During the Biden administration, Democrats have embraced the gender-identity movement on multiple fronts including transgender athletes in girls’ sports, puberty blockers and locker room access, and Republicans want to make sure voters know about it.
Ads linking Democrats, including Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, to the transgender agenda are running in battleground states as well as those with competitive congressional races, offering a real-time test of the issue’s potency with voters.
In Pennsylvania, for example, the Trump campaign is running an ad calling out Ms. Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded sex-change procedures for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and prison inmates, a stance she took in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
The ad titled “Nonsense” shows her in a 2019 interview saying that “surgery for prisoners … every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.”
“It’s hard to believe but it’s true. Even the liberal media was shocked that Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for inmates and illegal aliens,” says the ad. “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The ad also shows Ms. Harris posing alongside a drag queen at the White House, as well as photos of Biden Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender official to hold a Senate-confirmed post, and former Department of Energy official Sam Brinton, a gender-fluid activist who left the department after being charged in a series of airport-luggage thefts.
The Harris campaign has sought to deemphasize her previous positions without rebutting them, telling CNN that as president, she “will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common sense solutions for the sake of progress.”
Other pro-Republican campaign ads running in a host of states, including Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas, accuse Democratic candidates of undermining women and girls on the issue of transgender athletes in female scholastic sports.
In Texas, the Truth and Courage PAC, which backs Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, unveiled last weekend a $3 million ad buy blasting Rep. Colin Allred, Texas Democrat, for voting against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which passed the House last year with no Democratic votes.
“He stood with woke progressives and radical Democrats, not our daughters,” the ad says of Mr. Allred. “What kind of man does that?”
The ad, which is also airing in Spanish, ends with a shot of a man tackling a girl in a flag football game. The man’s jersey shows the name “Allred.”
The Allred for Senate campaign decried the campaign as a “disgusting, false attack, and another example of how Ted Cruz only wants to divide Texans.”
“He’ll say anything to distract from his dangerous abortion ban that is putting women’s lives at risk, trying to raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare and fleeing to Cancun during a deadly winter storm,” said Allred campaign spokesperson Josh Stewart.
🚨NEW AD🚨
— Truth and Courage PAC (@tandcpac) September 26, 2024
Colin Allred could have stopped men from competing in girls’ sports, but instead he voted against our daughters and stood with the radical left.
What kind of man does that? Colin Allred is too extreme for Texas. pic.twitter.com/MlwC2RKTOL
Not mentioned was the 2023 legislation, or Mr. Allred’s support for a 2023 resolution to create a Transgender Bill of Rights. The proposal calls for amending federal law to ensure that scholastic athletes may “participate in sports on teams and in programs that best align with their gender identity.”
In other words, Mr. Allred is on the record as a supporter of transgender athletes being able to participate in female sports. The question is whether the issue will resonate with voters.
Polls consistently show that Americans oppose transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s athletics, but the topic isn’t high on the electorate’s list of concerns, certainly not when compared with the economy, inflation, illegal immigration or crime.
“The rhetoric is truly alarming, and trans Texans have dealt with a lot. They don’t need their lives politicized,” Johnathan Gooch, communications director at the LGBTQ group Equality Texas, told the Texas Tribune. “I think most Texans care about their grocery bill more than they care about anything else.”
Even so, the subject has the potential to sway voters worried about political extremism, said Paul Dupont, spokesperson for the conservative American Principles Project.
“Democrats have shown a total unwillingness to moderate on anything transgender-related,” said Mr. Dupont in an email. “While Kamala Harris and Democrats have run ads pledging to cut taxes, hire more police, and crack down on illegal immigration (basically co-opting Republican positions on these issues), they have not moved to the center on transgender issues—and they cannot without angering their base.”
In June, for example, the Biden administration sought to walk back its previous support for transgender surgeries for minors, only to reverse course following an uproar from LGBTQ advocates.
“So as long as they are forced into taking an unpopular stance on this issue, Republicans should take advantage of that vulnerability,” said Mr. Dupont.
In Missouri, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is running an ad against his Democratic foe, Lucas Kunce, featuring Riley Gaines, the All-American swimmer who tied for fifth place with transgender athlete Lia Thomas at the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships.
“[Thomas] got the trophy a woman had earned. It’s wrong,” said Ms. Gaines in the ad. “Lucas Kunce supports the radical trans agenda.”
The Washington Times has reached out to the Kunce campaign for comment.
In Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund PAC ran an ad against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown featuring an Ohio man talking about how his granddaughters have “worked hard to excel at sports.”
“It’s tough enough, so the idea that Sherrod Brown voted to allow transgender biological men to compete in girls’ sports?” said the man, identified as Scott F. of Concord. “It’s unfair and dangerous.”
Mr. Brown is running for reelection in a tight race against Republican Bernie Moreno.
The ad touched off a battle between the Senate PAC and WKYC-TV in Cleveland, which ran a fact-check dubbing the ad “false” despite acknowledging that Mr. Brown voted against an amendment to the American Rescue Plan barring transgender athletes from competing in girl’s and women’s scholastic sports.
The Brown campaign said in a statement that Mr. Moreno “has been caught lying on the campaign trail,” while a Senate Leadership Fund told Fox News it was never contacted by the station, calling the lapse “unethical.”
Ads blasting Democrats on the subject of transgender athletes are also running in House races in New Mexico and Texas.
The right-tilting Independent Women’s Voice clearly thinks the issue has legs. The organization launched on Sept. 18 the Riley Gaines Stand With Women Scorecard, a candidate-ranking system based on their positions on the single-sex sports issue.
“The Riley Gaines Stand With Women Scorecard provides needed accountability and measures the degree to which candidates and elected officials will fight against erasing the realities of women and girls,” said IWV CEO Heather Higgins. “It is time Americans have this information.”
Those receiving a green “RG Approved” sticker included former President Donald Trump, while Vice President Kamala Harris was given a red “X.”
“Every American deserves to know who stands with women, and who does not,” said Ms. Gaines on the website.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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