Transgender teens ages 13 to 17 comprise a scant 3.1% of the youth population in Virginia. But trans issues have loomed unusually large in Virginia’s gubernatorial election this year — and not in a good way.

Roger Chesley

 

From 2014 to early 2025 — when state policy changed to prevent transgender athletes from participating in girls sports in the public school divisions — just 48 appeals had been filed by transgender athletes to compete in school sports, a Vi rginia High School L e a g u e spokesman confirmed to me. That’s a minuscule number of students who participate in sports annually. 

Yet Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears has flogged the issue repeatedly, in a way disproportionate to the number of people affected. The scheme also distracts from more critical concerns, like soaring food costs, impending health care changes, and the chaos that has beset the federal government since Donald Trump’s second presidential term started in January. Those issues affect all Virginians. 

Earle-Sears’ hateful strategy targets already vulnerable people who seek to be their true selves. She has employed it to try to defeat Democratic Party nominee Abigail Spanberger in November. The former congresswoman has been more tolerant on transgender topics, and she has said bathroom use in schools based on gender should be decided at the local level. 

CNN reported that last month, Earle-Sears’ campaign spent $2 million on ads focused on transgender policy, more than it spent on any other issue. The news website Notus. org said Republicans in the gubernatorial contest, including her campaign, have dedicated a whopping 57% of all their paid media campaigning toward transgender-related issues, citing data from the company AdImpact. 

The discriminatory crusade demonizes transgender people and their families. Other GOP candidates across the country have followed suit in local, state and federal contests. It suggests how bankrupt their overall messaging is. 

For example, state Del. Chad Green, R-York, who’s running for reelection, teamed up with Earle-Sears this month at a campaign stop in Williamsburg. He said barring “biological males” from competing against females was among his top priorities, The Virginian-Pilot reported. 

Added Earle-Sears: “All the Democrats want biological men in girls sports.” 

It’s a lot of umbrage directed at a relatively small population of athletes and individuals. And these Republican candidates know it. 

Transgender adults, incidentally, have a prevalence of past-year thoughts about suicide “that is nearly twelve times higher, and a prevalence of past-year suicide attempts that is about eighteen times higher, than the U.S. general population,” according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. They certainly don’t need hyped comments from political leaders. 

The Republican tack on transgender people is reprehensible. This cynical blueprint to stoke fear, drive transphobic voters to the polls and exploit ignorance mimics one that Trump used in the 2024 presidential election. 

Republicans nationwide, obviously, would rather spew on this topic than debate cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. Those reductions occurred because of the president’s bill that took money from the poor to pay for tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the rich. Republicans in Congress, who control both chambers, passed the legislation. 

Such programs impact millions of people, including folks in the Commonwealth. Nearly 2 million Virginians used Medicaid or FAMIS, the state’s health insurance for children, earlier this year. More than 866,000 used SNAP. 

Regarding the fixation on trans people, “They’re focusing on this more than issues that affect all Virginians,” Reed Williams told me. The 23-year-old trans woman attended high school in Virginia Beach and is now on the staff of Equality Virginia, a LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. 

Williams recently wrote a heartfelt column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch verbalizing her dismay at the attention that conservative candidates place on this issue, when things like the economy and rising prices are much more important. She’s right. 

Williams noted, matter-of-factly, that she used the girls bathroom from the eighth to 12th grades — one of the overheated talking points for conservatives. Williams had a summer job in City Hall at 16. 

“Confusion over my gender could be remedied with a productive conversation, agreement to disagree, or simply moving on,” she wrote. “Virginia’s current fight over transgender people is entirely manufactured.” 

I reached out to a spokesperson for Earle-Sears, the current lieutenant governor, about her focus on trans issues, but Peyton Vogel didn’t respond to my messages. Among them: Has Earle-Sears actually discussed her concerns with transgender individuals, especially those who transitioned during high school? 

Besides, it’s not like the topic leads the list of priorities for Virginians. Far from it. 

A Virginia Commonwealth University poll in September said that, among the top issues influencing registered voters in the state, 28% named the rising cost of living, followed by women’s reproductive rights (13%) and immigration and education (12%). Similarly, a Washington Post-George Mason University poll this month found just 4% of voters in the Commonwealth said policies about transgender students were the most important issue in the governor’s race. 

Instead, look at what Virginia is facing: 

Because of the ongoing shutdown by the federal government, 900 furloughed federal employees have filed unemployment claims in Virginia during the first two weeks of October. 

The Trump administration’s federal job cuts — most of which had little publicly announced criteria — have hurt Virginia; 341,000 federal workers lived here in 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau reported. 

The state’s unemployment rate is projected to hit 4.1% by the end of the year, up from 2.9% in 2024, according to the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia. 

But sure, Republicans, continue to be transfixed on transgender voters. 

It’s not the first time you’ve scapegoated minorities by race or gender. Going back to at least your Willie Horton ads during the 1988 presidential contest between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, you’ve been chock full of stereotyping and fear-mongering. 

You simply don’t care who you harm in the process. 

May your gutless ploy backfire. 

The writer is a columnist and editorial writer with the Virginia Mercury, where this commentary originally appeared.