Sarah McBride was elected to the Delaware State Senate on Tuesday night, making her the first openly transgender state senator in the history of the United States. Set against a yet-to-be-determined presidential-election backdrop Tuesday night, her win marks history in a down-ballot race.
McBride ran on a classic progressive platform: expanded paid leave, affordable healthcare, and criminal justice reform. Her husband, Andy, died of cancer shortly after they married in 2014, making healthcare a particularly personal issue for her. But she’s no political novice. A 30-year-old Delaware native, she spent her teens and early twenties working on campaigns for former state attorney general Beau Biden and former governor Jack Markell. “My hope is that this result can help reinforce for a young kid trying to find their place in this world,” she told the New York Times in September, “here in Delaware or anywhere else in this country, that this democracy is big enough for them, too.”
Delaware, which produced Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and skews blue in national elections, is indeed decidedly liberal. But the state’s politics run much redder to the south, and the state senate’s conservatism reflects that reality. Christine O’Donnell took a considerable swipe at the state’s liberal leanings in 2010, when she ran a competitive race for a Senate seat against Chris Coons, who eventually won. I grew up in Delaware; my mother’s best friend, Margo Woodacre, served as a state senator there in the late ’80s. I think often of a story she told me growing up: on her first day in office, a male fellow senator told her, “Senator Woodacre—skirt too long.” (She replied: “Senator [Name], socks too short.”)
But McBride’s win stands out. I grew up with Sarah in Wilmington, playing with dolls and other toys at her house. My family eventually moved across the country and I lost track of Sarah, but learned in July 2019 that Sarah had come out as trans and was planning on running for office. I’d missed quite a lot, it turns out: she’d worked on several campaigns, including Beau Biden’s campaign for state attorney general; interned with President Barack Obama in 2012, marking the first time a transgender woman worked at the White House; and she led lobbying efforts for transgender rights in Delaware. In 2016, she became the first transgender woman to speak at a national party convention when she gave an address at the Democratic National Convention. Most recently, prior to her campaign, she had served as press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign.
While election-night results continue to trickle in across the country—and with a presidential election yet to be called—McBride has already made quite a bit of history.