{"id":227341,"date":"2026-10-12T15:16:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/marcy-kaptur-longest-serving-congresswomans-bid-for-another-house-term-roiled-by-anti-trans-ad-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T15:16:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:16:53","slug":"marcy-kaptur-longest-serving-congresswomans-bid-for-another-house-term-roiled-by-anti-trans-ad-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/marcy-kaptur-longest-serving-congresswomans-bid-for-another-house-term-roiled-by-anti-trans-ad-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcy Kaptur: longest-serving congresswoman\u2019s bid for another House term roiled by anti-trans ad – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democrat in Congress since 1983 rebuked over \u2018dangerous\u2019 campaign ad \u2013 will it harm her chances in tight Ohio race?
Last month, Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, released a video advertisement in which she looks directly at the camera and says exactly what she thinks about one of the most divisive issues facing Democrats today.
\u201cHere\u2019s the truth: I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools because parents know what\u2019s best for their kids,\u201d Kaptur says, \u201cand boys should not play in girls\u2019 sports.\u201d
In the days that followed, two county Democratic parties in her north-west Ohio district called for Kaptur to take down the ad, the president of the largest LGBTQ+ rights group in the country told reporters<\/a> it would not back her re-election campaign, and a former intern published<\/a> an op-ed about how he was \u201cembarrassed\u201d to have worked for the congresswoman.
For Kaptur, taking a stance at odds with much of her party may be a necessity as she navigates what could be the toughest re-election campaign she has ever faced, in a year where Democrats nationwide believe they are poised to win back the US House of Representatives and halt Donald Trump\u2019s legislative agenda.
In office since Ronald Reagan was in his first term as president, Kaptur easily won re-election for decades, until 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 Trump won her district handily. Months later, the Ohio redistricting commission approved a legally mandated redraw<\/a> of the state\u2019s 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<\/a> in the form of Trump\u2019s 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 the question of transgender rights, two years after Trump\u2019s re-election campaign successfully weaponized<\/a> the question against his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. She also viewed it as inevitable that Merrin\u2019s campaign would try to use the issue against her.
\u201cWe knew what he was going to do, and they have done that to us in the past,\u201d she said.
Kaptur is not the only Democrat facing a tough race this year to come out against equal access for transgender youth athletes<\/a>, who have been targeted by a wave of bans in Republican-controlled states, including Ohio. In a ruling earlier this year, the US supreme court\u2019s conservative supermajority upheld<\/a> such laws.
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Ohio, Amy Acton, opposes<\/a> transgender participation in school sports, as does Rob Sand<\/a>, the party\u2019s nominee for governor of Iowa. This week, Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina released an ad<\/a> saying she, too, supports the bans, while in May, eight Democrats in the US House \u2013 Kaptur included \u2013 broke with their party to vote for a bill that would require public schools receive parental consent before recognizing students as transgender. Some of the Democrats who supported that measure, <\/strong>which has not cleared the Senate,<\/strong> have been targeted by the mid-decade redistricting effort<\/a> Trump encouraged Republicans to carry out, in hopes of stopping Democrats from taking the House this year.
Kaptur has had a rebellious streak for much of her 43 years in Congress, which began when she unseated a Republican in 1982 after serving as a domestic policy adviser in Jimmy Carter\u2019s administration.
Representing a district centered on her hometown of Toledo that was navigating the fallout from manufacturing disinvestment and population loss, Kaptur opposed both the North American Free Trade Agreement<\/a> and the bank bailouts<\/a> of the 2008 financial crisis. She has made unsuccessful bids for leadership positions in the House Democratic Caucus, and complained openly<\/a> that midwestern representatives like herself were being overlooked. In 1996, the late billionaire Ross Perot<\/a> approached her to serve as his running mate when he made a third-party bid for the presidency, but Kaptur declined.
Now 80, Kaptur still lives in her childhood home, and has no plans to retire, saying that since she is the top Democrat on a powerful, spending-focused House subcommittee, she feels a responsibility to use that leverage to help her community. \u201cMy ability to help them is a function of the positions I hold,\u201d she said of her constituents.
Though her job requires her presence in Washington many weeks, Kaptur may be the best known local politician in Toledo, simply because she manages to be around quite a bit.
\u201cMarcy\u2019s here. I was just at an event, and I know it\u2019s campaign time, but I was just at an event with her Saturday,\u201d said Tony Totty, the president of the United Auto Workers\u2019s political arm in the Toledo region.
\u201cThat\u2019s not just because it\u2019s campaign time. Marcy is in her district, and, you know, these politicians fall in love with DC because it\u2019s alluring, but Marcy\u2019s been there too long to let that sway her.\u201d
Her career has coincided with a decline in Democrats\u2019 fortunes in Ohio<\/a>, a one-time swing state that\u2019s now dominated by Republicans. As Kaptur\u2019s re-election prospects have grown more competitive, she has repeatedly been among the first to publicly break with her party.
