As the world anxiously awaited the first results of the 2020 U.S. election last November, Sarah McBride, too, was refreshing the results page of Delaware’s Department of Elections. After an inspired state senatorial campaign that brought her closer to the community that helped raise her, McBride knew that she was on the cusp of an historic feat.
Having spent the day visiting polling places across Delaware’s First District, McBride was heading to a small gathering with family and friends when the final polls began to close across her state. Some 20 minutes later, the first results were in.
With absentee ballots accounting for a third of all votes in Delaware, McBride jumped to an early lead against Republican Steve Washington, and it quickly became clear that her advantage was already insurmountable. Within a matter of minutes, the Associated Press called McBride’s race, making her the highest-ranking openly trans official in the U.S. She also received an immediate phone call from Virginia delegate Danica Roem—the first openly transgender person to serve in any state legislature.
“A trailblazer who recognizes that first doesn’t matter if you’re also the last, Danica had done so much to support me and other trans candidates in our elections to pay it forward,” McBride tells Xtra over Zoom during one of the busy first weeks of her new term. “It was so fitting that the first person I heard from after realizing that I was going to win was one of the people whose shoulders I am able to stand on.”
Now just two months into her new job, McBride is certain that she can effect meaningful change for communities so often overlooked—making Delaware a better place not only for LGBTQ2S+ people but for all of its residents.
Born to progressive, upper-middle-class parents, McBride’s love for politics stemmed from an early fascination with the White House—not necessarily the people that lived and worked there, but rather the design and architecture of the building itself. In the process, McBride discovered a “deep love for history,” where she first encountered the work of assiduous activists, courageous citizens and elected officials who fought to expand equity and justice for people “on the margins of society.”
“I found that politics was the place in those history books where you could make the most amount of change for the most number of people. I hoped that perhaps I could make more space for people to live their lives more freely and fully, including people like me,” she explains. “I thought, even if I never mustered the courage to live authentically, perhaps making that [political] change might bring me the fulfillment and heal the pain that I thought about every single day of my life.”
In her early teenage years, McBride became heavily involved in statewide politics, first as a volunteer for her father’s colleague, Matt Denn, during his successful run for Delaware insurance commissioner in 2004. She later co-founded a statewide high-school young Democrats organization and worked for the campaigns of former governor Jack Markell in 2008 and Attorney General Beau Biden—the late son of President Joe Biden—in 2010.
“I thought, even if I never mustered the courage to live authentically, perhaps making political change might heal the pain that I thought about every day.”
Still struggling to come to terms with her gender identity, McBride chose to study at American University’s School of Public Affairs, where she was also elected student body president in her junior year. It was around then that she began to feel more pressure to come out, even if she feared that her identity and her dreams were mutually exclusive. She confided in a friend before telling her parents on Christmas Day in 2011. Five months later, as the outgoing student body president, McBride penned a moving op-ed titled “The Real Me” in the school newspaper in which she came out as trans. “Today is the next day of the life I’ve already had, but at the same time, the first day of the life I always knew I wanted to lead,” she wrote. Much to her surprise, McBride was met with an overwhelmingly positive response from family and friends—a luxury that she knows far too many trans and queer people do not have.
“Through every single challenge I’ve faced, I’ve been reminded of the luck and privilege that I have. I could see very clearly that if you took away any one of the layers of privilege or support that I had, I might not have been able to make it through those challenges,” McBride says. “That recognition instilled a deep sense of responsibility to make sure that the support and acceptance that I’ve been able to experience are no longer a privilege but a right that is guaranteed for everyone.”
After coming out, McBride interned at the Victory Fund, an LGBTQ2S+ electoral organization, before joining the Obama-Biden administration as the first openly trans female White House intern in August 2012. It was at a White House event that she met Andrew Cray, a trans man and LGBTQ2S+ health care activist. Over the course of the next year, the two began dating, even as McBride temporarily moved back to Delaware to help pass bills in the state.
In 2013, McBride joined the board of directors of Equality Delaware and was instrumental in the passing of the state’s Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act. In front of the General Assembly, McBride described her personal struggles with gender identity and the urgent need for equal legal protections for all trans Delawareans. The legislation, signed into law by Governor Markell, bans the discrimination against a person on the basis of gender identity in areas such as housing and employment.
Soon thereafter, McBride moved back to D.C. to work alongside Cray at the Center for American Progress before Cray was diagnosed with cancer. In a difficult year-long battle, McBride acted as Cray’s primary caregiver. When they discovered that his cancer was terminal, the couple decided to get married on a D.C. rooftop. He would pass away four days later.
