US Election: Sarah Mcbride Makes History

 

In the US elections on November 3rd, Sarah McBride was the first time an openly living transgender politician was elected to the Senate of a state in the United States.

McBride was able to defeat Republican Steve Washington and will be the first trans person to enter the Senate, the second chamber of the United States Congress, in January.

When she is sworn in, McBride will also be the nation's highest-ranking elected transgender officer - strongest evidence that the US LGBTIQ community is not intimidated by Donald Trump. Its administration had only overturned a regulation in the summer that was supposed to protect trans  people in the healthcare system (we reported).

In her four-year tenure, McBride will not only focus on LGBTIQ issues, but also advocate health policy issues in general. Among other things, she campaigns for sick pay.

A resume that inspires

Like Joe Biden, Sarah McBride is a native of Delaware. The second smallest state in the USA, located on the east coast, is officially known as The First State because in 1787 Delaware was the first state to ratify the US Constitution. Delaware is traditionally strongly democratic.

McBride, who grew up in her current constituency, Wilmington, identified as a girl from an early age. Still, it was a long struggle before she decided to go public - not just to her family, as student body president, but also to her fellow American University students. It wasn't until a Facebook post in which McBride dared to tell the truth went viral that she realized the impact her story could have on the country. That was in 2012. Today, just a few years later, McBride is one of the most famous transgender activists in the country.

Her way into politics led through an internship in the White House, which she completed under the Obama administration. She later campaigned for a law on transgender rights at the Delaware General Assembly, which was signed into law in 2013. In 2017, she helped ensure that laws to protect vulnerable young people from child abuse are passed.

In 2016, at the age of 26, she became the first transgender person to speak at a national Democratic political convention. Since then, McBride has worked with senior politicians to improve healthcare in the United States.

In 2018, McBride published her life story as a book. Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss and the Fight for Trans Equality is a very personal story about the struggle of the LGBTIQ community for equality and what it means to be openly transgender. Nobody less than Joe Biden wrote the preface to McBride's book.

Sarah McBride shares another similarity with Joe Bilden: Both have suffered a tragic loss. Biden lost his first wife and two children in a car accident, and McBride's husband Andrew Cray died of cancer in 2014 just three days after their wedding.