Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride is running to become the first transgender member of Congress.
McBride, 32, a two-term state senator who is the nation’s most senior trans lawmaker, on Monday announced her bid for the open seat as the state’s at-large member of the House of Representatives.
“For our democracy to work, it needs to include all of us,” McBride tweeted. “If elected, I’ll be the first openly trans member in Congress.”
McBride said a victory in the race to succeed Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who is running for U.S. Senate, would represent a powerful rebuke to far right-wing Republicans who have “tried to use the LGBTQ community as a scapegoat for their policy failures.”
“Diversity in government is necessary for us to not just ensure we have a healthy democracy but also to truly deliver for people,” she said in an interview with The News Journal of Wilmington.
McBride is considered a front-runner for the Democratic nomination, which would put her in the driver’s seat to win the seat in the deep-blue state.
Rochester, who has held the seat since 2017, is running to replace Sen. Tom Carper, who is retiring. All are Democrats and are considered staunch allies of President Biden, the most powerful figure in the state for decades.
McBride has deep roots in Delaware Democratic politics and has long been eyed as a rare political talent. Biden wrote a forward for her book about coming out as trans as a college senior.
Despite hoping to make history, McBride prefers to stress her conventional can-do political chops.
She doesn’t even mention her transgender identity in a two-minute campaign launch video that boasts about her constituent service and her role in pushing to enact paid family leave measure in Delaware.
It was the same story in 2020 when she won her historic race for state Senate as “a senator who happens to be transgender.”
