When Granite State Democrats united to oppose a state law keeping biological males out of girls sports earlier this year, they were gambling against the odds. Polls at the time showed New Hampshire voters overwhelmingly supported the law, and an even larger number supported keeping males out of girls locker rooms and bathrooms.
Meanwhile, every single Democrat in the legislature voted against the GOP-sponsored “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” when it advanced through the House in March and when it passed the Senate in May — a risky political move.
Now, New Hampshire Democrats could be losing that bet. A new poll released Monday finds Granite Staters still oppose biological males in girls sports.
At the national level, the Trump campaign is running ads targeting Vice President Kamala Harris over her support for taxpayer-funded sex change operations for illegal aliens in prison.
“I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained,” Harris said in 2019.
Political professionals say the ad is one of the most effective of the 2024 cycle.
“It’s one of the issues where Democrats are furthest from the center of the country,” GOP advertising guru Brad Todd told The New York Times. “They are doing something that is totally illogical to appease a tiny slice that is very radical in their base.”
And 69 percent of Americans told Gallup last year that “transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.”
In New Hampshire, the new NHJournal/Praecones Analytica poll asked if voters would be more or less likely to support a legislator who voted to allow males who identify as female to play on girls sports teams. Only 15 percent said “more likely,” while 54 percent said “less likely” — more than three times more favorable for the GOP.
That tracks a May 2024 poll of Granite Staters finding that 59 percent supported separate sports teams for biological girls and boys, and 74 percent supported separate bathrooms and locker rooms.
Every Democrat in the legislature voted against both.
Republicans running for state House and Senate seats are using the issue as proof that the Democrats they’re running against are too extreme for local voters.
It’s also a point of division in the race for governor. Former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig is with her fellow Democrats in demanding that males who identify as females be treated like biological females.
“I trust our experts, the NHIAA (New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association), to set the rules and feel strongly that we shouldn’t be putting forward divisive policies–blanket, one size fits all, divisive policies–that prohibit people from playing sports,” Craig told WMUR on Sunday.
The NHIAA allows male athletes to identify as girls and play on girls teams, only requiring that they play as a girl for the entire season.
Republican Kelly Ayotte, on the other hand, supports allowing girls to have teams of their own.
“As the proud mom of a three-sport state champion female athlete, I believe protecting women’s sports is a matter of fairness,” Ayotte said when New Hampshire’s law went before a federal judge in August. “Women fought for decades to achieve that fairness through Title IX. When I am governor, New Hampshire’s female athletes will have a champion in the Corner Office.”
Gov. Chris Sununu signed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” into law in July. But a court challenge and several high-profile incidents have kept the issue in the spotlight as Tuesday’s election approaches.
In August, U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty issued a temporary restraining order allowing a biological male, Parker Tirrell, 15, to keep competing in girls soccer at Plymouth Regional High School.
That ruling led to a national news story out of Bow, N.H., when a group of local parents attended the game against Plymouth High wearing pink wristbands with “XX” drawn on them. They said it was a silent show of solidarity in support of girls-only competition. The Bow School District responded by slapping two of the parents with no-trespass orders, generating more headlines.
The banished parents in turn filed their own lawsuit on First Amendment grounds, leading to more news coverage.
Meanwhile, players on two girls’ teams have gone a step further and boycotted games where they were slated to face off against Kearsarge Regional High School. Its goalie is Maelle Jacques, a biological male who made headlines after winning the state girls’ high jump competition earlier this year.
Jacques’ presence in girls sports later attracted even more attention when the player’s father, Marc Jacques, was convicted on federal charges for allegedly possessing at least 200 child sex abuse images and video files, many of which he uploaded to the social media platform, Kik.
Marc Jacques, who had been attending girls’ soccer games while awaiting the day he was to turn himself into prison, has since been rearrested on more child pornography charges — a development that only pushed the issue still further into the spotlight.
Earlier this year, as the Republican-backed law was being debated in Concord, most Democrats doubted the matter would generate such a constant cycle of news.
When Rep. Timothy Horrigan (D-Durham) testified against the bill before it came up for a committee vote, he dismissed his GOP colleagues’ concerns as unimportant.
“A lot of these cases, they are pretty obscure competitions that normally sports fans wouldn’t be paying much attention to,” Horrigan said at the time.
The issue doesn’t appear to be “obscure” anymore.
