“This problem will help [the] The GOP wins the middle term, ”said Stephen Miller, the former White House Trump adviser who helped write his CPAC speech.
Some Republicans say that publicizing the issue will unite two key elements of a successful electoral coalition: the party’s socially conservative base, which mainly rejects the expansion of gay and transgender rights, and more moderate voters in the suburbs, who are less reliable supporters Of the Republican Party, but they may revolt against what they see as a Democratic exaggeration.
“It’s a cross-cutting issue,” added Miller. “Biden’s activist team is clearly making him adopt policies that alienate non-ideological voters.”
But the Republicans’ claim to be advocates of women’s sports is tenuous at best. During Trump’s presidency, he was at odds with female athletes at the university and professional levels, with most champion teams refusing to visit the White House in protest against his policies and personal treatment of women. And just last month, former senator-nominee Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), Who introduced a bill last September to ban transgender women from competing in gender-segregated sports, sold her stake in the Atlanta WNBA franchise afterwards that the team’s players openly campaigned for the Democrat who defeated her, now a senator. Raphael Warnock, in a special election in January.
“If Republicans are talking thoughtfully about this – supporting American transgender people while identifying an issue of equality – it could be attractive to more moderate suburban voters. But if it is introduced cruelly or as a way to ’embarrass libs’, it will not help, ”said veteran GOP strategist Rob Stutzman.
Several prominent and potential aspiring 2024 Republican officials have already started testing messages about women’s sports. Some claim that transgender women enjoy performance advantages over their cisgender and competing teammates and, therefore, can cause the latter group to miss out on scholarships and college opportunities. Currently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association requires transsexual women to undergo 12 months of treatment to suppress testosterone before they are allowed to compete with other women.
Others argue that transinclusive sports policies are a violation of women’s rights or a violation of Title IX, the 1972 federal law that paved the way for women’s equality in sports and education.
“Across the sporting world, gambling is being rigged against women and in favor of biological men,” wrote former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is expected to launch a presidential candidacy in 2024 in a National Review article last month.
Haley accused Biden of “paving the way for a federal mandate that all schools that receive federal funding let biological men play on women’s sports teams” after he signed an executive order to reduce discrimination against LGBTQ people in health, housing and schools at the beginning of their term. “The order was structured as a matter of transgender rights. But, really, it was an attack on women’s rights ”.
The issue has infiltrated the state level since the beginning of 2020, when several Republicans led states began to push for bills to limit or prohibit the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports. But recent attention is part of a sharper focus on cultural issues that conservatives believe can resonate in the undecided suburban state whose support for the Republican Party suffered a hemorrhage last fall.
“This is the decisive issue that will bring suburban women back to the polls and increase their support for Republicans, and Republicans would be foolish not to rely on that,” said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, a social organization Conservative group that has been urging Republicans to address the issue since last year.
“I hear from mothers all the time that they get up at dawn to take their daughters for swimming or participate in athletics competitions all weekend, and they don’t want biological men competing in their daughters’ teams. They know it would be detrimental to their daughters’ skills to get scholarships and recognition, ”added Nance.
Much of the GOP the rhetoric surrounding women’s sports can be traced back to Biden’s efforts on LGTBQ issues during his first weeks as president and the recent passage of the House Equality Act, which would expand anti-discrimination protections for LGBTB Americans. In addition to taking executive action, Biden recently instructed his government to withdraw government support for a lawsuit against the state of Connecticut that aims to prevent transgender athletes from competing in women’s high school. Sports.
Supporters of the House project and Biden’s actions rejected conservative efforts to use women’s sport as a club against Democrats, considering them cruel and unlikely to produce the results Republicans want in the midterm elections of the United States. next year.
“If Republicans want to win the votes of suburban women, the question that will do that for them is to be effective on issues that people have to face at the dinner table. This is not the problem, ”said Kate Oakley, state legislative director and senior advisor to the Human Rights Campaign.
Oakley also cited the Connecticut court case as a reason to reject the Republican Party’s “frenzy of fear” around women’s sports, noting that Selina Soule, the lead plaintiff in the case, is now a track and field athlete at the College of Charleston . Oakley also pointed to recent cases in which Republican state lawmakers who supported bills to ban trans women from competing in women’s sports have struggled to identify cases in their own states where a question about a transgender athlete has arisen.
“This is a completely fabricated problem,” said Oakley. “Certainly there are people who have daughters who are really destined for college – and there are parents who, let’s be honest, think their daughters are. The time for these discussions has passed and they will fall apart very quickly. “
But conservatives, who expect Republicans to stay focused on women’s sports in the coming months, have claimed that they are simply adopting an approach initially used by their political opponents.
“This is what Democrats do so well that Republicans don’t,” said Terry Schilling, executive director of the American Principles Project, a group that launched anti-transgender ads about women’s sports during the 2019 Kentucky governor race and elections generals for 2020. “They bring the statistics of violence against transgender people – and you look at the numbers, and they’re, like, 40 people.” (An HRC report published last November identified at least 37 cases in which transgender or non-gender-confirming people were killed in 2020).
A potential obstacle for Republicans who have embraced women’s sports as a new issue – from Haley and Trump to Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – is that an increasing number of Republican Party voters support non-discrimination laws and protections for LGBTQ Americans. For example, a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute last year found that 61 percent of Republicans supported anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans, an increase of 5 percentage points over the previous year.
Republicans are not unanimously behind the strategy. Two sources familiar with the matter said that Republican National Committee chairman Ronna McDaniel was part of a coalition of Trump advisers who encouraged the former president not to get involved in transgender issues during his re-election campaign. And in response to a POLITICO investigation into whether the RNC has plans to send messages about women’s sports, spokeswoman Mandi Merritt offered no indication that the committee would join Republican lawmakers and governors in their criticisms of transinclusive sports policies.
“Republicans are proud to have doubled our LGBT support in the past four years and we will continue to increase our big tent by supporting measures that promote justice and effectively balance protections for LGBT Americans and those with deep religious beliefs,” said Merritt in a statement. statement sent by email.
Meanwhile, Stutzman warned that current figures who are talking about transgender issues – including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Who hung a sign outside his Capitol Hill office last week that said, “ There are TWO genders: MAN AND WOMEN. Trust science! ”- failed to introduce“ a different perspective ”and were at risk of making GOP appear generally transphobic.
“From time to time, there is an issue that leaves people frustrated even outside of cultural wars, and I think there are probably political bases to be won in the suburbs if Republicans across the spectrum can address this correctly,” he said.
The topic already seems to be gaining attention among Republican candidates looking to make inroads with suburban voters and, at the same time, polish their conservative credentials. In a fundraising email sent to her supporters this week, Ohio Senate candidate Jane Timken, a staunch Trump supporter and former Republican Party president, accused Democrats of seeking “a mission to create a totally UNFAIR playing field for girls and women “.