Ashley Brundage, a transgender woman running for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives, is looking forward to shaking Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand.
Brundage, a Democrat, credits DeSantis, a Republican, for inspiring what could be political history: If she wins, she’d be the first trans woman elected to public office in Florida. Brundage said she hopes DeSantis — who has made anti-LGBTQ education and health care bills a cornerstone of his second term in the governor’s office — attends her would-be swearing-in ceremony and comes face-to-face with one of the Floridians whose lives have become increasingly scrutinized under his watch.
“Making up all kinds of culture war bills, having bills literally drafted to try and eliminate me from society, I think, is a waste of time, resources and money from the state of Florida,” Brundage said.
NBC News spoke with seven transgender candidates who are running for seats in state legislatures nationwide about what they hope to accomplish if they are elected. They listed a variety of policy issues that motivated them to run for office — from affordable housing to climate change. Nearly all said they were inspired or felt pushed to run because of the wave of anti-LGBTQ bills proposed and passed by state lawmakers in the chambers they’re seeking to join.
“The transgender community has been targeted and has been under attack, and that has been concerted attacks going back a number of years now. And when any community is under attack, it is important that individuals from that community speak up and be in leadership positions responding to the attacks,” said Lisa Middleton, a Democratic candidate for the California Senate.
A steady rise
At least 18 out trans candidates are running for seats in state legislatures this election cycle, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a super PAC focused on electing LGBTQ candidates. They are running against a national political backdrop in which trans people have come to play an outsized role.
At the state level, 75 anti-LGBTQ bills became law last year, and 21 of them specifically targeted trans people and their ability to receive gender-affirming care or play on sports teams that align with their identities.
On the national stage, former President Donald Trump has spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising that negatively portrays or ostracizes trans people and their allies, even though trans health care and participation in sports don’t rank in the top 10 issues driving voters to the polls for either party, according to a survey Pew Research released last month.
Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science focused on LGBTQ politics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said that while trans issues rank low for voters compared with immigration or the economy, they can be “a successful way to mobilize a small but potentially important sector of the electorate.”
Trump himself said last year that when he brings up transgender issues at rallies, “everyone goes crazy.”
But Magni said there’s also a monetary incentive to focus on such issues.
“Every time that a new anti-trans bill was introduced at the state level, almost always the day after there would be a fundraising email that this was done to protect children and girls in school and so on,” he said.
Trans candidates’ presence on ballots has only continued to rise since 2017, when Virginia’s Danica Roem became the first out trans person elected to a state legislature. Roem, who is now a state senator, is one of at least eight transgender lawmakers in state legislatures, according to research from the LGBTQ Victory Institute.
“I haven’t talked to one trans person running for state legislature who hasn’t said that [Roem] was an inspiration to them to step forward to fight for their community. Now that’s being coupled by Sarah McBride,” said Sean Meloy, vice president of political programs at the Victory Fund. McBride is expected to make history as the first trans member of Congress after having served two terms in the Delaware Senate.
‘Bread-and-butter issues’
For Roem, a former journalist, local traffic congestion was a central campaign issue despite national attention on her gender identity. The story is similar for many of this year’s candidates who disagree with bills targeting LGBTQ people but also care deeply about an array of other issues.
Most of the candidates had been involved in civic engagement or local politics to some extent before they ran for office, giving them portfolios of other issues to fuel their political futures. Nathan Bruemmer, a Democrat who would be the first trans man in the Florida Legislature if he is elected, was previously appointed as the LGBTQ consumer advocate for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Middleton has spent her entire adult life working in local government, most recently as mayor and City Council member in Palm Springs.
“That credibility that I have built up on any number of basic bread-and-butter issues of local government has served me well when it comes time to talk about issues that are specific to the LGBT and to the transgender community,” said Middleton, whose campaign website lists abortion care, rebuilding public infrastructure and increasing funding for local police and firefighters as top issues.
Brundage is clear that her campaign “isn’t about LGBTQ rights at all.”
“Being trans literally has almost nothing to do with my run for political office. If anything, it’s just one piece of my identity,” she said. “My campaign is about addressing the property insurance crisis, which is only exorbitantly worse because of the storms that we’ve been facing here in the Tampa Bay area.”
In Hawaii, Kim Coco Iwamoto, who is already a representative-elect given that she doesn’t have a challenger, is particularly concerned with the rates of homelessness in her state.
Veronica Pejril, a candidate for the Indiana Senate, lists “healthcare freedoms” as the first priority on her campaign website. Pejril made history in 2019 by becoming the first openly trans elected official in Indiana after she won a seat on the Greencastle City Council.
Wick Thomas, a librarian and candidate for the Missouri House, is especially concerned about right-wing attempts to censor or ban books from school libraries, especially those including material about LGBTQ people.
“The anti-trans laws and the anti-library laws go hand in hand. If you are trying to push a singular narrative, then it’s dangerous for a library to have multiple points of view,” Thomas said.
Transphobia on the campaign trail
Iwamoto, who has run for local office several times over the past two decades, said she has experienced almost no animosity in her liberal state for being a trans woman of color on the campaign trail. She did, however, recall an instance during the height of the pandemic when someone left her a transphobic voicemail. She said she called back, pretending not to have heard it, to check whether the caller needed any support.
“We ended up speaking, and then at the end of it he said, ‘You know, I’m glad you didn’t hear the voicemail message, because it was very hostile, but now I would actually vote for you,’” Iwamoto recalled the man saying.
None of the candidates who spoke to NBC News said confrontations like those dampened their political ambitions.
Thomas, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, added that most of the vitriol they’ve received has been online from people they don’t believe live in the state. Thomas said that they don’t “tend to lead” with their gender identity but that they noticed an uptick in the number of hate comments on their social media accounts after they were recognized by Gun Sense, a branch of Everytown for Gun Safety that singles out candidates who have vowed to govern in favor of stronger gun regulations.
Pejril said she has experienced verbal attacks in person. She said she has knocked on the doors of people in her state who have said things like: “I know who you are. I know what you are.”
“The fact of the matter is I need to exist. It’s not going to stop me from being who I am and living my most authentic self,” Pejril said of such interactions. “I keep going back to it, but our Pledge of Allegiance says, ‘Liberty and justice for all.’ And it’s a promise that, frankly, is unfulfilled for so many.”