Transgender issue puts Democrat on defense in Virginia governor’s race

Virginia’s gubernatorial race is highlighting Democrats’ dilemma in reconciling their liberal base’s demands with the views of a moderate electorate, as Abigail Spanberger tries to parry Winsome Earle-Sears’ jabs on transgender rights.

The issue has surfaced repeatedly in recent election cycles. President Trump and other Republicans have focused on transgender rights in portraying Democrats as beholden to a radical ideology that is contrary to traditional values and biological reality.

Democrats have yet to develop a coherent strategy to counter these attacks. Polling consistently shows that most voters oppose transgender participation in girls’ sports and unrestricted access to sex-specific facilities, making it harder for the party to stick with an inclusive message, political scientists say.

“Democrats need to come up with a better answer,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “It could be a defense of the trans argument, or it could be a ‘Sister Souljah moment’ when candidates take the anti-trans side.”

He referenced a moment in the 1992 presidential race, after the Los Angeles riots, when candidate Bill Clinton publicly rebuked comments of Black rapper/activist Sister Souljah, signaling his independence from the more controversial elements in the Democratic coalition.

“This is not an issue that lends itself to ‘both sides’ arguments,” Mr. Sabato said.

The dynamic was displayed during the Virginia gubernatorial debate at Norfolk State University last week. Moderators pressed Ms. Spanberger to clarify her position on whether transgender girls — biological males who identify as female — should be allowed to use girls’ bathrooms and compete on girls’ K-12 sports teams.

The Democratic nominee sidestepped the question by saying such decisions should be made by parents, educators and school administrators, not politicians.

When Ms. Earle-Sears, the Republican lieutenant governor, reframed the question as allowing “nude men in girls’ locker rooms,” Ms. Spanberger responded, “There should never be nude men in locker rooms.”

Ms. Earle-Sears then accused the former congresswoman of hypocrisy by citing Ms. Spanberger’s 2021 vote for the Equality Act.

The bill, which died in the Senate, said “an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”

The Earle-Sears campaign has spotlighted transgender rights in campaign ads, including one that says, “Spanberger is for they/them — not for us,” echoing the attack Mr. Trump and his allies leveled against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.

Ms. Harris and other prominent Democrats, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, have since questioned the fairness of biological men participating in women’s sports.

The shift puts them more in line with the general public.

A Washington Post-Schar School survey released this month showed that 69% of 1,002 registered Virginia voters said transgender girls should be allowed to play only on sports teams that match their birth gender, and 62% said transgender students should be required to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their birth sex.

A Pew Research poll released earlier this year found similar trends nationally, though it also found that most Americans support policies that protect transgender people from discrimination in jobs and housing.

Mr. Trump tapped into that sentiment on his first day in office by issuing an executive order “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the Jan. 20 order reads.

The Department of Education is threatening to withhold federal funding from Northern Virginia school districts over their transgender policies, intensifying scrutiny of Ms. Spanberger’s stance.

Jeffrey Ryer, chair of Virginia’s 1st Congressional District Republican Committee, said Ms. Spanberger’s struggles are a “good illustration” of the tightrope Democrats must walk.

“Their base freaks out if they distance themselves even slightly from ‘trans rights,’” Mr. Ryer said. “If they go with the majority opinion — women’s spaces being reserved for women — they risk likely noisy backlash from a portion of their base.

“Therefore, they are obliged to say that any biological male who identifies as female — or conversely, a biological female identifying as male — must be accepted and treated as such,” he said.

Ms. Spanberger leads most polls by double digits, and surveys show that Virginia voters are more concerned about the economy and rising costs than policies related to transgender students.

The Spanberger campaign has focused on affordability. She says Trump-era policies strip away health care access, close rural hospitals and threaten the livelihoods of thousands of federal workers in Virginia. Since the debate, she has also focused criticism on Ms. Earle-Sears’ assertion that firing someone for being gay is “not discrimination.”