Sarah McBride doesn’t want to be known for making history

Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, the front-runner in a three-way Democratic primary race to succeed outgoing U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), would make history if elected as the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress. But that isn’t what she wants to be known for.

“My hope is that we get to a world where it’s no longer newsworthy that people like me are in politics or get elected to public office,” McBride, 33, told The Hill in a recent interview.

McBride as a state senator co-sponsored successful legislation to expand mental health care resources in Delaware public schools, significantly reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and bolster gun control laws. She spearheaded an effort to create a statewide paid medical and family leave program during last year’s legislative session, drawing on her experience as a caregiver to her late husband Andrew Cray, who died of oral cancer in 2014.

“Sarah has lived very profound and sad experiences, and I think that helps her understand what so many other people go through — she’s very empathetic,” said Delaware Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, who has endorsed McBride in the race for the state’s at-large congressional district.

“I think politics is her way of effectuating her values and her commitment to people on a personal level,” he said.

Townsend said McBride’s gender identity, which has earned her national attention, is not top of mind for her colleagues or constituents back home.

“So many people focus on the sort of celebrity aspect of what Sarah brings to the table, but to know that there she is thinking about a very local constituent services issue or a Delaware-specific legislative issue, that’s really the hidden gem,” he said.

McBride is also something of a peacemaker in the state Legislature, and she has brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass landmark legislation. 

In June, McBride led a successful effort to repeal the state’s transgender “panic defense,” a legal defense seeking to excuse crimes such as murder and assault against transgender people. All six Republican senators signed on as co-sponsors.

“I do believe that my Republican colleagues have increasingly been able to see me as the multidimensional human being that I am — that we all are,” McBride said. “What that moment reflects is so much more than a single policy that was being passed. What that moment reflects is my Republican colleagues seeing very clearly that the issue of LGBTQ rights that we’re debating in that moment was not some abstract issue, but rather an issue that touched and impacted a person they knew.”

McBride said she’s had similar experiences with constituents in all three Delaware counties.

“While I’m confident that our voters are fair-minded and judge candidates based on their ideas, not their identities, you run like you’re 5 points behind; you take nothing for granted,” she said.

“We’re trying to do something that’s never been done in history before,” she added. “And there’s a reason for that: It’s because it’s hard.”

“I’m not naive to the challenges, but I’m running because at a certain point we have to run into the fire; we’ve got to elect folks who know how to roll up their sleeves, dive into the details, work with people who might disagree with them on every other issue with the one right before them, and actually deliver results,” she said.

McBride came out publicly as transgender at age 21, while entering her senior year at American University in Washington, where she studied political science. She previously served on the board of directors of Equality Delaware, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, and was a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ civil rights group.

McBride as a teenager worked on Delaware campaigns for former Democratic Gov. Jack Markell and the late state Attorney General Beau Biden (D), President Biden’s eldest son. She published her memoir, “Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality,” in 2018, with a foreword from President Biden.

McBride, who in 2020 became the nation’s first openly transgender state senator, launched her bid for Delaware’s sole House seat in June, raking in upwards of $414,000 in the first five days.

A September poll showed McBride leading her primary opponents, Delaware State Housing Authority Director Eugene Young and state Treasurer Colleen Davis, by a large margin.

This story was updated at 11:07 a.m.