CNN
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Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is no stranger to going against the grain on significant social issues.
Four years before California voters passed a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in 2008, then-San Francisco Mayor Newsom instructed the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, defying federal law and solidifying his reputation as a longtime ally of the LGBTQ community.
That history was top of mind for several Democrats last week, when the governor said in his new podcast that transgender girls and women participating in female sports leagues is “deeply unfair.” The comments made him the most prominent Democrat to buck the party and echo public opinion on an issue that helped shape the 2024 election and could be a political liability once more in 2028.
The episode quickly made good on the promise of the podcast, advertised as a place where the governor would “answer the hard questions.” Chief among those: Are there limits to the party’s support for transgender Americans?
“The issue of fairness is completely legit,” Newsom said on “This Is Gavin Newsom” last week. “And we’ve got to own that. We’ve got to acknowledge it.”
Democrats have spent the last several years pushing back on a wave of anti-transgender bills and rhetoric led by Republicans, including Donald Trump, who made banning transgender athletes from women’s sports a key part of his 2024 campaign.
Most Democrats have been steadfast in their opposition to restricting or rolling back transgender rights. But in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss, millions in attack ads and public polling showing a majority of Americans disagree with Democrats on transgender athletes, some members of the party are acknowledging the political dilemma facing them.
A January New York Times/Ipsos poll found that 79% of Americans — including 67% of Democrats — said they believed female transgender athletes should not be allowed to play on women’s sports teams. A Pew Research poll released last month found that 66% of Americans favor laws that require transgender girls and women to play on the teams of the gender they were assigned at birth.
The same poll also found that 56% of Americans favor laws that prevent discrimination against transgender Americans.
For many Democrats, the debate was heightened in the aftermath of Harris’ loss, and the outsize impact of a Trump campaign ad that highlighted her past support for gender-affirming surgery for prison inmates. “Kamala’s agenda is they/them, President Trump is for you,” one ad said. Further down the ballot, Democratic Senate candidates Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Colin Allred of Texas, both of whom lost their races, also faced ads focusing on transgender girls in sports.
One Democratic strategist who has worked on California campaigns said the party shouldn’t change its positions on transgender issues, but rather rethink how it discusses them.
“I’ve said this to my clients a million times: You get to decide what you talk about, when you talk about it, and how you talk about it,” the strategist said. “And if we’re talking about the trans community, we should do the same thing we did with the broader LGBT community, which is talk about it in ways that are relatable to people who don’t understand what it means to be trans.”
In Washington, Democrats have remained mostly united on transgender rights issues, while attempting to shift their messaging. Only two House Democrats voted to approve legislation to restrict transgender girls and women from playing in many female sports leagues. No Senate Democrats voted to advance the same measure, which failed last week.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, argued that decisions about whether transgender girls should be allowed to participate in female sports leagues should be decided at the local level, where parents and players can participate.
“While Republicans are focused on playing politics with children’s sports leagues, I’m focused on the issue that I hear about from constituents every day. I’m focused on lowering household costs,” she said.
Newsom, meanwhile, attempted to straddle a line between supporting transgender athletes broadly while also echoing Republican arguments on fairness.
“The way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with. So, both things I can hold in my hand,” Newsom said on the podcast, which featured conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that, I think, is inherent in you, but not always expressed on the issue, but at the same time, deal with the unfairness?”
Later in the interview, Newsom noted how “devastating” the “they/them” ad was for Harris, specifically references to her past support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgery for detained migrants.
“She didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating,” Newsom said, later adding: “This was even more challenging because it’s issues of people who are incarcerated … illegal, incarcerated individuals getting taxpayer-funded, gender reassignment surgery. That is a 90/10, not an 80/20.”
In a statement, Newsom’s office said he has said the issue of transgender athletes should be “guided by fairness, dignity, and respect.”
“He rejects the right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids,” the statement said. “The Governor’s position is simple: stand with all kids and stand up to bullies.”
LGBTQ groups strongly condemned Newsom’s comments calling it “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to play in women’s sports leagues, even as they praised him for being a longtime ally. The leaders of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, which unveiled a slate of transgender rights bills in the state legislature earlier this month, said they were “profoundly sickened and frustrated” by Newsom’s comments.
“I’m not going to speculate on his strategy here, but I do know, in running for public office that you use addition, right? You try to earn more votes, and I see this as actually a net loss,” Democratic California Assemblymember Chris Ward, the chair of the caucus, told CNN. “People who are already decided on this issue are probably also pretty decided on him.”
Ward said he still expects to find agreement on the caucus’s agenda, which includes expediting new California IDs for transgender and nonbinary individuals who change their names and making court records on name changes confidential.
Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist based in California, described Newsom’s podcast as an effort to “abandon his posture of resistance” and find a new political lane. But he also agreed with the substance of what the governor said.
“Democrats are on the wrong end of an 80/20 issue when it comes to this, so I think he’s right,” Stutzman said. “I don’t think the timing is courageous.”
Newsom, a possible 2028 presidential candidate who campaigned for former President Joe Biden and Harris, is the most high-profile Democrat to shift on transgender athletes, but not the first. After the November election, Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, said his party spent too much time trying not to offend people instead of being “brutally honest.”
“I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” Moulton told The New York Times in November.
Moulton, who faced his own swift backlash from Democrats, described Newsom’s comments as a step in the right direction for the party and said he hoped other Democrats would follow his lead.
“It took 120 days for a fellow Democrat to come out and agree with me publicly, even though I’ve had countless colleagues come up to me privately and say, ‘Yeah, you’re right on this and Democrats just need to get real,’” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” on Friday. “The right thing to do is to engage in these issues and listen to 80% of Americans when they say this is a problem.”
Transgender rights advocates have argued that Democrats shouldn’t retreat on the issues, especially at a time when Republicans are launching a concerted effort to regulate broad areas of transgender Americans’ lives.
In recent years, Republicans across the country have introduced hundreds of bills restricting transgender rights, including measures on youth sports, gender-affirming care, access to public restrooms and ID changes. Since taking office for his second term, Trump’s administration has introduced a wave of measures limiting the rights of transgender Americans, including an executive order banning transgender girls and women from female sports leagues and moves to restrict trans Americans from serving in the military.
“Our message to Gov. Newsom and all leaders across the country is simple: The path to 2028 isn’t paved with the betrayal of vulnerable communities — it’s built on the courage to stand up for what’s right and do the hard work to actually help the American people,” Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.
