Gavin Newsom Jump-started A Conversation Democrats Need To Have

When Gavin Newsom said this week that allowing transgender athletes to play women's sports was “deeply unfair,” many reacted with cynicism: The California governor was pandering ahead of a run for president in 2028.

My reaction was a little different: Why the hell has it taken this long for a high-profile Democrat to say what most people in the country are thinking?

President Donald Trump and Republicans successfully weaponized the issue on the campaign trail — pummeling Kamala Harris with the indelible tagline, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

More importantly: Polling consistently shows that while Americans don’t condone discrimination, they also don’t support transgender female athletes competing in women’s sports. A January New York Times/Ipsos poll found 79 percent of the public with doubts, including a whopping 67 percent of Democrats.

But the backlash to Newsom’s comments — not to mention the dearth of Democrats defending him — shows that the party is not only grappling with how to approach one of the nation’s most explosive issues but also struggling to even have an open conversation about it. Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is lesbian, told my POLITICO colleagues the remarks were “disgusting,” while LGBTQ+ organizations made it clear that any Democrat who agrees with Newsom can kiss their presidential dreams goodbye.

Even some of the party’s most skilled messengers see this as a tricky topic. That much was clear in my recent Playbook Deep Dive interview with Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, taped a few hours after Newsom’s comments went public. Off the top, I asked him to respond.

“Are you sure we haven’t run out of time?” he joked, before graciously engaging in a 10-minute back-and-forth about a difficult topic we weren’t originally slated to discuss.

The need for sensitivity is understandable. Democrats are loath to be seen as compromising on something they see as a matter of human rights. Boyle, for instance, spoke about not wanting to be seen as bullying a community that has been relentlessly targeted by Republicans and has a high suicide rate.

He also compared the issue to banning same-sex marriage — something Democrats once played a part in doing. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act passed the House and Senate with large bipartisan majorities, and President Bill Clinton signed it less than two months before winning reelection.

Over the course of the next 20 years, of course, Democrats did a 180. A remarkably effective persuasion campaign reversed public opinion on the issue, and the party eventually followed suit. That example also underscores what’s different about transgender rights, and what makes the issue of women’s sports uniquely thorny for Democrats.

The crux of the argument that won over America on same-sex marriage was fairness — that it was fundamentally un-American to deny people in a loving relationship the ability to enjoy the same privileges as others, especially when opponents could not make a credible case that allowing same-sex couples to marry represented any real threat to straight couples.

When it comes to women’s sports, it’s not so cut-and-dry. There is a real question whether allowing transgender athletes to participate is fair to whom they’re competing against, and it’s hard to see any PR campaign changing that. That’s to say nothing of putting the ability to play sports in the same category of fundamental rights as marrying a loved one.

For much of the 2024 election cycle, Democrats tried to argue transgender rights were a non-issue, something that Republicans were obsessed with that only impacted a tiny fraction of the country. That was a convenient enough line at the time, one that both kept LGBTQ+ advocacy groups at bay and played well enough in interviews and debates.

But November’s results were clear: Sidestepping the issue is not the answer. Republicans will continue to use this as a potent line of attack, and there’s now room — thanks to Newsom and a handful of other Democrats, including Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — to speak more frankly.

Still, few Democrats are comfortable going where Newsom and Moulton have — to clearly state that trans athletes shouldn’t be allowed in women’s sports. Instead, some in the party have tried other messages.

During a January House debate on a bill that would bar transgender athletes from women’s sports, for instance, Democratic leaders cast the bill as a privacy violation — empowering coaches and administrators to strip-search kids. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it the “House Republican Child Predator Empowerment Act."

More recently, congressional Democrats have rallied around another response: federalism. Let localities, states or even individual sports leagues decide how to handle these questions of whether transgender athletes can compete in women’s sports.

Boyle responded to my questions with a mashup of those messages: “At the end of the day, I'm much more comfortable, given these intricacies, with allowing the appropriate sports bodies to make these decisions rather than Congress legislating it — especially Congress legislating it in such a clumsy way that they would, whether intentionally or not, actually allow for genital inspections of minor girls.”

But Democrats still have to reckon with whether voters will hear that kind of answer as a dodge of the fundamental questions at stake. And they need to know that Trump and Republicans will gladly find the next wedge issue even if they don’t.

A preview of what is to come came at Tuesday’s joint session, where Trump asked lawmakers to “pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.”

It’s another tricky issue where the impacts go beyond individual human rights — and where public opinion cuts against where most Democratic officials have been. Recent Pew Research Center polling found 56 percent of American adults oppose allowing medical care for gender transitions for minors, versus 26 percent who support it. (The same poll found a 66-15 split on the women’s sports question.)

Democrats do know this: They need to figure out their message soon, lest they risk a repeat of the scorched-earth 2024 campaign in next year’s midterms. Boyle called Trump’s “they/them” ad “maybe the most effective ad since the Willie Horton ad in 1988” — comparing it to the famous spot from George H.W. Bush that was also both lambasted by liberals and wildly effective.

“When you don't respond immediately and when you don't hit back and you don't hit back harder, it can have devastating political consequences,” Boyle said.