According to CNN projects, Sarah McBride will win the open seat in Delaware, becoming the first transgender person in Congress

CNN
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Sarah McBride, a senator from Delaware, will win her state's U.S. House seat, becoming the first out transgender person to serve in Congress, CNN reports.

The at-large seat became available when outgoing Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester decided to run for the state's open U.S. Senate seat.

Despite running in a reliably bad state, McBride emphasized her work leading a bipartisan effort to pass paid family and medical leave in the state. She also praised the support of unions and their efforts to raise the state minimum wage. While she didn't lean on the historic nature of her candidacy, she alluded to a broader theme of respect — specifically, that everyone deserves a member of Congress who respects them and their families.

The new congresswoman is a close ally of President Joe Biden and is credited with helping shape Biden's view on LGBTQ issues. McBride entered Biden's orbit in 2006 when she worked for the campaign of the late Attorney General Beau Biden. Beau Biden was also a strong supporter of the 2013 Transgender Protection Act, which McBride championed in Delaware.

The president wrote the foreword to McBride's 2018 memoir, “Tomorrow Will Be Different.” The book describes McBride's experiences as a transgender rights activist and her personal story, including meeting her late husband, Andrew Cray, whom she met at a 2012 event met at the LGBTQ Pride event at the White House. Cray, a transgender man and fellow activist, died of cancer in 2012 in 2014, just days after the couple's wedding.

McBride, a former spokeswoman for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group, has made history throughout her public life. In 2012, as a senior and student president at American University, she made national headlines when she announced that she was transgender in an op-ed in the school newspaper.

At the time, McBride wrote about her concerns that her gender identity was inconsistent with her goals of running for office.

“I now know that my dreams and my identity are only mutually exclusive if I don’t try,” she wrote.

Four years later, McBride became the first transgender person to speak at a national convention when she spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

And in 2020, McBride became the first out transgender person elected to a state Senate when she was elected to represent a seat in northern Delaware.