Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, is navigating the toughest re-election campaign of her career with a stance that has put her at odds with much of her party.
Last month, Kaptur released a video in which she says: "Here's the truth: I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools because parents know what's best for their kids, and boys should not play in girls' sports."
In the days that followed, two county Democratic parties in her north-west Ohio district called on Kaptur to take down the ad, the president of the largest LGBTQ+ rights group in the country said it would not back her re-election campaign, and a former intern published an op-ed describing himself as embarrassed to have worked for the congresswoman.
Kaptur has been in office since Ronald Reagan's first term as president and won re-election easily for decades. That changed after redistricting following the 2020 census increased the share of Republican voters in her area. She eked out a 22nd term against Republican challenger Derek Merrin in the 2024 presidential year, even as Donald Trump won her district handily. Months later, the Ohio redistricting commission approved a redraw of the state's congressional map that shifted her district about four percentage points further to the right.
Kaptur and Merrin are set for a rematch in the 3 November midterm election, and forecasters believe it could go either way, despite Republican candidates nationwide facing headwinds from Trump's public unpopularity and persistently high gas prices.
In an interview, Kaptur said she felt it was important that voters knew precisely where she stood on transgender rights, two years after Trump's re-election campaign successfully weaponized the question against his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. She also viewed it as inevitable that Merrin's campaign would try to use the issue against her. "We knew what he was going to do, and they have done that to us in the past," she said.
Kaptur is not the only Democrat in a tough race this year to come out against equal access for transgender youth athletes, who have been targeted by bans in Republican-controlled states including Ohio. Earlier this year, the US supreme court's conservative supermajority upheld such laws.