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.
“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,” Kaptur says, “and boys should not play in girls’ sports.”
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 it would not back her re-election campaign, and a former intern published an op-ed about how he was “embarrassed” 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’s 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 ۲۰۲۰ census increased the share of Republican voters in her area. She eked out a ۲۲nd term against Republican challenger Derek Merrin in the ۲۰۲۴ presidential year, even as Trump won her district handily. Months later, the Ohio redistricting commission approved a legally mandated 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 ۳ November midterm election, and forecasters believe it could go either way, despite Republican candidates nationwide facing headwinds in the form of 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 the question of 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.
A rebellious streak
Kaptur is not the only Democrat facing a tough race this year to come out against equal access for transgender youth athletes, 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’s conservative supermajority upheld such laws.
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Ohio, Amy Acton, opposes transgender participation in school sports, as does Rob Sand, the party’s nominee for governor of Iowa. This week, Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina released an ad saying she, too, supports the bans, while in May, eight Democrats in the US House – Kaptur included – 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, which has not cleared the Senate, have been targeted by the mid-decade redistricting effort 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 ۴۳ years in Congress, which began when she unseated a Republican in ۱۹۸۲ after serving as a domestic policy adviser in Jimmy Carter’s 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 and the bank bailouts of the ۲۰۰۸ financial crisis. She has made unsuccessful bids for leadership positions in the House Democratic Caucus, and complained openly that midwestern representatives like herself were being overlooked. In ۱۹۹۶, the late billionaire Ross Perot approached her to serve as his running mate when he made a third-party bid for the presidency, but Kaptur declined.
Now ۸۰, 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. “My ability to help them is a function of the positions I hold,” 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.
“Marcy’s here. I was just at an event, and I know it’s campaign time, but I was just at an event with her Saturday,” said Tony Totty, the president of the United Auto Workers’s political arm in the Toledo region.
“That’s not just because it’s campaign time. Marcy is in her district, and, you know, these politicians fall in love with DC because it’s alluring, but Marcy’s been there too long to let that sway her.”
Her career has coincided with a decline in Democrats’ fortunes in Ohio, a one-time swing state that’s now dominated by Republicans. As Kaptur’s re-election prospects have grown more competitive, she has repeatedly been among the first to publicly break with her party.
“Joe Biden’s letting Ohio solar manufacturers be undercut by China, but Marcy Kaptur’s fighting back,” the narrator declared in an ad for her re-election bid in ۲۰۲۲, the first under Republican-friendly district lines. Kaptur wound up beating her opponent JR Majewski after it turned out he misrepresented his military service, a win that broke the record for length of service by a female lawmaker in the US Congress.
‘The public has to know where you stand’
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 “transgender ideology”, the Democratic party in Lucas county, where Toledo lies, said: “This 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.”
In neighboring Wood county, the Democratic party said it was “disappointed and saddened that the Kaptur campaign is running ads that use hurtful language and dangerous anti-trans rhetoric”.
The latest round of redistricting added three heavily Republican counties along the border with Indiana into Kaptur’s district. Sam Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Toledo, said the congresswoman’s 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.
“The 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,” Nelson said.
“How many people are in each of those buckets? That’s the calculation a campaign has to make.”
Andrew Reising, a ۳۶-year-old bartender in Toledo whose ۱۴-year-old son is transgender, said the ads had worsened his perception of Kaptur.
“Yes, I’m going to vote for Marcy Kaptur here in the fall. But I’m 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,” he said.
In an interview, Kaptur said she approved the ad because “the public has to know where you stand on something. I don’t think I’ve taken rights away from anybody.”
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. “Sports is essentially not fair to all people,” she said.
“I 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,” Kaptur continue. “So, I don’t feel like I’m the person to decide. I feel that I have to let people know I’ll protect their children, and … I do believe the responsibility is with the parents, with the schools, and with the leagues, especially after ۱۸.”
Michael Stwarka, a spokesman for Merrin’s campaign, noted the congresswoman voted against a measure House Republicans passed last year to bar transgender athletes from both women and girl’s sports. That bill has not advanced in the Senate.
“For ۴۳ 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,” Stwarka said.
Perhaps a greater obstacle facing Kaptur is that for all her years of service, her name doesn’t carry as much weight in the Trump-friendly rural counties she will represent if she wins a ۲۳rd term.
“She is well received, I know, in Lucas county, but ۴۰-plus years in the … House, to me, it’s time for change,” said Mike Weible, a Republican who chairs the board of commissioners in Paulding county, where Trump won more than ۷۷% 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 ۷۶-year-old retiree Glenn Taylor saw her walking up and said “I just want to hug you!”
“You are doing fantastic job, I don’t care what nobody’s saying,” Taylor said after they embraced.
“They’re going to say a lot, especially this last month,” Kaptur replied.
“Can you tell me one thing?” Taylor asked. The election was ۳۴ days off, and ads for Merrin and Kaptur were all over the airwaves in Toledo.
“I see these TV ads,” Taylor said. “Are they … What are they?”
“They’re paid for,” the congresswoman replied. “They’re paid for by people who don’t want us to win.”
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