There’s a word for politicians who support fringe transgender issues — Democrats. At least that was the trend until this month, when two governors shocked voters by switching jerseys on a subject that’s almost single-handedly swung elections. 

While most people would agree that it’s past time for Joe Biden’s party to get back in step with sane Americans on sports, parental rights, and biological gender, it’s inexplicable that anyone — especially a Republican like New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte — would cross over into the incredibly shrinking island of public opinion on LGBT extremism. And yet, that’s exactly what happened last week when the governor decided to veto a string of common-sense bills in a baffling display that jeopardizes whatever future she envisions in the GOP. 

In a gross miscalculation — reminiscent of the fumbles made by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) and former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem — Ayotte turned back three separate pieces of legislation that would have protected girls’ spaces (bathrooms, prisons, and locker rooms) from biological men (HB 148), given parents an avenue to complain about sexually-explicit material in the classroom (HB 324), and let moms and dads intentionally opt their children into the government’s controversial Youth Risk Behavior Survey that features invasive questions about children’s personal behavior (HB 446).

Ayotte’s stunning trio of vetoes bucked the Republican Party at a time of nationwide dominance in the trans debate. While Democrats are scrambling to find their footing after conservatives walloped them on their woke extremism in the elections, it makes absolutely zero sense that the former senator would intentionally self-sabotage. For months, the Left has been trying to dig itself out of a defensive hole on this issue — only for Ayotte to throw herself down in it. 

Not surprisingly, local conservatives are angrily scratching their heads. After all, these issues aren’t just potent at the ballot box, they’re overwhelmingly popular. Sixty-nine percent of Granite Staters want to shield children from radical gender ideology, according to polling. “Kelly Ayotte is living in a different day and age,” former State Rep. Melissa Blasek vented on X. “She doesn’t seem to realize it’s 2025 not 2018. Republicans won the culture wars. We were elected because Democrats went off the rails on these issues and normal voters want course correction. But instead of doing what she got elected to do, she’s running scared from 80/20 issues. It’s baffling.”

Calls of “traitor” dotted several social media accounts, along with posts declaring, “This is not what New Hampshire voters want.” For those who’ve watched Ayotte over the years, it is, unfortunately, on brand. The former senator was part of the anti-family minority in the GOP, voting to draft America’s daughters, force taxpayers to fund same-sex marriages, and inject the Left’s twisted views of gender and sexuality on every business, school, organization, and charity in the country. 

In defending the indefensible, the governor tried (unsuccessfully) to have it both ways in her public statement. While she acknowledged that there are “important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns raised by biological males using places such as female locker rooms and being placed in female correctional facilities,” she believes the state’s solution “creates an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens.” Which, many would retort, is exactly the point. “I have concerns about the broadness of this bill,” Ayotte went on, “the unintended impacts accompanying its implementation, and that it will spur a plethora of litigation against local communities and businesses.”

As for her decision to silence parents on issues like LGBT extremism in the classroom, the mother of two claimed to “understand and appreciate the concerns parents have about their children being exposed to age-inappropriate or objectionable materials in schools.” But, Ayotte argued, New Hampshire already allows exemptions, so she sees no need to empower parents to remove books or other content that includes “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse.” 

As part of the legislation, moms, dads, or guardians could write a complaint to the school principals outlining their objections and highlighting how the books or curriculum are “harmful to minors.” That would trigger an investigation, something Democrats called a “censorship effort.” In the end, Ayotte sided with the leftists at the nation’s largest teachers union, stating, “I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness, particularly where the system created by House Bill 324 calls for monetary penalties based on subjective standards.” 

New Hampshire House Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R) was astounded, comparing the vetoed bill to the law that now bars students’ cellphones in K-12 classrooms. “Now that kids can’t get porn on their phones while at school, at least they can still find it in the library,” he quipped disdainfully.

Making the optics for Ayotte even more unfavorable, the New Hampshire leader betrayed parents at the same time a Democratic governor, Josh Stein (N.C.), had their backs. In a somewhat surprising move, the Tarheels’ leader ignored his party’s woke standard-bearers and signed a bill that lets adoptive and foster parents raise children according to their biological sex without fear of discrimination or punishment. The Parents Protection Act also bars adoption agencies from blacklisting couples who have biblical or moral beliefs about gender. Compared to Ayotte, Stein’s move seemed remarkably reasonable. 

Perhaps he, like his battered and bruised party, is trying to come to grips with what The New York Times calls the Democrats’ ideological “troubles.” The party “lost voters on transgender rights,” Charles Homans warns. “Winning them back won’t be easy.”

Part of that strategy needs to be “coming to terms with the party’s transformation during the Obama and first Trump presidencies,” the Times insists, “when American liberals broadly embraced what had previously been vanguard positions on a range of social and cultural issues, including gender and race, immigration and policing.” Greg Schultz, campaign manager of Biden’s 2020 primary run, put his finger on the problem immediately. “We try so hard to represent everybody, we alienate everybody.” He paused before observing, “It has become so pervasive in our party that we must check all these boxes in order to do anything. But voters don’t think that way.”

Now, with their brand in crisis and leaders in the political wilderness, Stein is dipping his toes in the untested waters of moderation. (Only his toes, though, as his vetoes of other common-sense bills soon showed.) 

As FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter told The Washington Stand, “While I’m under no illusions Governor Stein is some kind of staunch ally of the truth as it relates to God’s design for His image bearers as exclusively male and female, he’s due some amount of credit for signing the Parents Protection Act. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte, who just vetoed legislation to protect women and girls from being subjected to biological men in their restrooms and locker rooms.”

“Considering that Republicans nationwide campaigned heavily on supporting the truth that male and female are immutable, biological categories,” Carpenter continued, “and that women and girls deserve privacy in changing rooms, bathrooms, and locker rooms, and won historic victories, it begs the question why Governor Ayotte would veto this bill when not just the public is behind it, but the truth also.”

No one except Ayotte can answer that — but you can bet it will be asked. As so many leaders who’ve crossed parents can testify, voters don’t forget. No matter how hard people from both parties try to stop it, there’s no avoiding the reckoning.