: transgender rights.
“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., told The New York Times on Wednesday. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., shared a similar view, telling the Times on Thursday: “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
Representatives for Suozzi and Moulton did not immediately return a request for comment.
In Texas, where the battle over transgender rights has become particularly fierce in recent years, then-Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa told a local radio station that “you can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.”
Hinojosa issued an apology on X on Wednesday, saying that he “failed to communicate my thoughts with care and clarity” before resigning over Democratic losses on Friday.
Brad Pritchett, the interim chief executive of LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, condemned Hinojosa’s comments and the wider argument by some Democrats that trans people contributed to Democratic losses.
“This is something that Democrats need to stop and remember what their values are,” Pritchett said in an interview with NBC News. “We live and run campaigns by the values we hold dear.”
He also said Democrats should not be “alienating” some of their most loyal supporters. Eighty-six percent of LGBTQ voters said they supported Vice President Kamala Harris compared with 12% who said they supported Donald Trump, according to NBC News exit polling of 10 key states.
Between the 2020 and 2024 elections, transgender rights have become a political flashpoint in the nation’s culture wars.
Thousands of anti-LGBTQ bills were filed in state legislatures across the country, with many of them targeting transgender Americans specifically, according to tallies by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Corporate America was also pulled into the fray, with American brands like Bud Light facing immense backlash for partnering with trans influencers. And perhaps nothing stoked more conversation than the issue of transgender girls and women competing in girls and women’s sports.
In 2022, a streak of wins by transgender athlete Lia Thomas as a member of the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team sparked global headlines and conservative outrage. Thomas’ win in the NCAA swimming championships provoked particular ire. This past summer, conspiracy theories that Olympic boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria was not born female exploded online, drawing atypical attention to the women’s sport at the Paris Games.
Throughout the campaign, Republicans spent more than $200 million on network television advertisements centered on transgender issues this year, according to data shared with NBC News by AdImpact, an analytics firm that tracks political ad spending.
Ads that mentioned Harris’ past support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care treatments were repeatedly aired during NFL and college football games last month. The ads ended with the tagline: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”
Harris largely avoided the issue on the trail and in interviews and it was notably absent from this year’s Democratic National Convention.
Asked if she believed that transgender Americans should have access to gender-affirming care in this country, Harris told NBC News’ Hallie Jackson, “That is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary.” Pressed further, she said, “I believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect, period, and should not be vilified for who they are, and should not be bullied for who they are.”
The Harris campaign’s LGBTQ engagement director, Sam Alleman, urged voters not to blame trans people for Harris’ loss.
“Please do not blame trans issues or trans people for why we lost,” he wrote on X on Thursday. “No exit polling or data is showing this as a significant decision point for voters.”
The issue voters most often cited as their No. 1 concern was “the state of democracy,” followed closely by the economy, according to the NBC News exit polls.
Brianna Wu, a prominent transgender Democratic activist, told NBC News in an interview that the debate over trans rights has “radically shifted” in recent years.
Wu ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 2018 and 2020 and now hosts a podcast on trans perspectives called “Dollcast.”
“It has moved from a message that’s saying, ‘This is my body, this is how I feel most comfortable. Please, let me do this and move on with my life,’ to being able to self-ID into women’s locker rooms and women need to deal with seeing penises that are fully intact in front of them,” Wu said.
Wu thinks trans people need to make compromises on what the broader public is willing to accept regarding trans issues.
“Plenty of gay men put on khakis and went on daytime TV to make the argument that love is love,” she said. “And yeah, it’s a little embarrassing, but you do what you have to do to talk to normal people.”
