EXCLUSIVE: Riley Gaines has championed fairness in women’s sports. Will it lead her to the campaign trail?
The former NCAA swimmer-turned-conservative activist has vowed to help unseat any Democrat who is enabling the inclusion of trans athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. That list added 45 senators to it on Monday night, after every Senate Democrat voted against the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.”
Gaines spent Monday in Minnesota, rallying supporters to advocate for a state bill aimed at protecting femal athletes from trans inclusion. However, that bill also failed to pass, falling short in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
After Gaines helped President Donald Trump and Republicans capitalize on national outrage over Democrats allowing trans inclusion in girls’ sports, she now turns her attention to inflicting further consequences on the DNC in the 2026 midterms, as the party has seemingly refused to budge on the issue.
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Riley Gaines, a former All-American University of Kentucky swimmer, speaks before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at the Greenville Convention Center on Friday, June 2, 2023. (MCKENZIE LANGE/ Staff / USA TODAY NETWORK)
However, Gaines also is not ruling out the possibility of taking matters into her own hands, and eventually running for public office, she told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview last Friday.
“It’s never what I saw myself doing,” said Gaines, who majored in health sciences at the University of Kentucky and originally planned to pursue dentistry.
“But now, of course, with this issue and more, I would say the whole America-first agenda. I am just so passionate, I care so deeply, and I love it, so we’ll see. It’s definitely not something I would rule out. I don’t think I’m that crazy yet, because I do think you have to be a bit clinically insane to voluntarily do that. But I do believe that maybe eventually influencing policy in that way is something I see myself doing.”
Gaines said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would be her top role model in a potential political career.
“She’s so fierce, and she is so strong, and what you see is what you get,” Gaines said. “She stands firm for what she knows to be true, for what she knows to be right and righteous and moral and just. And I think we need more of that. We don’t have a lot of that, it is a very rare trait, especially in the political sphere.”
Gaines’ political resume already includes three years of highly-visible activism in the space of protecting women’s sports. This past week, a law named after her, “The Riley Gaines Act,” passed in the Georgia House of Representatives, which seeks to ban trans athletes in girls’ and women’s sports in that state.
After campaigning for Trump and Republicans in 2024, Gaines has become a rapidly-ascending conservative counterculture figure, leading the popular “Gaines for Girls” OutKick podcast.
This past week, she also led a pre-race prayer at the NASCAR Cup Series’ EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.
If and when Gaines does become crazy enough to throw her hat into the arena with her own political campaign, she already has the confidence of at least one prominent GOP figure.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has worked closely with Gaines as a legislative ally in the battle to keep males out of women’s and girls’ sports. Blackburn was a co-sponsor of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, and in total, has proposed three pieces of legislation to address the issue.
Blackburn, from working with Gaines on that issue, has confidence that the former swimmer and aspiring dentist could achieve anything she seeks to do.
“I think Riley has the ability to pursue whatever she wants to pursue,” Blackburn previously told Fox News Digital. “She thought she would be a dentist, and life has taken some interesting turns, and I am so pleased to see the work that she’s doing to protect women and girls.”
Gaines has already been outspoken on issues beyond women’s sports, taking a stance firmly in line with Trump and the Republican mainstream on issues like immigration and border security, U.S. relations with Ukraine and rolling back DEI. She has made these stances clear and consistent in her social media activity going back multiple years now.
However, for the time being, Gaines is focused on setting back the political careers of the Democrats who have voted to keep trans athletes in women’s and girls’ sports.
Immediately after Monday night’s Senate vote, Gaines took to social media to call out the Democrats who voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, and rally her supporters to oppose them. Gaines specifically pointed out Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.
“You have a daughter. Have you no shame? Georgians are watching. I will make it my mission to do what I can to remove you from your senate seat in 2026,” Gaines wrote over a photo that showed the names of every Democratic senator who voted against the bill.
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President Donald Trump acknowledges former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines before signing the No Men in Women’s Sports Executive Order into law in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)
Gaines previously told Fox News Digital that she is expecting the support of elected Republican officials, including Trump, in her efforts to unseat these senators. She also claims that some of the Democrats that she will look to unseat are already opposed to trans inclusion.
“In some of these private confidential conversations that I have had with several Democratic senators, they assure me that they know it’s absurd to allow men into women’s sports and that they wouldn’t want it to happen to their daughters. But they hide behind many different excuses,” Gaines said.
After those alleged Senators hid behind their excuses, they have officially made an adversary out of Gaines, and the DNC may even have to prepare for Gaines to be an adversary for many years to come.
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