Sarah McBride wins open Delaware seat to become first transgender person in Congress, CNN projects

CNN
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Sarah McBride, a Delaware state senator, will win her state’s at-large seat in the U.S. House, making her the first transgender person to serve in Congress, CNN projects.

The at-large seat was vacated when outgoing Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester chose to run for the state’s open US Senate seat.

Despite running in a reliably blue state, McBride emphasized her work that led to a bipartisan push to pass paid family and medical leave in the state. She also touted support from unions and work to raise the state’s minimum wage. While she didn’t dwell on the historic nature of her race, she alluded to a broader theme of respect — specifically, that everyone deserves a member of Congress who respects them and their families.

The congresswoman-to-be is a close ally of President Joe Biden and has been credited with helping to shape Biden’s views on LGBTQ issues. McBride entered Biden’s orbit in 2006 when she worked for the late Beau Biden’s attorney general campaign. Beau Biden was also a strong supporter of the 2013 transgender protection legislation that McBride championed in Delaware.

The president wrote the foreword to McBride’s 2018 memoir “Tomorrow Will Be Different.” The book details McBride’s experiences as a transgender rights activist and her personal story, including meeting her late husband Andrew Cray, whom she met at a White House LGBTQ pride event in 2012. Cray, a transgender man and fellow activist, died of cancer in 2014 just days after the two got married.

McBride, a former spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group, has been making history throughout her public life. In 2012, as senior and student body president at American University, she made national news when she announced she was transgender in an op-ed in the school newspaper.

At the time, McBride wrote about her concerns that her gender identity would not be compatible with her goal of running for office.

“I now know that my dreams and my identity are only mutually exclusive if I don’t try,” she wrote.

Four years later, McBride became the first transgender person to address a national party convention when she spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

And in 2020, McBride became the first transgender person elected to serve in a state Senate when she was elected to represent a seat in Northern Delaware.