In the early stages of the campaign, the Republicans seek to highlight the Georgia Jon Ossoff senator in one of the key careers of the mid -period elections of 2026 are strongly inclined in attacks on transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Two groups aligned with the Republican Party launched ads on the subject in recent weeks. And the representative of the Buddy Carter Republican Party reached the waves with an announcement that Ossoff produced on the subject shortly after launching his campaign.
Republican candidates and campaigns have frequently supported the problems of cultural war in recent years as a way of exciting the base and frameing the Democrats as out of contact, particularly in the states of red trend. And they are even more emboldened after President Donald Trump bombarded the then vice president Kamala Harris with an avalanche of ads that attacked their support for transgender people during the 2024 elections.
But while the Democrats are preparing for a difficult fight for re -election by Ossoff in a state that Trump won by little in 2024, they believe that the problem will drown over the concerns of voters about the economy, particularly the management of Trump about it. Even so, it is a problem for which the Democrats lack a consensus on how to respond to the sides of the Republican Party, since the prominent members of the party deal with whether to adopt the protection of the transgender community as part of their values, divert the question or leave against including transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Ossoff is the only democratic head that defends a seat in a state that Trump won last year, which makes it the main objective for the Senate Republicans. Even so, some Republicans admit that Ossoff will be difficult to overcome, particularly now that Governor Brian Kemp decided not to look for the seat.
Ossoff’s first republican criticisms point to the vote of the Democratic Senator about the legislation in February that would become a violation of Title IX (endangering the financing of federal education) so that states allow transgender women and girls to participate in women’s sports. The bill failed to obtain the 60 votes he needed to advance in the Senate.
One Nation, the non-profit organization aligned with the Super PAC of the Senate Republicans, has spent at least $ 400,000 on issuing an advertisement that reminds of a key motto of one of Trump’s anti-Harris ads last year: “The defense of man to man does not wake up enough for Ossoff, he is playing for them/them.”
Carter’s Carter’s save included a place that promoted Congressman’s magic credentials, while a person who pretends to be a transgender woman has sports trophies and is in front of a flag of transgender pride that talks about how Ossoff has been an ally for the community.
When asked about the criticisms of the Republican Party of that vote, the communications director of the Ossoff campaign, Ellie Dougherty, told NBC News in a statement that “US parents do not need federal bureaucrats confirming the genitals of our children”, a reference to how a state could enforce the mandate in the project of republican law.
Scott Paradise, who administered the loser campaign of the Senate of Republican Herschel Walker in 2022, told NBC News that the first race of the Ossoff Senate in 2020 provided a “perfect storm” that allowed Ossoff to position himself as a “centrist” by reducing his focus to the “bread and butter problems.”
“If you are talking about the economy or speaking of moments when it has been maintained with the right, whether it is medium east, to the extent that you have in immigration, it is easier for him to cloud the waters. But this is such a black and white problem in a state of the right center” that allows Republicans to try to frame him as out of the way, Paradise said.
Surveys greatly show that the American public does not support the transgender women who play in women’s sports. The NBC News survey last month, driven by Surveymonkey, discovered that 75% opposed and 25% supported it. Other national surveys have found similar trends.
That is a reason why Trump’s campaign focused largely on the issue on the ads, arguing that Harris was out of the mainstream and pointed out his last support to gender treatments for inmates. After the elections, the Democrats do not agree on whether the position of the party on transgender rights, particularly in women’s sports, cost them electoral.
When asked about the attacks last month during an interview about “political breakfast”, a podcast organized by the public radio affiliate of Georgia, Ossoff said that the great early expense is a sign for him that “demonstrates that the National Republican Party includes the force that I will bring to this re -election campaign.”
The Democrat called Republicans, particularly republican political consultants, “obsessed and concerned about this issue.”
Thinking about the future about the problems of “the most important” for voters in 2026, added Ossoff, will it be “if federal bureaucrats are investigating or not the sexual biology of adolescent athletes? I don’t think so,” he added.
Amy Morton, a Democratic strategist in Georgia, elaborated that she believes that half of the partial exams will be a “referendum in the economy” and the management of Trump in this regard, emphasizing democratic attacks in the broad policy bill of the Republican Party that is working in Congress.
“They will continue to rely on that problem because they do not want to talk about the problems that are really affecting the Georgians,” he said, and added, “they made a strategic decision to wrap their weapons around Donald Trump so that there is no degree of separation between their failure as an executive and their failure.”
A Democratic strategist who worked in the successful re -election of Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia in 2022 added that, like his former boss, Ossoff’s high profile elections have helped define it in the state, making them skeptical that a republican attempt to mark him as an extreme will stay. They added that, while Warnock’s Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, relied on social problems during his failed offer, Kemp won comfortably with a very different message in the same vote, showing how a campaign can focus on the problems he wants and leave others aside.
“You saw Brian Kemp run an extremely disciplined career about the economy. You had difficulties in obtaining Kemp in the registration on abortion in 2022: the man focused on small businesses, the works and the economy. That was the consistent message he heard outside Brian Kemp. You share that with Herschel Walker and, you can make the voting: 300,000 votes,” said the Democrat.
But the economy was also a main problem in the 2024 elections, and Trump and the Republican party still managed to turn their attacks into trans problems into a memorable motto that stayed with some voters. That is why a national Republican strategist told NBC News that the attack is not a “replacement” for a convincing economic argument, but “part of the equation.”
“It is a problem that obviously had a massive impact in 2024. ‘Harris’s announcement of the Trump campaign is for them/them’ is one of the biggest ads of our generation in which it is so simple and so effective,” said the strategist.
Ads on transgender participants in women’s sports can work “in addition to: OH, also voted to help ensure that illegal immigrants obtain medical attention paid by the government and voted against the amendment of Laken Riley in 2024 before it was convenient,” added the strategist.
While transgender sports attacks are drawing headlines, both parties have been publishing advertisements focused on Washington. The Democrats have attacked the policy bill of the Republican Party that made its way through Washington, and the Republicans hit Ossoff for supporting the draft law of expenditures of former President Joe Biden in 2022.
Tharon Johnson, a Georgia Democratic strategist who worked for the 2020 Biden campaign in the state, agreed that the Republicans “will be difficult to make Jon Ossoff in this radical”, partly due to his work both in office and in the campaign.
And although he believes that the situation in which Harris was found in which he found last year is not the same as Ossoff is now, he said that Democrats can still get a lesson: “respond before and more effectively.”
Until now, Ossoff’s response has been staying focused on the economy and trying to frame the debate as on local control.
