- GOP spends $65M on anti-trans ads
- Campaigns push “division, chaos, and hate”
- Strategy failed in past elections
Donald Trump and the Republican Party are promoting “division, chaos, and hate” by spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising assaulting transgender people, according to advocates, as the right wing’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric escalates.
According to the New York Times, the GOP has spent more than $65 million on commercials attacking trans people, with the former president’s most frequently aired ad hitting Kamala Harris for supporting gender-affirming care.
Television commercials have also been running in competitive statewide races further down the ballot, including Ohio, Montana, and Wisconsin, with Republicans resorting to hyperbolic, far-right talking points that were ineffective in the 2022 midterm elections.
“The Maga [Make America Great Again] agenda is one of division, chaos, and hate,” said Brandon Wolf, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.
“They pit neighbours against one another and try to divide our communities because they don’t have a vision for lifting people up or bringing the nation together.”
One Trump ad recalls comments made by the vice president in 2019 when she stated that she favored “surgical care” for transgender prisoners. The ad has Harris posing next to Pattie Gonia, a drag queen whose real name is Wyn Wiley, who has stated that he may sue the Trump campaign for exploiting his image without permission and concludes with the voiceover: “Kamala is for them, them. “President Trump is for you.”
The economy and immigration are among the most important issues for Americans in the next election, and Trump has focused much of his rhetoric on them. However, with some surveys indicating that Harris is gaining trust on these topics, it appears that Trump and the Republican Party have made a determined effort to focus on anti-trans issues.
However, data suggests that this is an unsuccessful technique.
Two years ago, Republicans ran on anti-transgender platforms in contests across the country, and they rarely won. Blake Masters, Arizona’s Republican Senate candidate, falsely claimed Democrats of “indoctrinating children” during his campaign. In contrast, his campaign distributed yard signs reading, “Blake Masters won’t ask your pronouns in the US Senate.” Masters lost 5% to Mark Kelly.
In Arizona, Republican candidate Herschel Walker released ads criticizing trans athletes and claiming that when trans persons “go to heaven,” “Jesus may not recognize them.” Walker lost the runoff race to Democrat Raphael Warnock. According to HRC, the American Principles Project spent $2 million on an ad campaign in Kentucky against Andy Beshear, the incumbent Democratic governor, “for his support for transgender young people and the freedom for their families to access health care” in 2023. Beshear sailed to victory in a traditionally Republican state.
“The more Maga bullies are exposed for having no plan for America, the more they turn to their same tired playbook of transphobia,” Wolf told the crowd. “But again – it’s a losing strategy because voters know better.”
The anti-trans ad campaigns come as attacks on trans and LGBTQ+ individuals increase in the United States. Glaad, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, discovered that there were 1,109 anti-LGBTQ+ occurrences between June 2023 and June 2024, a 112% rise over the previous year.
Republicans have sponsored hundreds of anti-trans measures around the country in recent years, as opposing LGBTQ+ rights has become a litmus test for becoming a Republican politician. Trump has stated that he would direct federal agencies to discontinue all programs “that promote the concept of sex and gender transition” and that he would request that Congress “permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars” from being spent on gender-affirming care.
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But there is no evidence that trans concerns are at the forefront of voters’ minds.
HRC polling conducted following the 2022 midterms revealed that fewer than 5% of respondents cited gender-affirming care for trans kids or trans involvement in sports as motivators to vote. In September, a New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters found that a majority of people in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin believe that “society should accept transgender people as having the gender they identify with” – implying that anti-trans ads may have little impact.
“Politicians escalating this line of attack are out of touch with where their voters are,” said Glaad president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.
“The emphasis on other people’s bodies and children is repugnant. Our pronouns do not make you poorer; tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and plans to withhold overtime pay and levy taxes through tariffs do.”
Ellis said, “The ads are a pathetic attempt to get people to forget how these policies will make everyone’s lives dramatically worse.”
