This story originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19thand republishing via Rewire News Grouphis partnership with The 19th News Network.
One of the the first signs of trouble for Kamala Harris’s Democratic presidential campaign on election night 2024 was in a state she won: Virginia. Specifically, in Northern Virginia, in places like Loudoun County, an affluent, bucolic community outside Washington, DC
In last week’s election, however, as families were still finishing late dinners and returns from Virginia’s gubernatorial contest began to roll in, Loudoun was an early sign that Democrat Abigail Spanberger was on the verge of having a really good night: It ended beating Republican Winsom Earle-Shears by 29 points in Loudoun and did 12 points better there than Harris did just a year ago. Northern Virginia they accounted for nearly 90 percent of Spanberger’s margin of victory in the race.
The conclusion he quickly came to was that Spanberger deftly understood how to respond to anti-trans attacks from her opponent and Republican interest groups in a way that the Harris campaign never did — and she did so without throwing vulnerable populations under the bus, who have seen their protections eroded by the Trump administration.
Earle-Sears spent between $7 million and $9 million to attack Spanberger’s record on transgender rights, according to analyzes of Virginia media markets. Spanberger has countered her GOP opponent’s claims in several interviews, as well as running a response ad of her own.
Democrats are desperate to retake the White House in 2028 and are looking for aggressive strategies as they try to take back one or both houses of Congress next year. So in the immediate aftermath of Spanberger’s victory, along with Democrat Mikie Sherrill’s 13-point victory over Republican Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election, political strategists and progressive groups began analyzing women’s successes for clues about how they’ll fare in competitive state contests next year.
“Abigail Spanberger made history by defeating Winsome Earle-Sears and more than $9 million in anti-trans attack ads. She didn’t shy away. She didn’t hide from her values. She led the way with them, and Virginians rewarded that courage,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a Nov. 5 call with Reporters.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group, will release a “playbook” for 2026 candidates on how to effectively respond to anti-trans attacks, based in part on lessons learned from the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests.
Northern Virginia, for a variety of reasons—for better or for worse—is a place where national political strategy is tested and the tea leaves are read. It’s commuting distance to Washington, D.C., where much of the country’s political apparatus is based. It has off-year state elections that can act as a reaction or harbinger of federal showdowns in previous and future years. And it has suburbs and exurbs like Loudoun that determine the fate of national races.
For a long time, Virginia was a reliably Republican state. In 2008, former President Barack Obama was the first Democrat to win Virginia since a single election in the 1960s, and his victory was driven by the state’s northern suburbs. Virginia has remained blue in White House races ever since, and Loudoun County has become something of a bellwether for Virginia, which has become even bluer than the state as a whole. It’s where parents go for good public schools and travel sports leagues for their teenagers. There are vineyards and horse farms. In recent years, Loudoun households have reported one of the highest median incomes in the country.
But last year, after the polls closed, Harris was trailing by the margins that then-President Joe Biden had won four years earlier in much of Northern Virginia. including Loudoun. Pundits wondered what it meant for suburban and suburban areas in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that have historically leaned Democratic but where President Donald Trump had shown in 2016 that he could win.
Harris still won Loudoun, along with Virginia. But the county’s swing in Trump’s favor caused problems for the former vice president in the swing state’s suburbs. Harris lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by less than two percentage points. In each of these states, suburban voters were decisive. The suburbs are a politically powerful place: Since 1980the White House candidate who won the suburbs usually has won the presidency. Suburban voters cast more than half the votes last year — and Trump moved the suburbs nationally at many points.
After Harris’ defeat, analysts pointed to a momentum in the final weeks of the race, when the Trump campaign and allied political groups blanketed key suburbs, including Loudoun, with tens of millions of anti-trans ads. Known as their/them ads, they often aired during high-profile events such as NFL games and highlighted Harris’ past support for transgender rights. Radio show host Charlamagne Tha God’s Answer it became another Trump ad. The ads ended with the line: “Kamala is for them; President Trump is for you.”
Harris tried to figure out how to respond. Her campaign tried the ads, but none did particularly well, so they never aired. Research from the top super PAC backing Harris showed their ads, on average, moved viewers 2.7 points in favor of Trump and were especially effective with black and Latino men and white, suburban women. The post-election suggestion from many high-profile Democrats was that the party should focus less on supporting transgender rights.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been eyeing a 2028 White House bid, he said on his podcast with since-killed conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk that it was “deeply unfair” for transgender women to compete in women’s sports. Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who ran in the 2020 Democratic primary and is believed to be considering another attempt at the White House in 2028; told NPR there were “serious justice issues” when transgender athletes compete in women’s sports. Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton he said to New York Times: “I have two little girls, I don’t want them to be beaten on a playing field by a man or a former athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” Moulton, now running for Senate, it has since softened his rhetoric.
But Spanberger and Sherrill took a different tack than Harris, engaging when their opponents launched a barrage of attacks about their support for transgender and LGBTQ+ rights more broadly. Particularly in Virginia, where Earle-Sears put millions back its own adswhich focused on the issue of transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sports and bathrooms. Spanberger quickly responded, stressing that she has three daughters in public schools, so the matter is personal.
“Nothing is more important to me than the safety of all our children. And as a law enforcement officer I have gone after child predators. So it really angers me to hear these lies about who I am. I think we need to take politics out of our schools and trust parents and local communities,” narrates in one.
Spanberger won 95% of voters who said support for transgender rights in society had not gone far enough and 89% who said it was about right, according to CNN exit polls—but also won nearly a quarter of half of Virginia voters who said support for transgender rights “has gone too far.”
Forty-eight percent of Virginia voters chose the economy as the most pressing issue facing the state, followed by health care (21 percent) and education (11 percent) — Spanberger won all three voter groups, 63 percent, 81 percent and 55 percent, respectively, CNN exit polls showed.
Only 7 percent of Virginians chose transgender issues as a top concern, according to a post-election analysis conducted by the Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm.
Narissa Rahaman, the executive director of Equality Virginia, told the Human Rights Campaign’s call that Spanberger’s response was effective in defusing Earle-Sears’ attacks in part because he kept the issue local. Spanberger’s response pointed to a state policy that had been in place for about 12 years, under which transgender athletes in school sports were decided on a case-by-case basis at the local level. Virginia Republicans attempt to rewrite the policy.
“We have 18,000 transgender youth living in Virginia, and during the decade of this high school policy, we had less than 50, I think, kids trying to play sports. So it was on a case-by-case basis, and it worked,” Rahaman said.
Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Delaware, who is the first openly transgender member of Congress, added: “We can uphold two truths: One is that every person, including LGBTQ+ people, deserves and needs protection from discrimination in their lives and in all areas of society in every corner of this country.
McBride said Spanberger’s victory showed the effectiveness of keeping the conversation specific to the community and showed how the GOP’s anti-trans attacks are an effort to divide as well as a distraction from issues voters consider more important. such as the economy.
“The other lesson we can take from yesterday’s victories is that when candidates stay true to their values and meet voters where they are when they respond to these attacks, voters listen and come to their side,” McBride said. “We saw her meet voters with respect and grace, and we saw them run an effective campaign that had a conversation with voters that serves to open hearts and change minds. That’s the future of our politics. That’s how we win.”
