Sarah McBride has won her election in Delaware to be sworn in January 3 as the first openly transgender member of Congress in U.S. history. She will become the highest-ranking trans public official nationwide and the first openly trans person elected to any federal office.
She did the same in January 2021 when she became the country’s first openly transgender state senator. (There are a few others now.) She’s achieved other firsts in her career: the first openly trans person to work at the White House when she interned for the Obama administration starting in 2012 and the first openly trans person to ever speak at a major party’s national convention when she spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
At the age of just 34, she is the youngest elected official Delaware has sent to Washington since Joe Biden—a friend of McBride’s—in 1972.
McBride is one of over 130 transgender, nonbinary, gender non-conforming, and Two-Spirit running for office this year, according to a report from the Victory Fund.
McBride easily won her election by 15 points in a heavily Democratic area against political newcomer Republican John Walen. Her victory is cause for celebration in an election dominated by anti-trans rhetoric and ads.
“Delaware has sent the message loud and clear that we must be a country that protects reproductive freedom, that guarantees paid leave and affordable child care for all our families, that ensures that housing and health care are available to everyone and that this is a democracy that is big enough for all of us,” McBride wrote on her social media channels when claiming victory as the Associated Press called the race.
