Sarah McBride
- Born:
- August 9, 1990, Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. (age 34)
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Sarah McBride (born August 9, 1990, Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.) is a transgender politician serving as a Democratic state senator in Delaware who was elected to the state’s single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2024. When she takes her oath of office in January 2025, McBride will become the first openly transgender member of Congress. After winning her Delaware state senate seat in 2020, she became the highest-ranking transgender elected official in the United States. McBride, a progressive Democrat, has long been an advocate for LGBTQ equality, racial justice, an expanded social safety net, workers’ rights, and green technologies.
Education and early interest in politics
McBride’s mother, Sally McBride, was a counselor at the Cab Calloway School of the Arts, which she cofounded in 1992, and her father, David McBride, was a lawyer with the prominent law firm Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor. McBride graduated from the Cab Calloway school in 2009 and from American University in Washington, D.C., with a bachelor’s degree in government in 2013.
Her interest in politics, government, and advocacy began at an early age. When she was 11 years old she happened to meet her political idol, then Senator Joe Biden, at a local pizzeria; he autographed a page from his briefing book and wrote, “Remember me when you are president.” (McBride still has the autograph.) Starting at age 13, she acted as a campaign volunteer for Matthew Denn, one of her father’s legal colleagues, who was elected state insurance commissioner in 2004. Jack Markell, then the state treasurer, met McBride during Denn’s campaign and was impressed by her enthusiasm and intelligence. Two years later Markell asked McBride to introduce him at his official announcement of his bid for reelection. For the next three years McBride effectively served as an opening act for Markell throughout the state, including during his successful campaign for governor in 2008; McBride was an intern and then a paid employee of Markell’s campaign. McBride also helped Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s eldest child, to win election as state attorney general in 2006 and 2010.
McBride naturally participated in politics at American University, serving in the student senate before winning the student body presidency in her sophomore year. As president she worked with the university’s administration to establish an inclusive housing policy allowing students of any gender identity to live with other students of their choice. On the final day of her presidency in April 2012, McBride posted an announcement on Facebook of her previously concealed gender identity and the first name she had chosen for herself—Sarah—and she soon received numerous expressions of support from her friends, colleagues, and fellow students. Her announcement was published the next day (with her permission) in the university’s student newspaper, The Eagle.
Soon afterward, McBride received an email from White House staff inviting her to a reception hosted by Pres. Barack Obama in celebration of LGBTQ Pride Month in June. Two months later, after the Obama administration accepted her application to serve as an intern, she became the first openly transgender person to work in the White House. During her internship, McBride became better acquainted with her idol, who was then vice president of the United States.
Political career
In 2013, during her senior year at American University, McBride joined the board of directors of Equality Delaware, the state’s leading LGBTQ rights organization, and began lobbying the Delaware state legislature in support of a transgender rights bill, the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act. In June an amended version of the bill was narrowly approved by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Markell. During the signing ceremony, Markell declared:
I especially want to thank my friend Sarah McBride, an intelligent and talented Delawarean who happens to be transgender. She courageously stood before the General Assembly to describe her personal struggles with gender identity and communicate her desire to return home after her college graduation without fear. Her tireless advocacy for passage of this legislation has made a real difference for all transgender people in Delaware.
For her work in securing adoption of the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act and advancing equality in Delaware, McBride was later awarded the Order of the First State, Delaware’s highest civilian honor.
After the law’s enactment, McBride worked as a campaign and communications manager on LGBTQ issues at the Center for American Progress and later became the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest advocacy group for LGBTQ civil rights in the United States. In July 2016, when she was 25 years old, she delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, which she began by declaring, “My name is Sarah McBride, and I am a proud transgender American.” She thus became the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention.
Three years later McBride announced her candidacy for a seat in the Delaware state senate, which she won in November 2020. As a state senator she sponsored several progressive legislative initiatives, notably including the Healthy Delaware Families Act (2022), which enabled qualified employees to take up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave and up to 6 weeks of paid medical or family-care leave; the Digital Citizenship Education Act (2022), which required public schools to educate students in media literacy in order to protect them from what she called the “corrosive effect” of online bullying and misinformation and disinformation; and the Protect Medicaid Act (2024), which was projected to secure up to $175 million in additional federal funding for Delaware’s Medicaid program.
In June 2023 McBride announced her bid to run for Delaware’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. After winning the Democratic House primary in September 2024, she easily defeated her Republican opponent in the general election in November and was widely acclaimed as the first openly transgender congressperson.
Gender identity and personal life
In her memoir Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality (2018), published when she was 27 years old, McBride recounted the sadness and anxiety she suffered for many years at what she perceived to be the inevitable conflict between her dreams and her gender identity—her fearful belief that coming out as a transgender girl or woman would expose her to ridicule and discrimination and prevent her from having “a family, a career, [and] fulfillment” and from “improving my world and making my family proud.” From a very early age she was uncomfortable with the identity she had been assigned at birth and felt that even her family, notwithstanding their affection and support, did not know who she really was. By age 21 she had decided that she could not “hide” herself any longer, and she told her parents on Christmas Day of 2011 that she was transgender. They reacted with shock and disapproval, mostly out of concern for her future but also out of sincere regret for the “loss” of the child they had known and loved. Before too long, however, they came to accept and support McBride’s decision. Four months after she had come out to her parents, McBride revealed her true self in her public announcements on Facebook and The Eagle, and she was greatly relieved at the wave of positive reactions she received. (The introduction to McBride’s memoir was written by Biden.)
At the White House reception for LGBTQ Pride Month in 2012, McBride met Andrew Cray, a transgender man who worked for the LGBTQ equality team at the Center for American Progress—the same group that McBride later joined herself. The two dated and began living together in 2013. Soon thereafter Cray was diagnosed with cancer, which was successfully treated with radiation and chemotherapy. In the spring of 2014, however, the cancer returned, and Cray was told he would not survive. McBride and Cray married in late August of that year, and Cray died four days later.