“Dodge, discredit, deflect”: Democrat called out for refusing to talk about trans rights positions
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), the incumbent candidate for Congress in Missouri’s Second Congressional District, launched an attack ad this month about her Democratic opponent, Fred Wellman, focusing on his support for trans rights. And it seems, like most Democrats, Wellman is experimenting with how to respond.
In this case, he’s chosen silence.
The 30-second ad claims Wellman wants to “force his socialist agenda on America” and says he has “dangerously radical ideas,” like allowing “biological men in girls’ sports” and taxpayer-funded “gender-mutilating procedures for minors.”
On September 19, Wellman posted on social media decrying “the Republican desperation in Missouri to talk about anything but the destruction of our economy.”
He didn’t specifically mention trans rights, saying, “Not one Republican incumbent can run on their record of making life better for their constituents so it’s bizarre ads about nonexistent issues and outright lies. I have had so many people tell me they are voting for me now after the insane lies being spread. If you’ve been in office for 14 years and all you’ve got is slanderous lies about your opponent you deserve to be fired.”
Yet, when a local news station tried to follow up with Wellman about the ad and his position on trans rights, he repeatedly rebuffed them.
“We asked his campaign which claims were false,” KSDK political editor Mark Maxwell told viewers in a September 21 segment. “He declined an interview and told us to investigate Wagner’s finances instead.”
Maxwell said the station then sent Wellman’s campaign 12 written questions. He answered none. Instead, he sent a statement declaring, “KSDK would have a lot more credibility if instead of repeating Ann Wagner’s attack ads it investigated how Wagner’s net worth grew.”
“Then he pivoted, changed the subject to the cost of gas and groceries,” Maxwell said. “So the strategy appears to be: dodge, discredit, deflect.”
Wellman does have a track record of supporting trans rights and continues to call out Republicans’ anti-trans attacks. In a post on September 13, he wrote, “They want us to believe their lies about fellow Americans because transgender people are the one group they feel safe to hate with vicious passion and get away with.”
KSDK also aired footage of him saying he supports taxpayer-funded health care for transgender people (he was responding to a yes-or-no question and given no room to explain) and pointed out that in 2023, he vocally opposed the state’s gender-affirming care ban for minors. In the same year, he slammed the state’s then-governor, Mike Parson (R), for wanting to call a special legislative session focused on passing anti-trans bills.
So it’s unclear why he dodged KSDK’s questions, but one thing is for sure: Democrats across the country are struggling to figure out how to respond to anti-trans attack ads.
Earlier this month, former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is also the current Democratic Senate candidate for Ohio, took a similar approach to Wellman when he released an ad slamming Republicans for focusing on trans people at all, when there are so many bigger challenges facing the state.
Brown found himself in hot water in a past campaign over his response to anti-trans attacks from Republicans, so this time, he took a different approach and did not try to defend or explain his views at all. The 30-second ad, on which Brown reportedly spent more than $200,000, features a series of voters asking why the GOP is so obsessed with trans people.
Since the 2024 presidential election, Democrats have struggled to figure out their messaging on trans rights. During that election cycle, Republicans invested about $215 million into airing anti-trans TV ads that repeated claims about Democrats wanting “boys to play girls sports” and supporting taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for inmates. One ad — aired repeatedly during football games to reach male voters and suburban women — showed pictures of Harris next to a drag queen, a trans woman, and a nonbinary person, and ended with the tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Members of the party have since argued over how big a role these ads played in the president’s victory and the Republican Party’s overall performance.
The Human Rights Campaign said that the anti-trans ads were a waste of money because polls showed that only 4% of voters listed trans issues as among their primary concerns. Other polls showed that most Americans opposed anti-trans discrimination and political candidates.
Times columnist Philip Elliott wrote that Democrats who are blaming trans issues for Democrats’ election losses are treating trans people as a “scapegoat,” adding, “Rather than ask why Democrats didn’t do more to explain that standing up for trans kids is just the right thing to do, these politicians are trying to absolve their compatriots’ silence.”
MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown noted that Democrats only spent $9 million to refute the GOP’s anti-trans attacks, rebuffing the idea that Democrats lost for embracing trans issues too tightly. Hayes Brown also noted that numerous trans and nonbinary candidates won historic races on Election Day, rebuffing the idea that voters are transphobic.