Delaware provided disappointed Democrats with a pair of bright spots in an otherwise grim night for the party.
Tuesday was historic, as the state elected Sarah McBride to the House, making her the first transgender member of Congress, and Lisa Blunt Rochester to the Senate, making her Delaware’s first African American and female senator.
The Associated Press called Blunt Rochester’s race shortly after polls closed, and she gave her victory speech minutes later, touching upon the noteworthy sorority she was joining that night.
“We are a country that is strengthened over time by the soul and sacrifice of those who serve, and by all of those who came before us,” said Blunt Rochester. “So, as I prepare to step foot on that trail blazed by three strong Black women senators who came before us — Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Sen. Laphonza Butler — I have a message to the young people. For standing up, speaking up and giving your all for your country and the world: I see you, I am grateful to you. And you’ve got next.”
McBride’s victory was announced soon after.
Their joy came amid wider misery for Democrats, who woke up Wednesday morning to see that Harris’ own bid to become the first woman president fell short against former President Donald Trump.
McBride delivered her victory speech as Democrats began to realize that election night was turning against them elsewhere. “We know that the divisions and nastiness that we too often see nationally, must not — and do not have to — be our new normal,” McBride said, according to her prepared remarks. “That a different kind of politics is possible: a politics of hope, not of hate; of grace, not of grievance; of progress, not of pettiness.”
Blunt Rochester, speaking well before any swing states were called in the presidential election, ended her speech with a message for optimism in the face of “the toughest of times.”
“Right now, in this moment, we don’t need a little hope,” she said. “We don’t need some hope. We don’t need normal hope. What we need is bright hope.”
McBride won even as Republicans across the nation increasingly tried to use trans rights as a wedge issue. One television ad from a Trump-aligned super PAC ended with Harris talking to a drag queen as the narrator warned “Crazy liberal Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
“I’m so incredibly grateful she’s doing this,” said Jay Brown, chief of staff at the Human Rights Campaign. Brown, who is trans, worked with McBride at HRC.
“The reality of the world today for LGBTQ folks — for trans folks especially — is not an easy one,” Brown told CQ Roll Call over the summer. “But we don’t make progress without being part of the solution.”
Blunt Rochester, who was also Delaware’s first female and Black U.S. representative, will be just the third Black woman elected to the Senate and fourth overall, a distinction she will share with Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat who, according to the AP’s call on Tuesday night, defeated former Gov. Larry Hogan in neighboring Maryland.
The first Black woman in the Senate was Braun of Illinois, who lost reelection in 1998 after one term. The second came 18 years later, when California elected Harris. And another, Butler, was appointed to finish Dianne Feinstein’s term in 2023. Like Blunt Rochester and Alsobrooks, they are all Democrats.
That representation matters, said Patrice Willoughby, chief of policy at the NAACP.
“It’s important because Black women have lacked access to these roles in the past. It’s much harder to raise money, it’s harder to gain the coalition of support,” she said. “Older Black folks always say, ‘You have to work twice as hard to do half as good.’”
Tuesday night also represented a generational shift for Delaware politics, although not a complete break from the past. Delaware’s favorite son, Joe Biden, will leave office for good in January after a half century in the public spotlight as senator, vice president and president. Blunt Rochester is replacing Tom Carper, a man she once interned for, who is retiring after 24 years in the Senate. McBride is herself taking Blunt Rochester’s seat in the House; Carper is a family friend, and Biden wrote the foreword to her memoir.
“Eight years ago, Lisa made history as the first African American woman elected to represent Delaware in Congress. And tonight, she’s made history again,” Carper said in a written statement. “When I stood on the banks of the Christina River to announce I was stepping down a year and a half ago, I had no doubt in my mind that Lisa would be the best person to represent Delaware and move our state — and our country — forward.”
While neither McBride nor Blunt Rochester shied away from their identities when it came up on the campaign trail, both focused their appeals on voters and the issues that matter to them. In the House, Blunt Rochester worked on agricultural issues that are important for Delaware’s many farmers while pushing for the usual slate of progressive policies you’d expect in such a solidly blue state, like clean energy and gun control. McBride ran on her bipartisan accomplishments in the state legislature, particularly on health care.
That focus served them well, said Betsy Maron, chair of the Delaware Democratic Party. “Both candidates have run campaigns that have centered on issues not themselves,” she said in a written statement. “The historic nature of the elections is important to celebrate but to most voters, what is most important, is that they get the job done.”
McBride has made health care a central focus of her political career, particularly paid family medical leave. She witnessed firsthand the burdens families go through taking care of ailing loved ones when her husband died of cancer. She successfully sponsored the bill to create Delaware’s new statewide paid family and medical leave program in 2022.
She makes a positive impression on nearly everyone she meets, said Delaware state Sen. David Sokola. He pointed to how McBride crisscrossed the state to talk to business owners who were worried about the paid family medical leave proposal. She won a lot of converts, Sokola said, but “even the people she didn’t persuade said nice things about her.”
That speaks to what McBride calls “the power of proximity” — the ability to convince others there’s nothing to fear from trans people like her.
McBride will come to Congress with a deeper Rolodex than most freshmen, having fundraised for and with Democratic leaders at LGBTQ-focused events across the nation.
“We are looking forward to her bringing that experience and her history making candidacy here, just when trans people are so under attack. Sarah is going to be just a leader for equality and justice for everyone,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., told Roll Call before the election. Clark has a trans daughter.
McBride’s closest friends and supporters think this is just the latest in a series of historic firsts for her that began when she came out in college. “She could be governor, she could be senator, she could even be president one day,” Mark Purpura, president of the Equality Delaware Foundation, told Roll Call over the summer.
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