In Ohio, a longtime Democratic congresswoman in a tough race, Marcy Kaptur, is running an ad in which she says she thinks “boys should not play in girls’ sports” and that she is focused on “making your life more affordable.” In North Carolina, a vulnerable Democratic congressman, Don Davis, has released a commercial that shows him stalking a football field and saying that there are “real concerns about fairness and safety” in youth sports and that there “should always be a safe and fair space for women and girls in sports.”
And in several of the country’s most competitive congressional battlegrounds, a leading progressive super PAC is running ads describing Republicans as “obsessed” with transgender people and distracted from rising prices. As the midterm election approaches, some Democrats in battleground races are moving to respond to Republican attacks casting them as extreme on transgender issues. In some cases, Democrats have reacted by accusing Republicans of being out of touch with voters’ economic concerns, or desperate to change the subject.
In others, Democrats have voiced their opposition to transgender female athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports. At times, their opposition has drawn criticism from other Democrats. The strategies show how the party has shifted on the issue since the last nationwide election — a pivot that has played out in various ways since early 2025, when Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat from deep-blue California considering a run for president, suggested that the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.”
Democrats remain divided on the issue. Many of the party’s candidates are wary of either angering the base by taking a position that would limit transgender rights, or taking a position at odds with most voters, who polls show overwhelmingly agree with Republicans on the issue of transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports. But a number of Democrats are trying to actively parry Republican attacks, which haunted them in 2024, when Kamala Harris largely elected not to address a torrent of ads from Donald J. Trump that declared: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Democratic strategists judged the ads to have been highly effective. In the midterms, Republicans have again put the issue at the center of their message, part of a broader effort to cast Democrats as outside the mainstream.
This time, Democrats are not letting the attacks go unanswered. “For the first time ever, Democrats are strongly on offense on this,” said Christina Freundlich, a Democratic strategist. Republicans are still directing far more attention and resources to the issue. Ad Impact said it had observed more than eight times as much Republican spending as Democratic spending on midterm ads focused on L.G.B.T.Q. and transgender issues. But a CNN poll last month found that “policies regarding gender identity and trans people” did not make the top 10 issues most important to voters. A Supreme Court decision in July upholding restrictions on transgender female athletes prompted celebratory statements from Republicans, but scant expressions of disappointment from leading Democrats.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing