Dems with anti-trans views are on the ballot. What should pro-trans voters do with them?

The list, and what it contains

Reed's list covers federal and statewide races only, and it is not a short one. Gubernatorial candidates Xavier Becerra of California, Aaron Ford of Nevada, and Amy Acton of Ohio all appear, each with records or statements opposing trans athletes or supporting sports bans. Senate candidates Mary Peltola of Alaska, Josh Turek of Iowa, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are included. Brown ran an ad explicitly distancing himself from trans inclusion in women's sport. House candidates range from Henry Cuellar, who has reportedly voted for nearly every anti-trans bill or provision that has come before him, to Eugene Vindman, who supported legislation that would end federal funding for schools with trans-inclusive policies.

Several of these candidates are polling ahead. Some are in knife-edge races. That is what makes this so difficult.

The argument Reed is making

Reed's concern is not just about individual votes. It is about what a Democratic Party learns when anti-trans candidates win. She points to the UK's Labour Party as a warning: a nominally left-of-centre party that has absorbed transphobia so thoroughly that it now governs with it. Her worry is that if anti-trans Democrats are rewarded with victories, the lesson the party draws is that throwing trans people under the bus is a winning strategy. Once that lesson is learned, she argues, there will never be enough lawmakers with both the power and the will to undo the damage.

That is not a hysterical fear. It is a serious structural argument about how political parties change, and how they stop changing.

The Human Rights Campaign's position

The HRC endorsed several candidates on Reed's list, including Shomari Figures, Susie Lee, Tom Suozzi, and Sarah Trone Garriott, all of whom have anti-trans votes or statements in their record. When Reed asked why, the HRC said that limiting endorsements to candidates with a perfect record would mean never making progress. Their theory of change is about meeting people where they are and moving them toward support.

I understand that logic. I have seen it work, in individual conversations, in individual lives. But Reed's response cuts through it: these candidates have not recanted. They have not updated their positions. They have accepted an endorsement from an LGBTQ+ organisation while their stated or voted position remains against trans people. That is not a candidate being moved, it is a candidate being rewarded for staying put.

Reed's suggestion that the HRC should withhold or withdraw endorsements from candidates who hold anti-trans positions is not a radical demand. It is a basic ask: that an organisation claiming to represent trans people should not endorse politicians who actively oppose them. Without consequences, she warns, the HRC risks becoming indistinguishable from a branch of the Democratic Party, viewed with justifiable scepticism by the millions of trans Americans whose rights are shrinking.

The calculation trans voters are being asked to make

Here is the part that makes me angry, not because it is unfair of anyone to raise it, but because it is unfair that trans people keep being put in this position. The question being asked is: do you vote for someone who will harm you in order to stop someone who will harm you more?

For a lot of single-issue voters, this kind of calculation is theoretical. For trans people right now, it is not. An anti-trans Democrat in office is a harm. A Republican who is openly, aggressively, legislatively hostile to trans existence is a different order of harm. Both things are true, and genuinely hard to reconcile.

What I will say is that Reed is right about the longer game. If trans voters have no credible way to signal that there is a floor, a point below which a candidate cannot fall and still expect trans support, then there is no floor. The party will keep testing how far down it can go. The Ohio race involving Amy Acton is a case in point: Equality Ohio gave her a B, she has made no substantive public statement supporting trans people, she skipped a listening session her own campaign scheduled with trans advocates, and she is running against Vivek Ramaswamy, who has built much of his political identity on transphobia. Trans voters in Ohio are being asked to choose between someone who does not see them and someone who actively despises them. That is not a choice, it is a trap.

What a principled response looks like

Voting is not the only tool available. In races where the anti-trans Democrat is polling comfortably ahead, withholding that vote or voting third party sends a signal at lower cost. In races that are genuinely close against a deeply hostile Republican opponent, the calculation shifts. Neither of those is a betrayal of trans people. Both of them can be the right call depending on the specific race.

What would help trans voters most right now is exactly what Reed has done: name the candidates, name the records, and make the information available. The HRC's role should be to reinforce that, not to smooth it over in the name of coalition maintenance. An endorsement is a signal. When it is given to someone who has not earned it, the signal misleads.

Trans people deserve to vote with full information and without being guilted into gratitude for the lesser harm. That is the minimum.