Sarah McBride becomes the first transgender person elected to Congress

WILMINGTON, Del. — Sen. Sarah McBride of Delaware won the state’s only House seat Tuesday, NBC News projects, making her the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.

McBride, a Democrat, defeated Republican John Whalen III, receiving 57.6% of the vote with 63% of the vote.

McBride’s key priorities for her congressional run expanded access to affordable health care, protected reproductive rights, and raised the minimum wage. She told NBC News in September that her goal in Congress was to work with colleagues to break through the partisan impasse and actually pass legislation — which she became known for during her time in the Delaware Senate. In her first term, she helped to pass universal paid family and sick leave across the state.

Jake Carpenter, 42, who works in finance for a college near Lincoln, Delaware, said he met McBride at a meeting in August when he asked her, “What have you promised and how have you delivered ?” She walked him through the policies she worked on in the state Senate, and “she won me over,” he said.

“I knew she was trans, and being gay myself, I wanted to see someone like me, part of my community, succeed,” Carpenter said. “She’s like a hero to me.”

He knocked on dozens of doors in Sussex County, the only majority Republican county in the state, to talk to people about McBride’s platform. He said he persuaded six Republicans to vote for McBride.

He added that he is an advisor to an LGBTQ club at the college he works for and that “for my trans students, this is a really big deal.”

Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, described McBride’s victory as “a landmark achievement in the march toward equality.”

“This historic victory reflects not only growing acceptance of transgender people in our community, heralded by the courage of visible leaders like Sarah, but also her tenacious work to demonstrate that she is an effective legislator who will deliver real results,” Robinson said in a statement adding that HRC is proud to see McBride, who was previously the organization’s national press secretary, “reshaping the halls of Congress.”

McBride is no stranger to making history. She initially made headlines in April 2012 when she came out as trans in American University’s student newspaper at the end of her tenure as student union president.

That same year, she became the first trans woman to work in the White House when she interned with the Obama administration, according to her 2018 memoir, “Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality.”

So in 2016, she became the first transgender person to speak at a major political rally when she gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention.

In 2020, she was elected to represent Delaware’s 1st Senate District, which includes Claymont, Bellefonte, and parts of Edgemoor and Wilmington, becoming the nation’s first openly trans state senator.

McBride became interested in politics from a young age. By the time she was 18, she had volunteered or worked on at least three political campaigns, including Beau Biden’s 2006 campaign for attorney general and his 2010 re-election campaign. Nearly a decade later, Joe Biden wrote the foreword to her memoir.

McBride said that as she voted Tuesday, she reflected on how powerful it was to vote for Kamala Harris for president; Lisa Blunt Rochester, who won his senate race and will become the first woman and the first black person to represent Delaware in the Senate; and then himself.

“That ticket is not an ultimate destination, but it is a reflection of how far we have come, that no matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from or the gender you identify with, you can live your truth and dream big dreams at the same time,” McBride said. “It’s not the end, but it’s the beginning.”

McBride’s historic victory comes during an election cycle in which Republicans have leaned on anti-transgender rhetoric and political ads. The GOP spent more than $200 million on network television ads targeting transgender people this year, according to data shared with NBC News Tuesday by AdImpact, a research firm that tracks political ad spending. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have embraced anti-trans rhetoric on the campaign trail, and during the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers mentioned gender or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis.