Eight transgender or nonbinary Democrats won legislative races on Tuesday, with victories spanning Alabama, Montana, Georgia, Delaware, Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Seven won seats in state legislatures, and Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride won a second term in Congress.
The winners were Allison Montgomery in Alabama, McBride in Delaware, Jaelynn Scott in Washington, Joanna Whaley in Michigan, Bentley Hudgins in Georgia, Zooey Zephyr in Montana, Leigh Finke in Minnesota, and Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford in Wisconsin.
In Alabama, Montgomery defeated Republican incumbent Phillip Rigsby in House District 25, becoming the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker. Preliminary results from the Alabama Secretary of State’s office show Montgomery took 53.2 percent of the vote to Rigsby’s 46.7 percent.
In Montana, Zephyr won reelection to House District 95 in the Missoula area unopposed, taking all 4,761 votes cast, according to Decision Desk HQ.
In Georgia, Hudgins won House District 90, a heavily Democratic seat near Atlanta, with 27,921 votes, or 92.5 percent, against Republican Samantha Boston’s 2,280 votes, or 7.5 percent, according to Spectrum News. Hudgins becomes Georgia’s first openly transgender and nonbinary legislator.
Scott won 87.2 percent of the vote in Washington’s House District 37, Position 2, per preliminary returns. In Michigan, Whaley beat Republican Ron Kokinda in House District 2, 62.5 percent to 37.5 percent. Scott and Whaley are the first openly transgender women elected to their respective state legislatures.
In Minnesota, Finke retained House District 66A with 85.3 percent of the vote against Republican Mark Born’s 14.5 percent. In Wisconsin, Martinez-Rutherford won an open Assembly seat with 92.5 percent against Republican Nina Chat’s 7.5 percent.
McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress, won a second term representing Delaware with 64.3 percent of the vote, compared with Republican Joseph Arminio’s 35.7 percent.
A Broader Policy Fight
The results land amid ongoing national disputes over gender identity policy, parental rights, and school curricula. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Leor Sapir wrote on X that the transgender debate reflects deeper disagreements over institutional authority versus individual freedoms.
Polling shows a public that remains largely skeptical of some policies tied to the issue. A Pew Research Center analysis published in August found 73 percent of Americans are uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on teams that don’t match their sex at birth, including 69 percent of women. That discomfort crossed party lines: 91 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats said the same in the November 2025 survey.
A separate Pew survey from February 2025 found 66 percent of Americans support requiring transgender athletes to compete according to their sex at birth, up eight points from 2022. Forty-nine percent supported requiring public bathroom use according to birth sex, versus 26 percent opposed.
On school curricula, 47 percent supported barring public elementary schools from teaching about gender identity, while 34 percent opposed such a ban. The same survey found 56 percent support protections against discrimination for transgender people in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
