Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan says Republicans are still running campaign ads focused on transgender people even though, in his view, the issue is failing to connect with the swing voters who could decide November’s US elections.
A prominent Texas Republican has questioned his own party’s continued electoral focus on transgender people, arguing that years of campaigning around issues such as trans participation in sport are no longer cutting through with undecided voters.
Dade Phelan, the former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, told Texas Monthly that Republicans are increasingly nervous about their position ahead of November’s midterm elections.
“People are freaking out,” he said. “You see it in their faces.”
But one strategy Phelan does not believe is working is the continued use of transgender issues as campaign material.
“We’re still running transgender ads,” he said.
“It’s just not resonating.”
‘They don’t even know what you’re talking about’
Phelan specifically pointed to Republican messaging around transgender women and girls participating in female sporting categories.
“Let’s be honest,” he said.
“The 8 to 10% of voters in the middle who are going to decide this election, when they hear stuff about boys in girls’ sports, they don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Phelan argued that after years of Republican campaigns centring the issue, many undecided voters simply do not encounter it in their everyday lives.
“This never happened in their communities, and they’ve been hearing about it for so many years,” he said.
“What Republicans are talking about is just not what the swing voter is really interested in.”
His argument is fundamentally electoral: that anti-trans messaging may no longer be an effective way of persuading the voters Republicans need.
It should not be confused with a wider rejection of Republican policies restricting transgender rights.
Phelan himself led a legislature that restricted trans rights
Phelan served as speaker of the Texas House from 2021 until 2025 and remains a Republican member of the chamber, although he is not seeking re-election in 2026.
During his speakership, Texas enacted several major Republican priorities affecting LGBTQ+ people.
That included a 2023 law banning puberty blockers, hormone treatment and transition-related surgery for most transgender minors, as well as restrictions on transgender participation in school and university sport.
The Texas Supreme Court upheld the medical-care ban in 2024.
Further measures affecting transgender Texans were passed after Phelan left the speakership.
In 2025, lawmakers approved legislation establishing state definitions of male and female, requiring sex assigned at birth to be recorded in medical records and introducing other restrictions affecting LGBTQ+ people.
Texas lawmakers also passed restrictions on transgender people’s access to bathrooms in government buildings during a special legislative session later that year.
So Phelan’s latest remarks are notable less because they signal a newfound pro-trans position than because a senior Republican is openly questioning whether focusing campaign resources on transgender people is politically useful.
Republican nervousness ahead of November
Phelan’s comments also arrive amid broader concern inside the Republican Party about the congressional midterms.
On 14 October, Politico reported conversations with five senior Republican lawmakers who privately expressed pessimism about retaining control of the US House of Representatives.
Some reportedly believed Democrats could gain around 10 seats.
Those comments represent private assessments by Republican lawmakers rather than an established forecast of what voters will ultimately do.
But they help explain Phelan’s emphasis on whether the issues dominating Republican advertising actually correspond with what persuadable voters care about.
Years of transgender-focused campaigning
Transgender issues have become an increasingly prominent feature of Republican politics at both state and federal level.
Campaigns have repeatedly focused on transgender athletes, gender-affirming healthcare for minors, bathroom access and the legal recognition of gender.
Texas has been one of the states at the forefront of those legislative efforts.
During its 2025 session alone, lawmakers filed more than 100 bills targeting transgender or broader LGBTQ+ issues, according to the Texas Tribune, although fewer than 10 ultimately passed.
Nationally, Republicans have also made transgender participation in women’s sport a campaign issue.
In January 2025, the Republican-controlled US House passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which sought to restrict federally funded schools from allowing trans girls and women to participate in female sporting categories.
Supporters of those policies generally frame them around fairness in women’s sport, parental rights or maintaining sex-based distinctions.
LGBTQ+ organisations and civil-rights advocates have argued that the policies single out a small minority population and can restrict trans people’s ability to participate in education, healthcare and public life.
Phelan’s comments introduce a different criticism from inside Republican politics itself: even if the party continues to support those policies, is campaigning on them still persuading anyone?
A strategic criticism, not necessarily a change of heart
That distinction matters for LGBTQ+ readers.
Phelan is not saying Republican policies affecting transgender people should necessarily be repealed.
Nor is he arguing that trans equality should become a Republican priority.
Instead, he is saying that the party’s continued fixation on trans-related campaign messaging may be failing as an electoral strategy.
His own record illustrates the difference.
As Texas House speaker, Phelan presided over a legislature that enacted some of the very restrictions on transgender people now forming the backdrop to his criticism of Republican advertising.
What has apparently changed is his assessment of what voters want politicians to talk about.
With control of Congress at stake in November, Phelan’s message to Republicans is that continuing to put transgender people at the centre of campaign advertising may not be delivering the political payoff it once promised.
For trans Americans who have spent years seeing their lives turned into campaign material, that is a revealing shift — even if it is driven by electoral calculation rather than a change in policy.
