Democratic candidates are suddenly opposing biological males in women’s sports and surgeries on minors, a shift Republicans say erases years of prior support and papers over a radical record.
South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Annie Andrews now says she rejects biological males in girls’ and women’s sports and opposes gender transition surgeries for minors. She delivered that line to Fox News Digital and repeated it in a new campaign commercial as her race against Republican Sen. Darline Graham heated up.
Andrews is not alone. Across several competitive races, Democrats are tightening their language on transgender athletes and medical interventions for children after Republicans spent heavily on the issue in 2024 and kept pressing it into the midterm cycle. GOP strategists and officials call the move a late conversion timed for red and purple districts, not a principled change.
Andrews stated her current position in plain terms.
She told Fox News Digital:
"I don't support biological men playing in women's sports, and I don't support gender surgery on minors,"
In the commercial, she added that she wanted voters to “hear me loud and clear.”
That message collides with her 2022 record. When South Carolina barred transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s public school sports teams, Andrews opposed the law. Her social media post at the time attacked the bill and pledged backing for transgender youth.
She wrote:
"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,"
Graham has made that gap the core of her attack. At an Aug. 24, 2026, campaign event at the Green Boundary Club in Aiken, S.C., the Republican senator framed Andrews’ new ads as damage control, not discovery.
Graham charged that 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,"
South Carolina remains a reliably red state. Graham entered the seat after the sudden death this summer of her older brother, longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham. The contest is one of several where Democrats are trying to neutralize an issue that hammered them two years ago.
Public opinion is not closely divided. A Fox News national poll conducted last month found 76% support for banning biological men from women’s sports, with about one in five opposed. Backing ran 90% among Republicans, 77% among independents, and 61% among Democrats.
Republicans treated those numbers as a mandate. The party spent more than $200 million on transgender-issue ads in the 2024 campaign. Trump’s operation hammered then-Vice President Kamala Harris with spots built around the contrast, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” and kept the theme alive after the Sept. 10, 2024, debate in Philadelphia.
At the GOP midterm convention on Sept. 9, 2026, at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Trump called the messaging durable. He told the crowd it was “one of our great sound bites of all time.” Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Sen. Tim Scott, and Rep. Richard Hudson all elevated the same fight from the stage.
The recalibration reaches far beyond South Carolina. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, eyed for 2028, said in early 2025 that biological males in women’s sports were “deeply unfair.” Texas Democratic Senate nominee and state Rep. James Talarico, hit by Republican ads over past support, told Fox News last month he draws a limit when fairness or safety is at risk.
Talarico said:
"I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness."
Iowa Democratic Senate nominee and state Rep. Josh Turek voiced opposition to biological males in women’s sports and to gender transition surgeries for minors after GOP criticism. North Carolina Rep. Don Davis, a vulnerable Democrat, was one of only three House Democrats who voted last year for a Republican bill that could impose prison time on health-care workers who provide gender-affirming care to minors. His re-election ad now stresses state control and North Carolina’s choice “for protecting women and girls.”
Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in House history and a candidate for a 23rd term, is airing ads and mailers that say “boys should not play in girls’ sports” and that she is focused on “making your life more affordable.” One line claims, “Unlike the far left, I believe boys shouldn't play girls' sports.” She has also highlighted a vote “to ban schools from touting gender ideology in classrooms.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee is not buying it. NRCC spokesman Zach Bannon said Kaptur voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act in April 2023 and again in January 2025, remains tied to the Equality Act, and cannot erase that record with new creative.
Bannon said:
"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,"
Even Democrats who moved early paid a price inside their party. After the 2024 elections, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton opposed transgender athletes in girls’ sports and described the pressure to stay quiet.
He told The New York Times he has “two little girls” and does not want them “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” but that “as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that.” He later apologized for past comments. Last month he lost his Democratic Senate primary to progressive Sen. Ed Markey, who accused him of throwing transgender children “under the bus.”
That primary result sits beside the general-election repositioning. Candidates in tougher terrain now sound more like Moulton’s post-2024 comments. Primary electorates still police the old orthodoxy.
Veteran Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, a DNC committee member with Clinton and Obama campaign experience, told Fox News the party is choosing clarity on purpose. In her account, Democrats are marking their position so Republicans cannot do it for them, then steering the conversation back to kitchen-table costs.
Cardona argued Republicans will not “weaponize this issue this cycle the way they were able to in 2024” because Democrats are “fighting about and actually talking about it and defining themselves.” She added that when voters “can't make ends meet,” culture fights lose force “when you go to gas pumps and can't fill up your car to go to work.”
Republican strategist Colin Reed offered the opposite read. He said voters should treat late shifts in red-leaning areas with skepticism, especially on issues that have already proven politically toxic for Democrats.
Reed said 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.”
The pattern on the ground matches the dispute. Andrews’ 2022 post defended “trans youth” and called a women’s-sports bill “actively harmful.” Her 2026 commercial and interview reject biological males in women’s sports and surgeries on minors. Kaptur’s new mailers land after two recorded votes against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. Talarico, Turek, Davis, and others are writing narrower rules only after Republican ads and convention speeches made the cost of the old stance obvious.
When the record says one thing for years and the ad says another weeks before Election Day, voters are entitled to judge which one is the real position, and which one is the escape hatch.
