Democrats shift on transgender athletes in women’s sports for 2026

South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Annie Andrews appears to be distancing herself from her past opposition to restricting transgender athletes in girls’ sports, telling Fox News Digital she opposes biological males competing in women’s sports and gender transition surgeries for minors.

As Democrats fight to regain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, Andrews is among a group of candidates in competitive races in red and swing states who seem to be shifting positions on transgender issues. Meanwhile, Republicans are aiming to use the highly-charged issue as a cudgel to bash Democrats for a second straight cycle.

“I don’t support biological men playing in women’s sports, and I don’t support gender surgery on minors,” Andrews told Fox News Digital.

Andrews, who’s locked in an increasingly competitive midterm election showdown with Republican Sen. Darline Graham in reliably red state South Carolina, delivers the same message in a new campaign commercial, adding “I want you to hear me loud and clear.”

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But Graham, who was appointed to the Senate following the sudden death this summer of her older brother, longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham, is accusing Andrews of trying to conceal her previous position on transgender athletes.

Andrews “has spent years supporting biological males competing in girls’ sports. Now that she’s running for Senate, she’s trying to hide from that radical record,” Graham recently charged.

Graham and Republicans point to Andrews’ opposition to a 2022 South Carolina law barring transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s public school sports teams.

“This is shameful legislation that does nothing to protect or support women or children in SC. In fact, it is actively harmful. I will always support trans youth,” Andrews wrote in a social media post at the time.

Republicans are seeking to once again make the issue a campaign liability.

The GOP effectively blasted Democrats in the 2024 election, with President Donald Trump’s campaign targeting Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris with ads declaring “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

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Then-Vice President Kamala Harris and then-former President Donald Trump shake hands at their presidential debate, on Sept. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Republicans spent more than $200 million to run ads targeting Democrats on the transgender issue in the 2024 campaign, arguably helping the GOP to sweeping victories.

The latest national polls indicate that most Americans oppose transgender athletes playing on sports teams that don’t match their birth sex.

More than three-quarters (76%) of those questioned in a Fox News national poll conducted last month backed banning biological men from competing in women’s sports, with one in five opposed. The survey indicated bipartisan support, with 90% of Republicans, 77% of independents, and 61% of Democrats backing the ban.

Facing a rough political climate amid an unpopular war in Iran and soaring gas and diesel prices as they try to hold their fragile congressional majorities, Trump and the GOP are increasingly looking to replay their transgender political playbook.

Trump, at last month’s GOP midterm convention, described anti-trans messaging as one of the party’s most effective campaign tools to drive voter turnout and target Democrats in the final stretch leading up to Election Day.

“It’s one of our great soundbites of all time,” the president said at the two-day confab in Dallas.

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President Donald Trump speaks during the Republican convention at American Airlines Center on Sept. 9, 2026, in Dallas, Texas. (Chitose Suzuki/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images)

And some of the other top speakers at the convention, including Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Senate and House GOP re-election chairs Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Richard Hudson highlighted the issue in their addresses.

Meanwhile, Republican ads on the issue are running for a second straight cycle.

But Democrats are recalibrating, and learning to fight back.

One of the first to pivot following the 2024 election setbacks was California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. In early 2025, he suggested that biological males playing in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.”

Also making headlines and sparking a debate among Democrats was Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who said soon after the 2024 elections that he opposed transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports and that Democrats spent too much time trying not to offend people.

Veteran Democratic strategist Maria Cardona told Fox News that “Democrats are being smart on this issue in terms of defining where they are on it so their opponents can’t define them and then pivoting back to the issues that they know that voters actually care about.”

“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.

Fast-forward to present day, and while most Democratic politicians remain steadfast supporters of transgender rights, there are an increasing number who have changed course.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee trying to flip a GOP-held seat in red-leaning Texas, has been targeted by Republicans over his past support for allowing transgender athletes in girls’ sports. But he told Fox News last month, “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness.”

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Democratic Senate candidate state Rep. James Talarico speaks during a campaign rally at the Cailloux Theater on Aug. 31, 2026, in Kerrville, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

In Republican dominated Iowa, where Democrats are aiming to capture another open-GOP held Senate seat, Democratic nominee state Rep. Josh Turek has expressed opposition to biological males competing in women’s sports and gender transition surgeries for minors after facing Republican criticism.

Longtime Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who is facing a tough re-election bid, is running ads saying “boys should not play in girls’ sports” and that she is focused on “making your life more affordable.”

In her campaign mailers she touts that she “voted to ban schools from touting gender ideology in classrooms,” and, “Unlike the far left, I believe boys shouldn’t play girls’ sports.”

But the National Republican Congressional Committee pointed out that Kaptur voted against the GOP-led Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act in April 2023 and January 2025.

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Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, is the longest-serving woman in House history and is running for her 23rd term in a key battleground race this November. (Getty Images)

“Lies from desperate Democrat Marcy Kaptur can’t erase her radical record. Kaptur is in damage control, and she must remove herself as a co-sponsor of the Equality Act and disavow her previous votes or remove her lies from the airwaves,” NRCC spokesman Zach Bannon told Fox News Digital.

Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina, another vulnerable Democrat seeking re-election, was one of only three House Democrats who voted last year for a GOP bill that could lead to prison for health care workers providing gender-affirming care for minors.

Davis, who played football at the Air Force Academy, appears alongside a football field in a re-election advertisement, saying, “I believe states should decide what’s right for protecting women and girls, and North Carolina has decided.”

But both Kaptur and Davis have faced pushback from Democrats over their messaging on the transgender issue.

And in deep blue Massachusetts, Moulton, who apologized for his past transgender comments, was still trounced in last month’s Democratic Senate primary by progressive Sen. Ed Markey, who accused his challenger of throwing transgender children “under the bus.”

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Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., left, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., faced off for the Democratic nomination in Massachusetts. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images ; Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Republican strategist Colin Reed, pointing to Democrats who’ve shifted their positions, told Fox News Digital that “voters should be very skeptical in the authenticity of any shifting policy positions that occur weeks before an election, especially in red parts of America where these types of issues have proven to be so politically toxic in the past.”

But Cardona, a veteran of the Bill Clinton administration, the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns and the Democratic National Committee who currently serves as a DNC committee member, said Democrats are “defining where they are on the issue so their opponents can’t define them and then pivoting back to the issues that they know that voters actually care about.”

She argued that “Republicans won’t be able to weaponize this issue this cycle the way they were able to in 2024 for two reasons. Democrats are fighting about and actually talking about it and defining themselves. But more importantly, when people can’t make ends meet, they’re not going to be drawn into culture issues which don’t make a difference when you go to gas pumps and can’t fill up your car to go to work.”

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report