DOVER, Del. (AP) – It was her final day in session as a Delaware state senator, and Sarah McBride sat in her miniature office in the state Capitol, preparing parting remarks.
She made history here as the country’s first openly transgender senator. Now she made history again and was recently elected as the first openly transgender member of Congress.
Her political rise came during a battle over transgender rights, as legislation in Republican-controlled states across the country aims to curb her advance. During an election that featured a barrage of campaign ads and politicians demeaning transgender people, McBride still handily won her blue state’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
But even before she is sworn in on Friday, her reception by Republicans in Congress was turbulent. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina took aim at her by proposing to ban transgender people from using restrooms at the U.S. Capitol that match their gender identity — a ban that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La ., has issued.
For her part, McBride tried to defuse the situation by saying she would follow the rules. “I’m not here to argue about toilets,” the 34-year-old wrote in a statement.
While some activists want her to fight harder, for those who know her, this move was classic Sarah – a pragmatist with a reputation for bipartisanship, a person who values diplomacy over pugilism.
“There’s so much joy and so much awe to have this opportunity and I’m not going to let anyone take that away from me,” McBride told The Associated Press. “I’m just there to do the job, just like everyone else.”
Their political home for the past four years, the Delaware Senate, is petite — just 21 members — much like the state itself, less than 100 miles (155 kilometers) from north to south. This closeness creates the kind of collegiality that, while not constant, is often missing in Washington today.
“We are a family,” said state Sen. Brian Pettyjohn, a fellow Republican who came over to hug McBride. “We will have different opinions on a lot of things, but we don’t have the necessary level of criticism.”
In the Delaware Chamber, last-minute nominees had to be confirmed and day-to-day business had to be taken care of during the special session on December 16th.
Between votes, McBride sat on her office’s burgundy couch and typed on her laptop. An employee went through the papers on her desk. The next day, they would remove art from the walls and pack up precious memorabilia: a wedding photo with McBride’s behind schedule husband; a letter from former President Barack Obama; a photo with Delaware’s most notable politician, President Joe Biden.
Back in the hallway, on the state Senate floor, McBride’s colleagues in the General Assembly sent her away like the popular classmate at graduation. She opened the day with a prayer about “new beginnings and bittersweet endings.”
She ended with a thank you speech for her colleagues in the state parliament.
“I take with me the hope I found here that despite the rancor and toxicity we too often see in our politics, we truly have more in common than what divides us,” McBride said.
She continued: “We can pursue a politics of grace and not arrogance, a politics of progress not pettiness.”
Early promise and a meteoric rise
Growing up in Wilmington, McBride was the kind of kid who practiced Democratic political speeches on a makeshift podium in her bedroom.
By high school, she had worked on several campaigns, including that of Beau Biden, the president’s behind schedule son and former Delaware attorney general.
“She combines a passion for public service with a great intellect, exceptional political judgment and communication skills,” said Jack Markell, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, a former Delaware governor and McBride’s mentor.
Although she seemed destined to work in politics, McBride once felt that revealing her gender identity would derail those ambitions.
She was 21 and president of American University’s student government when she came out as transgender, first to her friends and family and later in a public post that went viral.
Sitting in her Wilmington apartment, McBride said: “Coming out was, without question, the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point. And yet, compared to so many people’s experiences, it was relatively easy.”
Her parents were her biggest supporters, but they worried about her. One of her first calls after McBride came out was to her pastor, the Rev. Gregory Knox Jones of Westminster Presbyterian, a progressive church where Sarah was a youth elder and Jill Biden is a member.
“We talked about how this was your child. “You love your child,” Jones recalls. “You can’t imagine losing a son. You had a daughter.”
David McBride, Sarah’s father, said this kind of support made all the difference to their family. “Our life and Sarah’s life were shaped by the response we and she received first from our friends, our church, our community.”