After losing Cray, McBride admits that returning to the work that had brought her and her late husband together ultimately made her feel closer to him. She made history at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, becoming the first trans person to speak at a national political convention. “Knowing Andy left me profoundly changed, but more than anything else, his passing taught me that every day matters when it comes to building a world where every person can live their life to the fullest,” she declared in her speech.
“Will we be a nation where there’s only one way to love, only one way to look and only one way to live? Or will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally—a nation that’s stronger together? That is the question in this election.”
“I had seen firsthand that politics, at its best, is the art of transforming impossibility into possibility.”
Three years later, after writing a critically acclaimed memoir and working as the National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, McBride saw an opportunity to rewrite another chapter of the history books. After long-serving Democratic state senator Harris McDowell III decided not to run for re-election, McBride announced her candidacy in July 2019.
While her timing could not have been any better, McBride genuinely felt that she could make legitimate change as a state senator on issues that are often overlooked at higher levels of government. “I ran because I saw in my advocacy work that state legislatures are the place where the rubber meets the road on policy, where most of the issues that matter to us on a daily basis are handled,” she says. “As an advocate, I had seen firsthand that politics, at its best, is not the art of the possible but the art of transforming impossibility into possibility, into reality. We do have the individual and collective capacity to bring about seemingly impossible change, and I became even more hopeful that we could do that.”
In the last 12 months, Delaware—like the rest of the nation—has been forced to navigate the devastating economic and political fallout of a pandemic that has now killed more than 500,000 Americans. With Biden’s victory last fall, the president’s home state has now backed the Democratic candidate for president in the last eight election cycles. During that time, Democrats have generally controlled the small state’s governor’s office and both chambers of the state legislature.
In the process of working on his two political campaigns in Delaware, McBride grew closer with Attorney General Beau Biden, whom she describes as a “kind, decent and compassionate” man who “was the real deal,” and his father. When Beau died from brain cancer in 2015, McBride—who was already considered an honorary Biden—and Joe were united in their grief. Given the close-knit relationship that the family shares, McBride feels that President Biden’s long-standing support for LGBTQ2S+ equality is deeply rooted “in his own passion and empathy, but also in his commitment to carrying on part of Beau’s legacy” and support for the community.
“I knew that Joe Biden would be the most pro-equality president we’ve ever seen, and he’s already living up to that expectation,” she says, referring to the reversal of the trans military ban just days into his presidency. “To have the president and vice-president [Kamala Harris], so early on in their term, very clearly do the necessary work of restoring protections and of laying the foundation for ongoing progress came with a huge sense of relief. There is still significant work to do, though.”
A key part of that work includes the passing of the Equality Act, which would amend the 1964 Civil Rights act and officially ban discrimination against people based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The bill, which is headed to the Senate after it passed through the House of Representatives on Feb. 25, will also expand existing protections from housing and employment to public accommodations and access to credit.
“I am hopeful that Joe Biden will be the president who signs the Equality Act into law to afford clearer protections from discrimination in daily life to the entire LGBTQ2S+ community in every corner of our country,” McBride says. “That is an urgent need for the LGBTQ2S+ community; it is an urgent need for our country.”
But McBride’s own work will tackle issues at the state level, where she can make incremental but more immediate change for vulnerable communities. Now in the second month of her first term, McBride is looking to tackle Delaware’s multiple concurrent crises. Her first courses of action: Distributing COVID-19 vaccines using a “science and data-driven” approach, making health care more accessible and fostering a more equitable education system.
The new state senator is also focusing on making paid and medical leave a reality for all Delaware workers—an issue most recently brought to the forefront due to COVID-19. “As we’ve seen during this pandemic, no one should have to give up their income in the face of illness,” she says. “We’ve also got to make health care more available for Delawareans, regardless of their ability to pay.”
Since last November, McBride has recognized the enormous responsibility that comes with being among the first—but certainly not the last—trans person to break the glass ceiling in American politics. With the significant increase in LGBTQ2S+ legislators in the last four years (and a record number elected last November), McBride hopes to see more elected officials “that reflect the full diversity of those communities,” including more disabled people, non-binary people and trans people of colour.
McBride hopes her legacy will not hinge simply on the symbolic nature of her election. “The most notable thing about me and my tenure in office is not my identity, but [rather] the bills that I pass, the legislation that I advance, the issues I fight for and the change that I help bring to Delawareans,” she says.
“I said from the start that I wasn’t running to be the [first] transgender state senator; I was running to be the health care and the paid leave state senator, and that continues to be my focus as a state senator and as the chair of the Senate health and social services committee. I know that the only way I can do justice by the LGBTQ2S+ community is to do the best possible job for the residents of my district.”
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