Last Tuesday was a rough night for conservatives. But Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, says there was one bright spot.

Ballot measures restricting transgender kids’ participation in girls’ sports passed in all four states where they were on the ballot, including Democratic-leaning Washington and Colorado. Schilling called them “the only good thing that happened on Tuesday.”

The measures, which put the question directly to voters for the first time, won 56% of the vote in Washington and 52% in Colorado. In the battleground state of Arizona, a measure amending state law to expand an existing ban passed with the support of 59% of voters. The widest margin came in Nebraska, where nearly 68% backed the measure to enshrine the state’s existing ban into the constitution.

“We have now confirmed that these issues are actually more popular than Democrats,” Schilling told MS NOW.

Now, as the GOP faces a reckoning over its future, more than a half dozen conservative leaders and strategists tell MS NOW that the measures’ success proves the party should double down on the issue. Several said they are already plotting which states to target next.

“We hope to pass these measures in more states and legislatures, and, where available, on state ballots as well,” said Craig DeRoche, the president and CEO of the Family Policy Alliance, a conservative Christian public policy organization that he describes as being at the forefront of the measures. “The conversations are beginning already.”

With the Supreme Court having ruled earlier this year that those bans can proceed, supporters of the measures feel emboldened.

Megan Burke, co-founder of the group Athletes for Action, which put more than $50,000 behind the Colorado measure, said her organization “wants to get this in every state.”

Conservative leaders say they plan to focus next on states where citizens can initiate ballot measures without the input of legislatures, which in blue states may be more resistant to the prospect of restricting the participation of trans kids in sports. Nineteen states plus the District of Columbia presently lack bans on transgender student participation in women and girls’ sports. Of those 19, seven allow citizens to initiate ballot measures to propose state laws or constitutional amendments, according to MS NOW’s review of databases maintained by the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank focused on LGBTQ+ equity, and the National Conference of State Legislatures.

DeRoche and three other conservative strategists singled out California as a potential target, though they acknowledged that a campaign there would be expensive given the state’s size. As evidence that a sizable share of California voters support what they describe as socially conservative policies, they pointed to the recent failure of the state’s “billionaire tax” ballot measure and to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s comments after the 2024 election that it is “deeply unfair” for trans athletes to compete in women’s sports.

If the issue wound up on the ballot there, DeRoche suggested that Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, could find himself in a bind.

“It’d be hard to run for president in California and oppose a ballot measure there at the same time,” DeRoche said. “I would say states as big as California would be fairly easy for us to win.”

Erin Friday, an attorney and co-founder of Protect Kids California, which fell short of the signatures needed to put a measure on the state’s 2024 ballot, said “there’s a lot of interest” in trying again in 2028, especially after last week’s wins in blue states.

“If you can do it in Colorado,” she said, “you can do it in other states.”

Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, described Michigan as “low-hanging fruit.” Paul Jacob, president of the Liberty Initiative Fund, an advocacy group that works on ballot measures, said he has “talked to people in Michigan who have expressed interest,” though he declined to identify them.

In Maine, Leyland Streiff, founder of Protect Girls Sports in Maine, is mounting another push to get the issue on the ballot next year after falling about 500 signatures short this year. Last week’s results, Streiff told MS NOW, “give people permission to say, ‘We can still be a progressive state and still stand with common sense.’”

With the four new measures, 29 states now restrict trans kids’ participation in sports, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have made the issue central to a broader effort to curtail trans rights, even though trans people make up only about 1% of the U.S. population, and trans kids on youth sports teams are likely a far smaller group still.

In Washington state, for example, where the newly passed measure will require healthcare providers to verify the sex of anyone who wants to play on a girls’ sports team, trans or not, the state’s Interscholastic Activities Association estimates there are only about 10 trans kids statewide playing on school teams, though supporters of the measure say that is likely an undercount. (Parents and trans advocates there have already challenged the measure in court.)

Republicans’ confidence in the issue rests largely on polling. In a survey conducted before the midterms by The 19th and YouGov, nearly half of adults said they were more likely to support a candidate who backs banning trans athletes from girls’ and women’s teams, including more than three-quarters of Republicans and 37% of Democrats. A Gallup poll last year found that nearly 70% of adults, including 45% of Democrats, believe trans athletes should play on teams that match their sex at birth.

Some strategists also cite Democrats’ retreat from past positions as evidence that the GOP has pulled its opponents toward its side. After Republicans spent nearly $40 million on ads attacking Texas Democratic Sen.-elect James Talarico over his support for trans kids, Talarico said on Fox News that he would “oppose trans athletes playing in girls sports if it endangers safety or fairness,” reversing the position he held as a state representative.

But that shift among Democrats — which has not been limited to Talarico — could also make it harder for Republicans to claim the issue as their own.

“If Democrats run away from the issue toward the middle,” DeAngelis said, “Republicans will be less successful.”

Other factors complicate the GOP’s bet. Ticket-splitting is common with ballot measures, meaning voters can back trans sports bans while still electing Democrats, as they did last week in Colorado, Arizona and Washington.

The issue could also backfire on Republicans in the long run, as same-sex marriage did. Voters approved more than 30 ballot measures banning same-sex marriage in the 1990s and 2000s, which the Supreme Court struck down in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. As public opinion shifted toward greater acceptance of same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ people, the GOP’s opposition left it out of step with voters and the party struggled to move past it.

Two decades later, some advocates say Republicans are poised to make the same mistake.

“People do not want their leaders to be focused on discriminating against folks,” said Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, a political advocacy organization supporting issues affecting trans people.

Barbara Simon, spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization GLAAD, told MS NOW that trans sports bans are “not the 80-20 issue” that some on the right believe they are.

Simon pointed to a poll of more than 2,000 voters conducted by GLAAD and Morning Consult, which found that 37% of midterm voters reported being less likely to support candidates who ran ads on trans issues, compared to only 18% who were more likely. According to GLAAD, Republicans spent more than $187 million on anti-trans campaign ads, mostly in Texas and Ohio.

“They lit $200 million on fire, and they’re trying to find a bright spot,” Simon said.

The poll also found that nearly 60% of voters were cynical about why politicians focus on trans issues.

“I think, once again, the Republican party is learning the wrong lesson,” Hack said. “Talking about trans kids in sports is not an excuse for a complete absence of solutions to the problems that are affecting most Americans.”

On that point, even some conservatives agree.

In a September memo to GOP candidates, Schilling’s American Principles Project warned them to offer “a compelling economic alternative” to Democrats rather than simply highlight their differences on trans issues.

“These culture war issues work,” Schilling told MS NOW this week. “But if you really want to win nationally, you have to have an economy that works for young people and working families.”

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