Who Is Sarah McBride, The LGBTQ+ Activist Running For Delaware State Senate?

By Nico Lang


Sarah McBride understands how challenging it might be to get high quality, affordable healthcare In America. As soon as her partner, Andy Cray, needed an emergency operation in 2014 to drain fluid that was accumulating in his lungs, the couple had no choice although to mention yes. Cray was rapidly losing the capacity to breathe, and without undergoing the essential procedure, he may soon die.


While McBride says Cray had “good, comprehensive health insurance,” the doctor he required to be able to see didn’t take insurance. They were forced to pay for the cost of his treatment, which was nearly $3,000, out of pocket. The couple then had to submit an insurance claim and essentially “roll the dice” on whether they would ever be compensated for Cray’s treatment. It took a few months before the reimbursement went through, according to McBride, which was hard however — at a time in which an estimated 41 million folks are underinsured in the U.S. — It was also lucky.


“That is an experience no one should have to face, however it’s frankly the reality for far also several people,” McBride tells MTV News.


McBride, a longtime activist for transgender rights and press secretary for the LGBTQ+ advocacy order Human Rights Campaign, says it’s this experience that encouraged her to launch her historic bid for the Delaware State Senate. If elected, the 28-year-old could be just the fourth trans person elected to a state legislature and the first to be seated in a state Senate. Additionally, McBride’s residence state has never elected an openly LGBTQ+ candidate to statewide office.


Her candidacy is segment of a recent wave of landmark victories for trans candidates across the nation. In 2017, Virginia’s Danica Roem, who campaigned on repairing a dilapidated road in her residence town, became the initial transgender woman elected to a state legislature. Colorado’s Brianna Titone and New Hampshire’s Gerri Cannon were elected the following year.


McBride says she isn’t running to prepare history, though. As a substitute, she wants to create ensure that no person in her state has to prepare the choice she did: between a thousand-dollar medical bill they can’t afford and the lives of people they love.


“I do recognize that anytime a barrier is damaged, it might will support to empower others and potentially save lives,” she says. “But at the end of the day, this can't be about making headlines. It’s got to be about creating a difference in our community. That’s what Andy was about. That’s how I attempt to live my life almost every day.”


McBride is campaigning for the Delaware’s First Senate District because she believes our elected representatives is where she can effect the greatest quantity of change. Earlier this year, she lobbied with the advocacy order Moms Demand Action to supporter for a trio of comprehensive gun reform costs in the Delaware General Assembly, including bans on high-capacity magazines and semiautomatic weapons.


Those proposals stalled in committee, leaving Delaware with few statewide regulations on licensing or registering firearms. While the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives the state an in general “B” grade on gun policy, there’s still room for the state to grow. For instance, Delaware does not impose a waiting period on gun purchases, allowance the assortment of weapons a single can purchase at one time, or require that residents be licensed before possessing gun. If she’s elected, she’ll be in a position to supports the close these loopholes.


While coverage of her campaign has, so far, focused on her gender identity, McBride believes Roem’s victory in Virginia shows trans candidates can win as soon as they run on the issues. She plans to campaign on what “keeps voters up at night,” including paid family member leave and criminal justice reform. Earlier this year, lawmakers in Dover introduced 19 expenditures to address prison overcrowding and recidivism.


“Voters don't care about gender,” she says. “They care about the issues that are impacting their lives, whether that's infrastructure, whether that's family member inclusive workplace policies, or being able to access a job that pays a livable wage.”


The issues key to Delawareans are also essential for members of the trans community. A 2015 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) noticed that the best two priorities for transgender voters were decreasing violence and expanding access to health care. In a October 2018 poll conducted by the University of Delaware, 60 percent of state residents stated their support for Medicare for All, while 68 percent are in favor of universal health care.


McBride did not specify the specifics of her plans, having only reported her candidacy two weeks back. Nonetheless, she believes Delaware has the potential to be a progressive regular bearer for the rest of the nation. Her campaign kickoff video, filmed in a park down the street from her childhood residence in Wilmington, emphasizes her belief that her house state is a “state of neighbors.”


