A majority of U.S. voters set aside all evidence of Republican nominee Donald Trump's mental decline, adoration of dictators, criminal convictions, and hostility to the U.S. Constitution and gave him a decisive victory November 5 over Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
Mother Jones magazine called the 2024 presidential election the "most anti-LGBTQ election in decades." And, on Wednesday morning, many post-election political analysts were crediting much of Trump's victory to the campaign's $21 million investment in an anti-transgender ad. The ad ran more than 30,000 times — especially during televised football games — and apparently helped win over young men of all races. In a campaign heavily divided by gender — including the possibility that the U.S. would elect its first woman president — the ad apparently helped secure the popular vote and the necessary electoral votes in closely contested swing states.
And much of the post-election commentary criticized the Harris campaign's failure to produce any response to the ad.
Fox News reporter Bret Baier tried to get some traction for the anti-LGBTQ tactic during his interview with Harris October 16.
"Are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?" asked Baier.
"I will follow the law, and it's a law that Donald Trump actually followed," noted Harris. The ads, and various speeches by Trump at rallies, derided the "transgender insanity" in schools. Trump repeatedly characterized Harris' position as supporting the use of taxpayer funds for "sex-change operations" and transgender girls and women playing in girls and women's sports.
The ad did not, of course, explain that a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling held that the Eighth Amendment requires federal prisons to make "medically necessary" treatment available to prisoners. The American Medical Association and others have deemed "mental health care, hormone therapy, and gender-affirming surgical procedures [as] medically necessary...."
The Trump ads used a video clip showing a transgender basketball player towering over her young female teammates. (The Washington Post reported that the woman, Gabrielle Ludwig, played basketball at a community college at the age of 51 and was devastated by the ad.)
Another ad showed Harris responding in 2019 to a question from a transgender interviewer, asking her position on the availability of treatment for gender dysphoria for prisoners. In response, Harris chose her words carefully, noting that the law requires every transgender person in prison "have access" to medically necessary treatment.
But however much the anti-trans ads may have garnered Trump a margin of victory, at deadline Wednesday, data available from major media outlets showed Trump with 71 million votes to Harris' 66 million. News media tallies also indicated Trump won at least four and possibly all seven swing states, finishing the race with 277 electoral votes to Harris' 224. (It takes 270 to win.)
LGBTQs largely back Harris
The LGBTQ community invested heavily in the Harris bid to succeed Democratic President Joe Biden and become the first woman and first woman of color to win the presidency. LGBTQ papers, including those in the three swing states Harris had to win (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), endorsed Harris. LGBTQ groups did, too, including the Human Rights Campaign, the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund, and the Equality Political Action Committee.
Log Cabin Republicans backed Trump and used the transgender issue itself.
"Harris and [Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz] are crusaders for a small but powerful cabal of the LGBT Left which wants to erase the concept of biological sex from society, expose young children to overtly sexualized and ideological content, and strip parents of their rights to make critical decisions about their children," wrote national Log Cabin President Charles Moran in an op-ed September 13 in Newsweek magazine.
Equality California, the country's largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization, said it is already gearing up to fight to protect the LGBTQ community during Trump's second term.
"No matter who occupies the White House, we remain committed to fighting for our families, our freedoms, and our future," stated EQCA Executive Director Tony Hoang, a gay man. "We will use every tool at our disposal to protect LGBTQ+ people from harassment and discrimination, create a safe and inclusive learning environment for LGBTQ+ students and ensure that transgender people can access the essential health care they need. We will keep organizing across this nation, raising our voices and resisting every barrier. Our light is too bright to hide, and our community is too strong to break."
An unusual campaign
Biden, 81, withdrew his bid for reelection in July, after showing signs of cognitive difficulty and confusion during a June debate with Trump, 78. Biden's decision to do so had been pushed openly by many Democrats and more opaquely by Democratic Party leaders, such as former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).
Biden immediately threw his support behind his vice president, Harris, creating a groundswell of support for the 60-year-old former San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general, and U.S. senator. Biden's support, coupled with the party's obvious relief that it was overcoming concerns about its nominee's ability to serve, seemed to cure Democrats' panic. But race and gender started to play a major part in voters' thinking.
Voters in seven highly contested swing states gave Trump control of the White House and gave Republicans a decisive majority in the U.S. Senate. At deadline, partisan control of the U.S. House of Representatives had not yet been determined, but the New York Times reported that Republicans were leading with 197 seats to Democrats 177.
As of Wednesday morning, there were still 64 seats yet to be decided, many of them in California. That leaves open the hope that Democrats might be able to take majority control of the House. If they don't, Trump will have a rubber stamp Congress with Republican majorities in both chambers.
Joe Scarborough, host of the popular MSNBC commentary show "Morning Joe," said Wednesday morning he believes the anti-transgender ads that popped up during football games in the swing states "had a bigger impact than any ad that ran and that's why they ran it 30,000 times."
Washington Post commentator Matt Bai said, "Democrats dug themselves into a hole on cultural issues and identity politics."
One of the ads' closing lines was "She's for they/them, he's for you," noted Bai, who agreed that "Trump's vicious transgender ad in the closing weeks was probably the most effective of the cycle."
"I think that probably landed with a lot of traditionally Democratic voters who feel like the party is consumed with cultural issues while the economic issues don't really change," wrote Bai.
On conservative Joe Rogan's podcast, Republican vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance (Ohio) said, "Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote because they just want to be left the hell alone."
Gay CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper pondered Vance's comment on his show.
"I'm curious where the line is between a 'normal gay person' and a not normal gay person is," said Cooper. "I'm assuming that wearing as much makeup as Donald Trump wears — that would be considered not normal — fine for Donald Trump but on a gay guy that wouldn't be considered normal."
Los Angeles Times reporter Noah Bierman told ABC that, while transgender people are not a top issue for Republicans in the same way migrants are, the ads were "really intended to bring the culture wars back in."
"The Trump campaign is heavily focused on young men, and they feel like this is an issue that resonates with them," said Bierman. He said they are also intended to paint Harris as an out of touch liberal.
A national poll of 806 registered voters, conducted online and by phone in mid-October, found that 8% (64 voters) identified themselves as LGBTQ+. While voters overall split 50% for Harris, 47% percent for Trump, 3% others, voters who identified themselves as LGBTQ+ preferred Harris 78% to Trump's 20% and other's 2%. (The poll also provided some interesting data on how "masculine" and how "feminine" the voters perceive each candidate to be and how that affected their votes.)
Coincidentally, three states voted on same-sex marriage laws Tuesday: California, Colorado, and Hawaii. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that states had to allow same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses the same as heterosexual couples, very few states that had banned such marriages took the language out of their state constitutions.
In California, voters approved Proposition 3 to amend the state constitution to repeal the language of Proposition 8, which in 2008 prohibited same-sex marriage. (Courts eventually overturned Prop 8.) Passed by 61% of the vote, Prop 3 amends the state constitution to establish a right of marriage for same-sex couples. A similar measure, Amendment J, in Colorado passed with 64% and, in Hawaii, Question 1 passed with 61%.
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