Sarah Macbride: Last News

When Jennifer Williams was collecting signatures for her first political campaign in 2022, people told her, a transgender woman, “I think you would do an awesome job, but you got no chance to win.”

Their hesitancy was not unfounded. Williams won her seat on Trenton, N.J.’s City Council by a single vote.

This round she is running unopposed with broad community support. She attributes this to the fact that she got her job done. “Things have gone so well,” she says, “I think I delivered on everything I wanted to do.”

Williams is not the only trans candidate who has already secured a place in political office for the upcoming cycle. Kim Coco Iwamoto made history in Hawaii as the first person in U.S. history to defeat an incumbent House speaker in a Democratic primary—in addition to being the first out transgender elected official in Hawaii’s history. (Since there is no other challenger, Iwamoto is the representative-elect). 

Vered Meltzer, the first openly transgender individual to hold elected office in Wisconsin, elected originally in 2014, continues his tenure as a City Council Member in the City of Appleton, after winning in April.

Sarah McBride is favored to win Delaware’s at-large congressional district, becoming the nation’s first out trans congressional lawmaker. 

Across the nation, 35 other transgender, non-binary, and genderqueer candidates are running for office in their local communities. The Bladewill be tracking all races live as results come in, in addition to providing insight from interviews conducted with many of the candidates in the weeks leading up to election day.

Identity information—transgender man, transgender woman, non-binary, and genderqueer—comes from the LGBTQ Victory Fund and Families United for Trans Rights.

Candidates emphasize that their identities do not always fit within simple labels. Minita Sanghvi, a candidate for the New York Senate, says, “I present as a butch lesbian and I often don’t feel like I am cisgender.” She explains

Sarah Macbride