McBride broke ground with a quick series of firsts. During her studies, she became the first openly transgender woman to complete an internship at the White House. At a reception there, she met and later fell in love with teenage lawyer Andrew Cray, a trans man and LGBTQ+ health policy advocate.
An activist at age 22, McBride was instrumental in passing a transgender nondiscrimination law in Delaware. She worked as a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading LGBTQ rights group. In 2016, she became the first openly transgender person to speak at the Democratic National Convention.
Being a first, a historical first, is a privilege and a burden. McBride is quick to point out that her gender identity makes more than just headlines.
“The reality is that I didn’t run to come first. “I didn’t run to make history with an election,” she said.
Her focus is on being the best member of Congress she can be for all of Delaware and the country.
This is the only way I can guarantee that I am the first, but not the last.
A show pony and a workhorse
Before working with McBride, Democratic state Sen. Elizabeth Lockman thought “she was probably some kind of show pony, so good at presenting herself and speaking in public” and already destined for a bigger stage.
“Okay, she’s the show pony, but can she be a workhorse?” Lockman remembered thinking. “I like to tell her that she proved to us that she can do both. She’s probably one of the hardest working people.”
On busy days, McBride rarely stops eating, instead subsisting regularly on coffee, luxurious in cream and sweeteners.
And nowhere is her boundless energy more evident than when she talks about the details of policymaking. She likes kitchen table topics: health care, paid family leave, child care and affordable housing. In the state Senate, she led the Health Committee and helped escalate access to Medicaid and dental care for underserved communities. Most of their bills received bipartisan support.
Pettyjohn, her Republican colleague, appreciated that McBride often sought conservative members’ opinions on legislation. “She’s always someone who will come along, make the effort to get out of the echo chamber and say, ‘What can we do to spruce it up, make it better?'”
Her outstanding achievement was helping to pass paid family and medical leave in Delaware. For McBride, it was personal.
Her partner Cray was 27 when he was diagnosed with oral cancer. Within a year the prognosis was terminal. They have moved forward with their wedding plans. They asked Rev. Gene Robinson, a friend and the first openly gay bishop, to take over.
They married in August 2014 on the roof of their home. Cray died in hospital four days later.
“The experience of working as a caregiver for him changed me profoundly,” McBride said.
“I think of all the people who have to cope with what we went through, or worse, without health insurance, without family support, without paid leave, without jobs that allow them to continue paying their rent,” said she. “I just can’t imagine getting through even a fraction of what we’ve been through without the support we’ve had. It is a moral failure of our society and our country.”
A politics of grace
The word “grace” comes up a lot in McBride.
She does everything “with a lot of grace and patience,” Lockman said.
“She handled this with far more grace than I would have shown,” said Mat Marshall, a friend since high school, referring to McBride’s reaction to the bathroom bill in Congress.
In her 2018 memoir, McBride wrote a chapter titled “Amazing Grace” about “beautiful acts of kindness” she witnessed in the final weeks of Cray’s life.
“When people experience loss, it can be either faith-destroying or faith-strengthening. And for me it was an affirmation of faith,” she said.
In the room where Cray died, McBride felt God’s presence in a concrete way, like a hand on her shoulder – a comforting manifestation of the love of God that never left her.
Over the next decade, she often asks herself, “What would Andy do?” and tries to follow his example of compassion and “principled mercy” toward anti-LGBTQ politicians. “His kindness, his decency have given me a North Star.”
Some activists have criticized McBride for not more forcefully opposing the Capitol bathroom ban. She agrees that it is essential for transgender people to have access to public facilities.
“But the people talking about bathrooms aren’t transgender,” she said. “The people who are obsessed with toilets are right-wing Republicans who want to stoke division and distract.”
She said she will continue to respond with grace.
“Ultimately, our ability to have a pluralistic, diverse democracy requires a certain foundation of kindness and grace,” McBride said. “And I believe in it so strongly that I will try to conjure it, even when it’s difficult.”
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