Top Democratic candidates in Ohio are showing signs of backing off their support on transgender issues ahead of the November election, upsetting some party activists and leaving some transgender Ohioans feeling abandoned.
Both Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic governor candidate, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a long-tenured Toledo Democrat facing a tough reelection fight in November, were the targets of separate critical op-eds last week in the Buckeye Flame, an LGBTQ-focused news outlet in Cleveland.
Both Democrats have shown recent signs of pivoting on transgender issues. Acton said she “doesn’t support boys playing in girls’ sports” in a newspaper statement in June, and Kaptur voted in May for a Republican-backed bill requiring schools to notify parents of their child’s request to change their gender, pronouns or preferred name. Both op-eds criticized the candidates for not more clearly stating their overall views on transgender issues.
Ken Schneck, the editor of the Buckeye Flame, told Signal Statewide that Democrats in competitive races across the country have begun to back off transgender rights after their losses in the 2024 election.
“What we’ve heard from various elected officials is, if you’re going to try to get a statewide electorate, you’re going to have to make some compromises,” Schneck said. “But that comes at a cost at the hands of LGBTQ voters.”
Ohio Democratic Party affiliates criticize Acton
The internal party discontent spilled into public view after the Ohio Democrats Progressive Caucus, an official state party advisory group, issued – and then later deleted – a statement blasting Acton for her comment, saying it would cost her support from the party’s base.
“Any one of us could have warned her of that natural consequence if any one of us had been in the room with her. Despite our disagreement on this issue, we remain ready to work with her to achieve our shared goals to improve life in Ohio,” the statement read. The group didn’t respond to messages.
Activists are particularly upset that Acton framed transgender participation in sports as a decision of whether or not boys should play in girls’ sports. They say this framing negates that transgender girls are girls.
“There are no boys in girls’ sports,” the Ohio Democratic Party’s Pride Caucus, another affiliated advisory group, said in an July 2 Facebook post. “Trans girls are girls.”
NV Gay, a transgender activist in Columbus who wrote the Buckeye Flame op-ed criticizing Acton, said Acton could have just said she will enforce laws even if she disagrees with them.
Instead, they said Acton caused harm to transgender people by suggesting transgender girls aren’t girls.
“I think the effects of her words are extremely damaging to the trans girls out there who are wanting to just be themselves,” Gay said.
Brown calls issue ‘settled law’
Asked to weigh in on the issue, a spokesperson for Sherrod Brown’s U.S. Senate campaign issued a statement describing Brown’s focus on other issues.
“In Ohio, this is already settled law,” said the spokesperson, Lauren Chou. “Sherrod is focused on taking on the rigged system and improving the lives of Ohioans who continue to demand relief from Jon Husted, who has voted time and again to raise the cost of their gas, groceries, and utilities.”
Marisa Nahem, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party, issued a statement saying Democrats are “laser-focused” on similar issues as well as defeating Republicans.
Republicans, meanwhile, said they still plan to attack Kaptur and Brown based on their past records, not their more recent words. The Ohio Republican Party also has mischieviously made note of Democrats’ inter-party turmoil.
“For 43 years, Marcy has been on the wrong side of too many common sense issues, like keeping men out of girls’ sports,” said Michael Stwarka, a spokesperson for Derek Merrin, Kaptur’s Republican opponent in the November election. “It’s that time of the year that Marcy shows up and pretends she is someone else. The voters can see right through this facade.”
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Republican attacks lead to Democratic debate
Many Democrats sincerely believe in transgender rights, which they view as a civil-rights issue. But they’ve also come to believe that their support of transgender rights was a major factor in why they fared so poorly in the 2024 election. In Ohio, Republicans flooded the TV airwaves with ads attacking then-Sen. Sherrod Brown for his long history of supporting LGBTQ+ rights. Nationally and in Ohio, Republicans have pursued a variety of transgender restrictions affecting medical care, schools, sports and public accomodations.
Brown eventually responded by issuing his own ad calling the attacks false, and saying he agreed with Republican Gov. Mike DeWine that the issues should be left to local athletic officials. But he still lost his race by 3 percentage points to Republican now-Sen. Bernie Moreno.
