U.S. elections 2024: Sarah McBride to be country’s first transgender member of Congress

transgender member of US Congress

In a first this U.S. election, Sarah McBride becomes the first transgender member at the Congress – securing the opportunity to represent Delaware. She defeated her rival James Whalen III, a former police officer whose campaign was centred around curbing federal spending and averting illegal immigration.

“Delaware has sent the message loud and clear that we must be a country that protects reproductive freedom, that guarantees paid leave and affordable childcare for all our families, that ensures that housing and healthcare would be available to everyone and that this is a democracy that is big enough for all of us,” she wrote on social media platform ‘X’.  

The incoming Congressperson came out about her identity when she was running for the student body president at American University in Washington D.C.

“At the time, I was scared. I worried that my dreams and my identity were mutually exclusive,” she recalled in a 2016 convention. However, at the expiry of her tenure at the same university in 2012, she wrote in an editorial of the university’s publication, “For my entire life, I have wrestled with my gender identity. It was only after the experiences of this year that I was able to come to terms with what had been my deepest secret: I’m transgender”.  

Later in 2020, the 90s-born Ms. McBride would go on to pursue her political career, becoming the first openly transperson to serve as a state senator.

“It really felt like America was blazing a path to the future. But since then, the far-right has tried to use the LGBTQ community as a scapegoat for their policy failures,” she wrote on ‘X’ recently.  

The incoming Congressperson, who has been into community advocacy, borrows an experience from having worked with former Governor Jack Markell, the late Attorney General Beau Biden, and as a White House intern during the Obama Administration. She has also served as the spokesperson for Human Rights Campaign – United States’ largest LGBTQ equal rights organisation.