WASHINGTON— Democrats in red states are distancing from far-left transgender ideology, and their longtime gender-bending allies aren’t happy.
The LGBTQ groups that once had a death grip on the Democratic Party, donating heavily to candidates and crafting policy, are now lashing out as Democratic candidates move against them. Democrats in competitive races from Iowa to Alaska to Ohio have released a series of ads supporting keeping men out of women’s sports and bathrooms in recent weeks.
“I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools,” said Democrat Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur in a September campaign commercial responding to attacks from Republicans about past votes to enable men in women’s sports. “And boys should not play in girls’ sports.”
That ad drew heavy fire from Democrat and LGBTQ groups.
“There is no difference between whether Marcy Kaptur or Derek Merrin serves as our next Congressperson — you are both united against the LGBTQIA+ community,” the LGBTQ group Lucas County Stonewall Democrats wrote in a public letter to her.
And Equality PAC, which is the fundraising arm of the Congressional Equality Caucus, condemned her for the language in her ad and said it would “absolutely not” support her for her “weaponized language.”
“In terms of personal comfort, I’m trans, and I would have trouble voting for a candidate calling me a biological man,” communications strategist Ari Drennen, a man who identifies as a woman, told the Washington Post. “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.”
Iowa Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott similarly is adopting Republican stances on parental rights and transgenderism, saying in a new ad: “I oppose letting men in women’s locker rooms and voted to let parents, not politicians, make decisions for their kids.”
Candidates like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden fully embraced the LGBTQ+ activist strategy, but the 2024 elections proved that their stances are now deeply unpopular with the public: the latest polls show that most Americans are against men in women’s sports and oppose taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries.
Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In the meantime, Republicans continue to contrast the extreme Democrat positions on transgenderism.
White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster reminded The Daily Wire that the president has called out “the radical Left’s obsession with pushing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries for children as insanity since Day One.”
“President Trump’s agenda is rooted not only in common sense, but in safety and biology,” she said. “The overwhelming majority of Americans are glad that the Trump administration has restored Gold Standard Science as the guiding principle of health policymaking over the Democrats’ radical and financially-motivated ideology.”
“Running cleanup ads to scrub their woke records will never change the fact that they traded girls’ safety for applause from men in dresses,” Natalie Baldassarre, the RNC National Press Secretary, told The Daily Wire.
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