The Democratic incumbent for Florida’s 14th Congressional District, Rep. Kathy Castor, was all smiles last week as she threw transgender Americans under the bus.
At a candidate forum at the Tampa Tiger Bay Club—a nonpartisan organization that hosts political programming such as this—the group’s Republican treasurer, Art Wood, took aim at trans people with the very first question of the event.
“What is your position on men, biological men, in women’s sports?” he asked, invoking a common pejorative used to describe transgender women and girls. “Are you for it or against it?”
“The answer is no,” Castor said, grinning and laughing. She did not elaborate.
The lone Republican at the dais, Castor’s opponent and former State Rep. Mike Beltran, also decried equal rights for transgender athletes.
Two other Democrats joined the District 14 candidates on stage. Robert People, an Army veteran, is running against GOP incumbent Rep. Laurel Lee in the 15th district, and former Hillsborough County Commissioner Kimberly Overman is challenging the 12th district’s Rep. Gus Bilirakis.
“I’m not sure we’re going to be going through the whole gender test to determine who is going to be in sports,” Overman said. “I think there’s an opportunity to make sure people are able to compete fairly,” she continued, and emphasized the importance of making sure “everybody can actually compete with dignity.”
People concurred. “I’m with my fellow candidate Kimberly Overman, here,” he said, adding there are vanishingly few transgender women competing in sports. “What we don’t want to do, as far as being members of Congress, is put so much more of an emphasis on something that is not an issue when there’s so many more issues that we do need to address [...] Let’s not pretend people are losing sleep over this.”
It should be noted that Overman and People are in a much different boat than Castor. Polling strongly indicates that both of those races will be easy wins for the Republicans currently representing their districts. Castor occupies a reliably blue seat turned “toss-up” after redistricting. She’s also no stranger to a rightward drift, having been one of eight Democrats to vote for a GOP measure condemning “socialism in all its forms” that was packaged with the SAVE America Act, and one of 13 to back a GOP voter ID bill in July.
But Castor’s latest foray into anti-trans talking points also betrays a troubling strategy by Republicans: With gerrymandering, they don’t even need to win a blue seat. They can dilute the electorate and scare Democratic incumbents into taking a hard right turn on key issues, and equal rights for trans people is seen as an easy first domino to fall.
Castor is the latest incumbent Democrat to be added to Erin in the Morning’s small but troubling “Guide To Anti-Trans Democrats,” which has over 30 names from 17 states as of this writing. It also includes lawmakers who voted for the “Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act” to strip funding from schools that support transgender people (Rep. Cleo Fields of Louisiana, Rep. Laura Gillen of New York, Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, and Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia), as well as James Talarico, a Texas Senate candidate who voiced support for nationwide bans on surgical care for trans minors, and Iowa gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, who has voiced opposition to equal rights and inclusion for transgender athletes.
You can see the full list tracked by Erin in the Morning here.
I just don't understand why these democrats are deciding to come out as evil. Nobody is sitting around with the only thing holding them back from voting democrat being that they felt like dems needed to be a bit more Hitlery to trans people.
"The Democratic incumbent for Florida’s 14th Congressional District, Rep. Kathy Castor, was all smiles last week as she threw transgender Americans under the bus."
Well then, it is incumbent on us to make it impossible for her to be or remain an incumbent.
Every Gender Critical/Social Conservative person is a child abuser, so is Rep. Castor. It is fair for anyone to insist the athletic advantage produced by systemic high testosterone for an athlete who has it is medically reduced appropriately per the history and science involved* (IOC policy from 2004 ~ 2022) before they participate in "women's" or "girl's" sports . . . which has no applicability to a transgender girl benefitting from puberty blockade from start of Tanner 2, and that requirement applies equally to any athlete with any intersex condition.
* Not what Castor or apparently near anyone is talking about.
Thank you for the reporting, Baum.