Sarah McBride.Photo:Dia Dipasupil/Getty
Dia Dipasupil/Getty
Delaware State Sen. Sarah McBride on Monday announced her run for the state’s only U.S. House seat — a campaign that, if successful, would make her the first transgender person in U.S. Congress.
In anannouncement video, the 32-year-old Democrat said her commitment “is to the people in Delaware who aren’t seen, who don’t shout the loudest or fund political campaigns. Parents busy raising their children, seniors worried about paying prescription drugs, and working people struggling to keep up. Everyone deserves a member of Congress who sees them and who respects them.”
In 2016, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention, receiving a standing ovation as the first openly transgender person to address a major party’s convention.
Speaking to PEOPLE in 2020, McBride said her tenure at the White Househelped cement her beliefin the importance of representation and “having a seat at the table.”
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“It reflects a deeper truth that the only way for us to craft solutions that meet the needs of a diverse community is to have the full diversity of that community at the table,” McBride said in the earlier interview. “That’s true in business. It’s true in technology. And it’s certainly true in government.”
Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told PEOPLE inan earlier interviewthat McBride is “smart, she’s a great public speaker and a great possibility model for young people. And she’s always cared about public service.”
McBride’s candidacy for Congress comes as transgender people and the greater LGBTQ+ community work to push back against laws in Republican legislatures that target everything from healthcare to education.
According to the ACLU, some491 anti-LGBTQ billsare now making their way through legislatures across the U.S. and target everything from which restrooms transgender people can use to how they can access medically-necessary health care, like Medicaid.
source: people.com