“It’s a state where each person understands each other,” McBride says, a nod to Delaware’s petite public of just 900,000 people. “Because of that, Delaware is a state that has the capacity for adopting the sort of policies and laws that leave no one behind.”


McBride is aware that Delaware can be a “laboratory of big ideas and bold solutions” because she has witnessed its promise up close. As a young trans activist, her advocacy was widely credited with the passage of Senate Bill 97 in 2013, a LGBTQ+ civil rights ordinance that barred discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in housing, employment, and public accommodations while in the state.


However both houses of the Delaware General Assembly were controlled by Democrats, pushing the legislation through was a tough battle. McBride fought to pass SB 97 the same year that Delaware passed a marriage equality bill, and no state had ever enacted same-sex marriage as well as a nondiscrimination ordinance at the same time.


“Fortunately we understood that politics isn't the art of the possible,” she says. “It's the art of transforming impossibility into possibility.”


The nondiscrimination ordinance fight proposed McBride a glimpse into the special risks regarding being a trans woman in public life. She testified in front of the Delaware General Assembly on at least three occasions, tending to fears about whether the bill’s page would lead to girls and children being targeted in public restrooms, a widely debunked myth. A woman approached McBride soon after one of her testimonies and threatened to “chop it right off” if she ever saw her in the women’s bathroom.


“Was I surprised that someone threatened me?” She wrote of the encounter in her 2018 memoir, Tomorrow Will Be Different. “No. However the fact that it wasn’t surprising should be an outrage. It further underscored the necessary for the bill and, in particular, for protections from discrimination and harassment in bathrooms.”


However she had been out for much less than per year at the time, McBride didn’t back down; she knew how much was at stake. If she first started the work of lobbying for SB 97, it was with the ambition that she and Cray, a fellow trans activist, could move back residence one day and begin a family member, without worrying that they would be fired from their jobs or evicted from their homes. Even today, LGBTQ+ people can legally be denied housing and employment solely because of their identities in 29 states.


McBride’s determination paid off. In June 2013, former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell mentioned her by name as he signed the bill into law, crediting her “tireless” efforts for making “a real difference for all transgender people in Delaware.”


In the six years since the ordinance’s passage, McBride has never stopped pushing for equality. Throughout the 2016 Democratic National Convention, she made history because the initial out trans person to ever be invited to speak onstage at the event. Right following the audience rose to its feet, McBride instructed them thunderous crowd that her experiences in advocacy have shown her that “change is possible.”


Nevertheless, Cray would not be there to celebrate the milestone with her. In August 2014, he died of oral cancer at the age of 28. The couple was wedded in a tiny ceremony on the roof of their Washington, D.C. Apartment just days before he passed away.


“One of the most challenging conversations I had with Andy was in the last few weeks of his life, crying about not just his fear over death, however also his sadness over the fact that he wouldn't have the ability to be there for those he loved,” she says. “I'll never forget his blue eyes by means of the tears and him saying, ‘I’m sorry, Bean, that I won't have the ability to be there to tell you I love you and that I’m delighted of you.’”


Should she be elected a member of the Delaware General Assembly in 2020, McBride hopes to keep making her late spouse overjoyed by working for the values he imagined in: kindness and fairness for each person. As a researcher for the public policy agency Center for American Progress, his pioneering work laid the structure for trans inclusions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Those protections, referred to as Article 1557, have since been challenged by the Trump administration.


To date, McBride is the only candidate to have declared in the race for Delaware’s District 1, where the Democratic primary is scheduled for September 2020. It’s unclear if she plans to face challengers in the race.


If McBride is elected to the state legislature next year, she is aware the victory will be a testament to the “kind, funny, brilliant” man who keeps it up and continues to inspire her work day-to-day. Whenever she wakes up in morning, the opening thing she does is ask herself: “What would Andy do?”


“For Andy, the work was never about prestige,” McBride says. “It was routinely about doing good. He is someone who lived day-to-day fighting to create change, without consideration of whether he got praised. I attempt to carry on that legacy.”