Meet Sarah McBride: First openly transgender state senator from Delaware

With Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump securing a historic victory in the US Presidential Elections 2024, winning 303 electoral votes, the US House of Representatives will welcome its first openly transgender member, Democrat Sarah McBride, who won from Delaware.
McBride, 34, became the first openly transgender person to serve as a state senator when she was elected in 2020, reported the WION. Apart from this, she was the first to speak at a US national political party convention in 2016 and the first to intern at the White House in 2012, under former President Barack Obama.
In her 2024 US Election campaign, McBride stated that she would focus instead on the issues she would prioritise. “Whenever you are first, you often have to try to be the best version that you can,” she said in an interview with Reuters.
“But none of them matter if I don’t fulfil the responsibility of just being the best member of Congress that I can be for Delaware,” she said.
After winning the elections, she took to X and wrote, “Thank you, Delaware! Because of your votes and your values, I am proud to be your next member of Congress.”
“Delaware has sent the message loud and clear that we must be a country that protects reproductive freedom, that guarantees paid leave and affordable child care for all our families, that ensures that housing and health care are available to everyone and that this is a democracy that is big enough for all of us,” she added.
Since January 2021, Sarah Elizabeth McBride has been a Democratic member of the Delaware Senate. She also worked as the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.
McBride won in the November 2020 election in the 1st Delaware State Senate district. She is the highest-ranking transgender elected official in the history of the United States as being the first openly transgender state senator in the country.
She defeated Republican rival John Whalen III after securing 57.8 per cent of the vote when 95 per cent of the total ballot was counted.
According to the WION, McBride came out as transgender in the student newspaper of American University in April 2012. Her late husband, Andy Cray, died of cancer in 2014, a few days after they tied the knot, the report added.
She had advocated for affordable health care, protection of reproductive rights and a hike in wages in her campaign.
On being asked about the message young transgender Americans should take from her expected election, McBride said, “Anyone who worries that the heart of this country is not big enough to love them should know that they belong … Our democracy is big enough for all of us.”
From agency inputs.