\u201cJoe Biden\u2019s letting Ohio solar manufacturers be undercut by China, but Marcy Kaptur\u2019s fighting back,\u201d the narrator declared in an ad for her re-election bid in 2022, the first under Republican-friendly district lines. Kaptur wound up beating her opponent JR Majewski<\/a> after it turned out he misrepresented<\/a> his military service, a win that broke the record<\/a> for length of service by a female lawmaker in the US Congress.
In August, Kaptur and her campaign manager were injured when a hit-and-run driver slammed into their car on a rainy morning, as they were going to church. She had recovered well and was just returning to campaigning the following month when the ad on transgender rights debuted, and the backlash followed.
Singling out her use of the term \u201ctransgender ideology\u201d, the Democratic party in Lucas county, where Toledo lies, said: \u201cThis is the type of harmful ad we expect from Derek Merrin and the Republicans. We are disappointed and ashamed that the Kaptur campaign stooped to their level by using this incredibly dangerous anti-trans rhetoric.\u201d
In neighboring Wood county, the Democratic party said it was \u201cdisappointed and saddened that the Kaptur campaign is running ads that use hurtful language and dangerous anti-trans rhetoric\u201d.
The latest round of redistricting added three heavily Republican counties along the border with Indiana into Kaptur\u2019s district. Sam Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Toledo, said the congresswoman\u2019s path to victory this year requires getting her traditional support base in Toledo to turn out, while stemming her losses in those rural areas, perhaps by capitalizing on voter anxiety over issues like datacenters<\/a>.
\u201cThe anti-trans ad that she was running, that negates an attack line from the Merrin campaign, makes it harder for them to run ads painting her as supportive of trans issues. But at the same time, it potentially alienates not just LGBT supporters, but also people who support LGBT rights,\u201d Nelson said.
\u201cHow many people are in each of those buckets? That\u2019s the calculation a campaign has to make.\u201d
Andrew Reising, a 36-year-old bartender in Toledo whose 14-year-old son is transgender, said the ads had worsened his perception of Kaptur.
\u201cYes, I\u2019m going to vote for Marcy Kaptur here in the fall. But I\u2019m already talking to people in Toledo right now, talking about seeing if we can find somebody who will be able to primary her in two years. Those are conversations already happening with people disappointed in her,\u201d he said.
In an interview, Kaptur said she approved the ad because \u201cthe public has to know where you stand on something. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve taken rights away from anybody.\u201d
She talked about how much she hated basketball growing up because other girls were taller than her, and how she wanted to figure skate but did not have the build for it. \u201cSports is essentially not fair to all people,\u201d she said.
\u201cI have supported human rights for everyone, I have a good record. But on that particular issue, the people who should be giving us guidelines have no guidelines,\u201d Kaptur continue. \u201cSo, I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m the person to decide. I feel that I have to let people know I\u2019ll protect their children, and \u2026 I do believe the responsibility is with the parents, with the schools, and with the leagues, especially after 18.\u201d
Michael Stwarka, a spokesman for Merrin\u2019s campaign, noted the congresswoman voted against a measure House Republicans passed last year to bar transgender athletes from both women and girl\u2019s sports. That bill has not advanced in the Senate.
\u201cFor 43 years, Marcy has been able to talk out of both sides of her mouth to get elected, and now she is feeling the ground shifting beneath her. Northwest Ohio voters see through Marcy Kaptur and her lies,\u201d Stwarka said.
Perhaps a greater obstacle facing Kaptur is that for all her years of service, her name doesn\u2019t carry as much weight in the Trump-friendly rural counties she will represent if she wins a 23rd term.
\u201cShe is well received, I know, in Lucas county, but 40-plus years in the \u2026 House, to me, it\u2019s time for change,\u201d said Mike Weible, a Republican who chairs the board of commissioners in Paulding county, where Trump won more than 77% of the vote two years ago.
Campaigning in Toledo on a recent Thursday, the congresswoman went from discussing rising costs with the proprietor of a beauty salon to buying a quart of paint for her deck at a hardware store where Kaptur was on a first-name basis with the staff. Then came a detour for pastries and coffee at Strachn Bakery, where 76-year-old retiree Glenn Taylor saw her walking up and said \u201cI just want to hug you!\u201d
\u201cYou are doing fantastic job, I don\u2019t care what nobody\u2019s saying,\u201d Taylor said after they embraced.
\u201cThey\u2019re going to say a lot, especially this last month,\u201d Kaptur replied.
\u201cCan you tell me one thing?\u201d Taylor asked. The election was 34 days off, and ads for Merrin and Kaptur were all over the airwaves in Toledo.
\u201cI see these TV ads,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cAre they \u2026 What are they?\u201d
\u201cThey\u2019re paid for,\u201d the congresswoman replied. \u201cThey\u2019re paid for by people who don\u2019t want us to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Democrat in Congress since 1983 rebuked over \u2018dangerous\u2019 campaign ad \u2013 will it harm her chances in tight Ohio race?Last month, Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, released a video advertisement in which she looks directly at the camera and says exactly what she thinks about one of the most divisive issues facing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}