ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A protester confronted Senate Democratic nominee Mary Peltola during a Thursday campaign event over a recent TV ad that critics viewed as anti-trans, pressing the former congresswoman to pledge that she would stand up for transgender rights if elected to Congress this year.
The person confronting Peltola, 23-year-old Nico Wilkerson, later told The Washington Sun that he was no longer planning to vote for the former congresswoman because of her views on trans issues, underscoring the broader difficulty Democratic candidates face this election season as they try to navigate a relentless series of Republican attacks.
Peltola had arrived at a senior center in Anchorage to campaign a few weeks before facing Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in one of the year’s most competitive Senate races. She took a wide range of questions from the audience, which mostly comprised senior citizens, before Wilkerson was handed a microphone.
He asked Peltola about a recent ad in which the candidate, in a response to Republican attacks, said she doesn’t “want kids getting surgeries to change genders, or men in girls’ bathrooms.”
“That is a Republican slander,” Wilkerson told Peltola on Thursday. ”That is a false slander, and you are buying into it by releasing that ad. So my question for you is, do you plan to support trans rights in the Senate if you are elected?”
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Peltola did not answer the question directly, saying that the GOP attacks on trans issues were “political theater” meant to distract from the high cost of energy and food.
“My hope is that we don’t have to spend one second on a conversation about trans anything,” she said. “My hope is that we have a Senate that’s serious about fixing American problems and not creating political diversions, not creating and stoking wedge issues that just divide us.”
Democrats this election are more forcefully pushing back on GOP attacks related to trans issues, convinced that their lack of an aggressive response during the 2024 presidential election cost the party votes. The party’s messaging this time around has generally been similar to Peltola’s, with many candidates saying that they don’t believe trans children should be allowed to participate in girls’ sports or reiterating their opposition to gender reassignment surgery for minors.
Democrats have worked hard behind the scenes over the last two years to craft a response to the attacks that satisfies moderates but doesn’t alienate trans people or allies. Some party strategists have said that liberal groups focused on the issue, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have seemingly given the candidates more space this election to respond to GOP attacks without garnering extensive criticism from progressive institutions.
But Wilkerson’s frustration shows the extent to which Democratic candidates can still face backlash on the issue from individual voters.
In an interview with The Sun after the event, Wilkerson, who is a transgender man, said he had spoken with Peltola about trans issues weeks earlier at another campaign event in town. At the time, he asked the former representative about a vote she took while in Congress that would deny military families coverage if their child tried to receive gender-affirming care.
“And she said, ‘I wanted to get elected,’” Wilkerson said. “That’s what she said: ‘I wanted to get elected.’”
Peltola ended that conversation by telling Wilkerson that Republicans’ attacks against transgender people were unfair.
But a week later, Wilkerson said he saw Peltola’s ad, which he believed reaffirmed the worst GOP talking points about the transgender community instead of rebutting them. And so he decided to confront her Thursday.
“This was my only chance to speak to her directly and let her know the impact of her ad,” Wilkerson told The Sun. “Let her know that I felt personally betrayed by her ad, let her know that she is playing into Republican lies and slander against trans people.”
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