They/Them: Can It Work for Republicans Again?

Many or most observers on both sides of the aisle called it the turning point in the 2024 presidential race. It was the decision by Donald Trump’s campaign and related super PACs to unleash a barrage of ads unmasking the most outrageous policy ideas of Kamala Harris and drawing a razor-sharp contrast between her and Trump. "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you" echoed on TV sets across the land, unsettling undecided voters. And it’s no wonder.  The most famous of the ads showed an image of a purple-haired person, while Harris voiced her support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners, including criminal aliens, saying, "[E]very transgender inmate in the prison system would have access” to them.

That was the beginning of the end for the Harris campaign. According to an analysis by Future Forward, the main pro-Harris super PAC, the ad shifted the race 2.7 percentage points toward Trump among people who viewed it. The question now is whether that same they/them tactical narrative will work two years later. The polls may soon reflect the first signs because Republicans are unleashing the they/them kraken, bombarding the nation with ads about leftist extremism heading down the home stretch. Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee is barely solvent, according to multiple sources, and thus forced to scale back its marketing plans with Election Day less than a month away. 

They/Them 2.0

Since the Democratic Party has hardly changed its ways in the last two years, GOP ad themes are not significantly different from 2024’s, though the warnings are more pointed this time around. Republican Ken Paxton continues trying to sissify his opponent in the Texas Senate race, James Talarico, casting him as not a real Texan, a vegan in cattle country who thinks God is non-binary and created six genders. So, a GOP-aligned super PAC backing Paxton, who is plagued by multiple scandals that have weighed down his campaign, is going all in on they/them: "James Talarico supports taxpayer-funded sex changes. He stood against protecting girls' sports. Talarico is fighting for a radical agenda that leaves everyday Texans behind. James Talarico: For they/them, not you."

That basic line of attack against the left has continued almost seamlessly since the 2024 election, even against relatively moderate Democrats. In the 2025 Virginia governor’s race, Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears blanketed the airwaves with ads that characterized Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee, as “being for they/them.” Shortly after former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper announced his Senate run in 2025, the GOP Senate Leadership Fund released an ad with on-screen text saying, "Roy Cooper sides with they/them." An ad in the Georgia Senate race that aired during a basketball game lambasted Democrat Jon Ossoff, employing hoop language: “Man-to-man defense isn’t woke enough for Ossoff – he’s playing for they/them. Call and tell Sen. Ossoff, stop dunking on defenseless girls.” 

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Sometimes the GOP message reflects the same theme with different words. For example, a Trump-aligned PAC in Alaska spent $2 million in September accusing Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola of supporting "taxpayer-funded sex changes," according to AdImpact. And sometimes the Democrat feels forced to respond. Peltola cut a direct-to-camera ad, saying, “No, I don’t want kids getting surgery to change genders or men in girls’ bathrooms.” Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur has been rebuked by some of her fellow Democrats for airing ads recently claiming she “voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of schools.” Meanwhile, Talarico has tried to cleverly sidestep the issue, telling Fox News he would “oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it risks safety or fairness.” He said local officials should decide how to make those determinations, but he didn't say how they would measure safety and fairness. Of course he didn't.

By continuing to employ the they/them strategy, are Republicans “fighting the last war,” a no-no in electoral politics? Technically speaking, yes, because Harris is not on the ballot this year. But the cowardly wokeness underpinning the former vice president’s knee-jerk support for every fashionable far-left cause has not been vanquished from the ranks of progressives. If anything, the problem has metastasized with the infusion of self-proclaimed socialists into the Democratic mix.  Will the continuing threat to American culture posed by the left, on top of Democrats’ disastrous governance during the Joe Biden era, be enough to offset the kitchen-table concerns of everyday voters paying too much for food and fuel and blaming Donald Trump? Watch and find out.