State Sen. Sarah McBride announces her run for Delaware’s lone U.S. House seat, confirming rumors that have circulated since longtime Sen. Tom Carper announced last month that he would not seek reelection in 2024.
McBride’s Delaware political bona fides long predate her time in the state Senate. She worked as a staffer on Gov. Jack Markell’s 2008 campaign and Attorney General Beau Biden’s 2010 campaign, where she developed a close relationship with the Biden family; McBride later worked as White House intern during the Obama administration, deepening her Biden connections.
As board president of Equality Delaware, McBride later led advocacy for legal protections for transgender Delawareans, using her relationships with Markell and Beau Biden to shore up support for legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment, housing, insurance and public accommodations — a bill that passed in Delaware's General Assembly by a relatively narrow margin in 2013.
McBride soon ascended to national prominence, serving as the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest LGBTQ advocacy organization. During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, McBride became the first openly transgender person to address a national party convention.
Despite significant national attention on her candidacy — McBride would be the first openly transgender member of Congress, and political commentators have long speculated that she would run for federal office — McBride says she plans to run her campaign like any other state-level race.
“I’m certainly cognizant of the uniqueness of my candidacy," she said. "I’m cognizant of the uniqueness of my voice in the halls of Congress. But ultimately, I’m not running to be the transgender member of Congress. I’m running to be Delaware’s member of Congress who is focused on issues that matter to Delawareans up and down the state.”
McBride first won election to the state Senate with more than 70 percent of the vote in her Wilmington district in 2020. Her first major legislative victory came in 2022, when she served as the prime sponsor of a bill that created a 12-week paid family and medical leave program for Delaware workers.
McBride currently chairs the Senate’s Health and Social Services committee — a role that informs many of her priorities as a prospective federal lawmaker.
Those include offering federal funding for state-level family and medical leave programs, as well as making permanent many of the pandemic-era federal assistance programs that helped states expand their Medicaid rolls, increase access to affordable early childhood education and stand up emergency and transitional housing programs.
"At the state level, with the balanced budget requirements, there are real challenges to keeping up with rising healthcare, childcare and housing costs," she said. "Unfortunately, the rollback of federal funding has resulted in pandemic-era policies that were helping empower families being reduced or disappearing entirely. The reality is that crisis breeds innovation, and just because a policy was adopted during the pandemic doesn't mean it isn't the right policy in general. There are pandemic-era things we've made permanent — like telehealth. But we shouldn't just make permanent the things that worked well and were cost-neutral."
In her time on Senate Health and Social Services Committee, McBride has also become supportive of some policies that might not yet be politically viable in Delaware, including overdose prevention sites: centers where drug users can safely smoke, inject or inhale drugs with healthcare staff and overdose reversal supplies on hand for emergencies. Pennsylvania's Senate voted to ban overdose prevention centers, also called supervised injection sites, in May of this year.
McBride says that serving in the House would also give her an opportunity to vote on legislation she helped draft while working as a national advocate for LGBTQ civil rights protections.
“I will support, and like every member of the Democratic caucus, look forward to sponsoring the Equality Act," she said, "which would not just add sexual orientation and gender identity to our nation’s civil rights laws but also provide greater protections for women where they are currently excluded from federal civil rights laws. ”
Despite recent population growth – particularly in Sussex County – Delaware remains one of six states with one Representative in the House. Current Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester announced her candidacy for the Carper’s Senate seat earlier this month.
McBride is the first candidate to enter the race to replace Blunt Rochester, and she can tout some significant endorsements — including current Attorney General Kathy Jennings. But the Democratic primary could be competitive: Delaware State Housing Authority director Eugene Young, whose role has been in the spotlight amid increased focus on Delaware's housing crisis, has publicly expressed interest in running.
Carper himself has not yet issued an endorsements.
