Republicans Go All In on Anti-Trans Messaging

This story was produced as part of our partnership with NOTUS.

Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears and her conservative allies have gone all in on anti-trans messaging, launching more frequent attacks—and taking those attacks further—than Donald Trump’s campaign did in 2024.

It won’t be a one-off escalation.

The increased focus on transgender issues is a preview of the Republican Party’s message in the 2026 midterm election—including in North Carolina’s high-profile Senate race, according to political strategists in both parties. 

Republicans in the Virginia race have dedicated 57 percent of all their paid media campaigning toward transgender-related issues, according to data from AdImpact. Crime and immigration, two issues that Republicans have relied on heavily in recent elections, amount for only a combined 1 percent of ads, the data show.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger is “for they/them, not us,” one TV ad from Earle-Sears alleges, mentioning transgender athletes in schools and bathroom access. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the political arm of the Senate GOP, has already released a transgender-themed ad this year targeting Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia. 

Officials have signaled their interest in using similar attacks against other candidates, such as former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who is expected to be the Democratic Senate nominee. He is likely to face Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chairman.

“The way the battleground is shaping up, and who the leading Democrats are on their side, this is 100 percent going to be part of the conversation nationally,” said one GOP strategist working on 2026 races, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

The escalating anti-trans messaging from Republicans marks a new chapter in what has been one of the most visible and emotionally visceral issues in politics recently—one that has sparked intense debate within the Democratic Party and convinced Republicans they’re on the right side of a culture war fight. 

Cooper is running in a different environment than the last time the treatment of trans people dominated North Carolina politics. When he sought the governorship in 2016, the state was facing nationwide backlash over House Bill 2, which required people to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender assigned at birth. After Cooper won, ousting Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, the Republican-led General Assembly partially repealed HB2 and later let it sunset.

But almost a decade later, the treatment of trans people appears poised to become an even greater focal point of Republican campaigns, as they seek to emulate and expand Trump’s approach from 2024.

Whether they’ll be as successful with it in 2026 as Trump was in 2024, however, is a matter of debate. Even some Republicans said they were wary of the increased emphasis on anti-trans attacks, saying the party risks going all in on a subject that has limited resonance with some key voters.

Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina scoffed at the idea that Republicans should focus on trans issues, particularly in his state. Asked if trans policies were top of mind for voters, Tillis told NOTUS, “No, I don’t think it is.”

“I think that if you take a look at right-of-center, left-of-center voters, they’re more pocketbook issues. And I just don’t see any one of those issues—unless we have some major event that draws, you know, broader attention to it—I just don’t see those as being the margin of error,” Tillis said.

“I tell everybody, go back to the tried and true ways of winning elections: It’s about the economy,” the senator continued.

An October Washington Post-George Mason University poll found that only 4 percent of voters in Virginia said “policies about transgender students” were their most important issue when looking at the governor’s race. “Economy/cost of living/jobs/housing” came out at the top, with 19 percent of people naming it as their top issue.

But right-wing groups investing heavily in trans ads are not deterred, believing anti-trans messaging has particular resonance with Virginia voters.

“Thom Tillis is an idiot, frankly,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, told NOTUS. “He’s not basing off of any polling. He’s not basing off of any consumer research data. … I’ve spent millions of dollars in polling and consumer research channels and focus groups. I know what I’m talking about. He has no clue.”

The Test Case

American Principles Project has been heavily involved in the Virginia race. Most recently, the group put out a $1 million ad reminiscent of George H.W. Bush’s infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad in which Spanberger is tied to Richard Cox, a registered sex offender who allegedly exposed himself in a girls’ locker room while claiming he was a trans woman.

“Sears protects children from sex offenders, Spanberger allows men into girls’ locker rooms—men like Richard Cox,” a narrator says in the ad. “Spanberger’s radical transgender policies will let it happen again.”

The group commissioned the firm Evolving Strategies to conduct message testing in the Virginia attorney general race, finding that messaging on Jay Jones’ position on trans issues could sway voters toward the GOP candidate, Jason Miyares, by as much as 6.9 percentage points, per data viewed by NOTUS.

Schilling said that Virginia, which he called a “blue state,” is an “uphill battle” because “these statewide elections the year after the presidential, they usually go in opposite of whoever’s in the White House.”

But he said whether the strategy works is not measured by Earle-Sears winning, it’s about “how many voters did it shift?” To that end, his group plans to release ads against Ossoff in Georgia and Cooper in North Carolina.

Republicans supportive of the strategy say using anti-trans attacks galvanizes their base better than other issues and puts Democrats in a difficult position with some moderate voters. They say it also makes a broader point about Democrats’ fundamental political worldview, painting them as ideological extremists.

“People are wrong if they think it is just a culture war issue,” said Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the Earle-Sears campaign. “This is an issue about how people view fundamental realities. And to most voters who are not white, rich, left progressives, it’s a pretty open-and-shut 80/20 issue. So in politics, when you have 80/20 issues, you run with them.” (Americans’ views on trans-related issues are mixed, but polling has found they’re growing more supportive of restrictions.)

The Earle-Sears campaign’s ad referencing Spanberger’s support for “they/them” is the same line Trump’s campaign used against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris last year in an ad that even Democrats conceded was politically effective.

But even some Republicans pointed out that the two ads had some key differences. The Trump ad, for one, showed a video of Harris saying that she believed inmates were entitled to gender-affirming care at the taxpayer’s expense; the Earle-Sears ad shows Spanberger saying members of the LGBTQ+ community deserve equal rights.

And the Trump ad used the anti-trans attack as part of a larger message about the economy, saying that Harris wasn’t focused on helping cost-of-living issues because she was focused on helping the transgender community. The Virginia Republican’s ad makes no mention of the economy.

“Is this enough to win an election? Honestly, I think the answer is no,” said one Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s something you can define somebody as an ideologically liberal, and that’s a starting point. But we’re in a world where the voters are telling us the top issue is prices, it’s cost of living.”

A party that goes all in next year on transgender messages is “going to lose a lot of races,” the operative added.

An October Christopher Newport University survey found that “Virginia likely voters say Spanberger would do a better job than Earle-Sears” handling transgender policy by a 50–37 margin.

One House Democrat from a battleground district, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly, told NOTUS that Republicans’ reliance on trans issues is “almost like what we did with abortion,” referring to how Democrats put a heavy focus on reproductive rights in 2024.

“It’s still an issue, but I don’t think it’s quite as potent as it was,” the lawmaker said.

By hammering on anti-trans messaging, Republicans are going to get their “base riled up, but are you going to turn people? Especially, I mean, when federal workers are getting laid off, when the economy’s suffering, you know?” the lawmaker added.

Spanberger has responded to Earle-Sears’ anti-trans messaging, at least indirectly, with her own spot characterizing herself as a mother of three daughters and former law-enforcement officer who went after child sex predators. But her campaign has otherwise stayed overwhelmingly focused on economic issues, Democrats say.

Harris, Earle-Sears’ lead strategist, defended the campaign’s emphasis on the issue, saying that neither he nor anyone on the campaign thinks trans messages alone can win an election but that they still resonate more strongly with voters than nearly any other message.

“I don’t think it’s a magic bullet,” Harris said. “But very rarely in politics are there magic bullets. From my end, it’s a pretty clear positive thing.”

Alex Roarty is a reporter at NOTUS. He was previously a reporter for McClatchy newspapers, Roll Call, and National Journal.

Oriana González covers politics and policy for NOTUS. She has broken stories on abortion policy, transgender issues, Congress, and more. She was previously a reporter at Axios, where she led and shaped the newsroom’s coverage of abortion.