Since Brown’s defeat, Democrats have debated how to address the issue without abandoning or alienating their supporters. Meanwhile, polling consistently has shown broad voter opposition, including from a significant number of Democrats, to transgender issues involving gender-affirming medical treatment for minors, bathroom access and sports. LGBTQ+ advocates have said most major medical groups support gender affirming care and the general public misunderstands transgender issues unless they have a personal connection.
Democrats evolve on transgender issues
Immediately following the November 2024 election, Ohio Democrats showed early signs of not backing down. In a symbolic move, Ohio Senate Democrats voted and argued against a Republican-backed bill requiring state schools and universities to designate bathrooms based on students’ sex assigned at birth. The bill passed anyway, since Republicans hold supermajorities in the state legislature.
But Kaptur’s vote in May for House Resolution 2616 shows how not all Democrats followed suit.
Kaptur was one of eight Democrats to vote for the measure, which would require schools to get parental permission to:
- Use a child’s preferred name or pronouns on any school form
- Allow a child to use a bathroom or locker room based on their gender identity rather than sex assigned at birth
The measure also would strip federal funding from any school found to “teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology.”
It’s still pending in the Republican-controlled Senate after passing the House. Opponents call the measure a “Don’t Say Trans” bill, and equate parental notification with outing transgender kids. Kaptur voted against a previous bill containing similar language, although it was more expansive.
Kaptur issued a statement to Signal Statewide via her congressional office explaining her vote on HR 2616 while sidestepping the larger controversy.
She said that every child deserves “dignity, respect, and compassion, and our responsibility is to foster trust between families and schools.”
“The best way to do so is to encourage open communication and keep the focus where it belongs – on helping every young person grow, learn, and reach their fullest potential,” Kaptur said. “Parents have a right to be involved in their children’s lives and to have important information about their child’s well-being. Parental involvement is an important principle, and not something I will stand in the way of so long as students have safe avenues to report abuse. We must foster trust between families and schools, encourage open communication, and keep the focus where it belongs, on ensuring all children can thrive.”
The issue flared up again in June, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding Idaho, West Virginia and other states’ ability to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
Ohio has a similar law, which took effect in January 2024 after Republican legislators overturned a veto by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
In a June 30 article about the Supreme Court decision, the Toledo Blade asked Acton for a comment. The newspaper reported the campaign said Acton agrees with Ohio’s law.
“I do not support boys playing in girls’ sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor, I will uphold and enforce the law,” Acton said.
The op-eds published in the Buckeye Flame last week criticized both Acton and Kaptur for their respective actions and words.
The Kaptur op-ed, written by Arienne Childrey, a transgender activist who’s vice chair of the Ohio Democratic Party’s Pride Caucus, said Kaptur’s office refused to explain her vote.
Childrey, who’s running a longshot campaign for Ohio House, declined to comment for this story.
‘We don’t have a politician who is truly on our side’
The anti-Acton op-ed, written by NV Gay, said Acton’s campaign refused to clarify her statement further. Schneck, the Buckeye Flame editor, said his staff has debated the ambiguous statement’s meaning.
“Is there any space for her saying ‘I don’t support boys playing in girls’ sports,’ but the implied next sentence being ‘Transgender girls aren’t boys?’ But she didn’t say that sentence, so we’re just filling in blanks,” Schneck said.
Schneck said the articles have elicited a range of reader responses, including from people who don’t think the Flame should have published them at all, arguing they help Acton’s Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy, who has said that “transgenderism is a mental health disorder.”
Others have argued this is an opportunity to educate and influence Acton about how to speak about transgender issues. Many in social media comments have described their choice in November as between “the lesser of two evils.”
Some Democrats view the debate as a distraction.
“Now is not the time for purity tests,” said Chris Redfern, a former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party. “And Democrats have many and varied positions on important issues, but we are completely united in the opposition to Donald Trump and his failed policies and the corruption of Ohio Republicans over the course of the last 16 years.”
Gay, the author of the anti-Acton op-ed, said they and others understand the political strategy behind calculating on transgender issues. But it’s still disheartening, and reveals a system that’s rigged against the vulnerable, she said.
“Once again we’re in this fight where we don’t have a politician who is truly on our side,” Gay said.
