For years, Democrats won elections by portraying Republicans as cruel to transgender people. In 2016, North Carolina Republicans passed a law restricting bathroom use by biological sex, and the boycotts that followed cost the state $3.8 billion in lost business over a dozen years. PayPal scrapped a facility that would have added an estimated $2.66 billion to the state’s economy. The NBA moved its All-Star Game out of Charlotte. That November, Governor Pat McCrory became the first sitting North Carolina governor to lose reelection, “weighed down by a law he signed limiting LGBT rights,” according to AP. In April 2016, Trump said Caitlyn Jenner could use any bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower and advised North Carolina to “leave it the way it is.” When Trump tweeted in July 2017 that transgender people could not serve in the military, voters told pollsters, 68% to 27%, that they should be allowed to serve.
Republican criticisms of transgenderism didn’t work. In 2020, the American Principles Project spent $4 million on transgender-themed ads against Biden in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all of which Biden carried. Republicans and allied groups spent at least $50 million on ads about transgender children across at least 25 states in 2022, and Democrats concluded the ads had flopped. Third Way noted that the Democratic governors of Kansas, Michigan and Maine had all beaten challengers who ran them, and wrote that “attacking transgender kids isn’t the political win some on the right seem to think it is.” The next year, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear vetoed a ban on transgender medicine for minors, faced Republican Daniel Cameron’s charge that he and his allies “believe kids should have access to sex change surgery and drugs,” and won reelection by five points.
This year, Republicans view transgenderism as such a winning issue for them that they’ve made it a centerpiece of their closing argument for the midterms.
But the fact that transgenderism is prioritized at the same level as prices and the border in a Republican closing argument marks a 180-degree reversal from a few years ago. As a state representative, Talarico voted against Republican bills restricting transgender athletes. In 2021, Talarico said, “God is non-binary.” Then, in early September, he said, “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness,” and answered “Absolutely” when asked whether he would support a national ban on gender surgery for minors. He added, “I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements. There are not six sexes. There are two.” Paxton’s campaign sensed that it was too little too late and pounced. “James Talarico voted against TWO bills that would have prevented men from playing in women’s sports,” said Paxton. “He also called it a ‘far-right conspiracy theory.’ This is just the latest episode in James Talarico’s long saga of lies and flip-flops.”
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