Outrage over transgender women competing in women’s individual and team sports is emerging as a dominant theme in Republican primaries, with three female contenders running television advertisements on the issue in a bid to gain ground with GOP voters.
Two of the three campaign spots feature transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who won a national championship in the women’s 500-meter freestyle in March. Thomas’s rise in the ranks of women’s collegiate swimming after a middling career competing against men before transitioning has sparked controversy in athletic circles and contributed to anxiety on the political Right about society’s celebration of the transgender movement.
Rep. Vicky Hartzler, in a dogfight for the Republican Senate nomination in Missouri, aims to capitalize. So do Jane Timken, running for Senate in Ohio, and Katie Britt, a Senate contender in Alabama. All three are the only women running in their respective primaries. Their campaign ads vowing to block transgender women from participating in women’s sports come as fresh polls show them competitive but trailing.
Party strategists believe the spots can move votes, in part, they explain, because this topic touches multiple issues that matter to grassroots Republicans. Their concern about the impact of LGBT culture on society, and especially children, is simply the most obvious.
“Conservatives have been scolded to ‘follow the science’ for a decade, and especially for the last two years,” a GOP operative said, referring to Democratic harangues about climate change and the coronavirus. “It’s just too irresistible to bang Democrats for not even being willing to follow the chromosomes. It embodies their willingness to subordinate truth to identity politics in the most ridiculous way.”
DEMOCRATIC AD TARGETS POLICY PLAN BY SEN. SCOTT SHUNNED BY GOP LEADER MCCONNELL
Hartzler, Timken, and Britt speak straight into the camera in their ads, dispensing with the typical ominous voice-over and scary black-and-white images. But their messages are slightly different.
Hartzler’s 30-second television spot is framed entirely around Thomas. The congresswoman shows pictures of Thomas side-by-side — one as a man before she transitioned, the other as a woman after — as she vows to protect women’s sports from “men pretending to be women.”
Timken, the former Ohio GOP chairwoman, was filmed in a basketball gym. Her 30-second ad flashes a picture of Thomas as she warns that President Joe Biden and the Democrats want “to force our daughters to compete against men, in the pool and on the court.”
Britt takes a slightly different, if not more urgent, approach. The former chief of staff to retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama does not refer to, nor use pictures of, Thomas to drive her message. Rather, Britt uses a gym locker room decked out in red as the setting for her 30-second television spot, declaring that “crazy” liberals oppose God in the schools but “want boys in the girl’s locker room.”
Democrats say Republicans are acting out of fear and bigotry, with Biden saying on a regular basis that his support for transgender individuals is unwavering and a key part of his domestic policy priorities. “I’ll always have your back as president so that you can be yourself and reach your God-given potential,” he said in early March during his State of the Union address.
But the issue has taken off like wildfire in the Republican Party.
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Recently, Utah enacted legislation prohibiting transgender individuals from participating in girls’ sports after the state’s overwhelmingly Republican Legislature overrode GOP Gov. Spencer Cox’s veto of the legislation. Cox said he vetoed the bill because there were less than a handful of children who were affected by the legislation and he did not want them to feel targeted.
Meanwhile, Republicans are cheering GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for signing a law that bans teachers from kindergarten through third grade from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with their students. Some polling has suggested the Parental Rights in Education bill is popular, at least in concept. But critics, who refer to the legislation as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, say it discriminates against the LGBT community.
