NY-SD40: A New York candidate (R) tests the electoral limits of anti-trans rhetoric

Among the placards dotting lawns in northern Westchester County, N.Y., in the weeks before the November election are ones that do far more than simply remind passersby about the names of local candidates. Over the past few weeks, scores of white signs have appeared that instead prominently feature a pithy slogan: “Save Girls Sports.” Only below that, in much smaller print, is Republican state senate candidate Gina Arena named.

“People want signs!” Arena celebrated when we met at a diner in the town of Hawthorne last week during a lunch break from her nearby job with the county. “I mean, we ordered 250 signs and we had to order 500 more because people were calling, ‘I want the signs!’”

Arena had signs out before the ones about girls’ sports, normal ones that simply had her name and the position she sought. Those, it seems, didn’t inspire similar demand. So now, by all outward appearances, her campaign is singularly focused around this vaguely articulated idea that sports for girls are under threat.

Visit her campaign website and a landing page informs you that, yes, this is the website of all those lawn signs you’ve been seeing. They’re necessary, it explains, because “ideologues in Albany want to sacrifice Girls sports to achieve some type of genderless Utopia in New York.” This, the page adds, is “nuts.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/elections-new-york-girls-sports-gender-identity/