If she wins Delaware’s only House seat in November, the Democrat is poised to become the country’s first openly transgender member of Congress.
She was about 11 years old and had a pressing question for her father after he finished teaching Sunday school at their local church.“Where’d you get that podium?” Dave remembers his daughter asking, throwing him for a loop. Three weeks later, he was in for a surprise.
“We knew we’d do whatever she needed us to do, but I thought her life was over,” Sally said from an armchair in McBride’s childhood home in Wilmington. “I thought she’d be discriminated against at every turn. I was frightened for her safety.”She and Dave also worried McBride’s political aspirations would be limited. They didn’t expect that over the next decade their daughter would make history over and over again. Now McBride, 34, is heavily favored to win Delaware’s only House seat in November.
“For someone who’s scared and feels alone, it could potentially be a lifesaving message to go to sleep in November seeing that someone like them is able to fully participate in our democracy, that they can be seen as full human beings,” McBride said in the living room of her Wilmington condo after a few hours of knocking on constituents’ doors.
In 2002, at 11 years old, she met then-Sen. Biden, her “political idol” and a fellow Delawarean, at a local pizzeria. Biden ripped a page from his daily briefing book, signed it and wrote, “Remember me when you are president,” McBride recalls in her bookBy the time she was 20, McBride had volunteered or worked on at least three political campaigns, including Beau Biden’s 2006 campaign for Delaware attorney general and his 2010 re-election campaign.
Sarah McBride, center, with Lisa Goodman, left, and Delaware state Sen. Russ Huxtable outside of a polling location in Sussex County on primary election day.Jana Williams for NBC News In 2013, shortly after graduating college, McBride joined the Center for American Progress to work on LGBTQ policy. Then in 2016, she joined the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, as its national press secretary. That same year, she McBride married Andrew Cray in August 2014, four days before he died of oral cancer. Even now, McBride said she still holds close a number of lessons Cray and their relationship taught her.
They met at a White House Pride celebration in June 2012. They started dating, and their relationship was “built on a unique shared experience: the by-product of years of each of us fighting to be ourselves,” McBride wrote in her memoir. Jesse Chadderdon, who has known McBride since 2014 and is now the chief of staff for the Delaware state Senate’s majority caucus, said after her election, McBride had the political muscle and reputation to push paid leave through with little negotiation. However, she set up meetings with relevant stakeholders so that more people would be invested in the policy’s long-term success.
Taylor Hawk, center, said she was initially intimidated by McBride when she first met her, but now the two are close friends.Jana Williams for NBC News“Not only do I think it’s the right thing to do, I also think it’s incredibly helpful in policy conversations to show up where people are and show them that respect,” McBride said.State Sen.
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