Lisa Goodman, founding president of Equality Delaware, a statewide LGBTQ organization, worked at the same law firm as McBride’s father. After McBride came out, Dave and Sally talked with Goodman in her office for three hours, Goodman recalled, and she said two memorable words.
“I said, ‘This changes everything,'” Goodman recalled of McBride’s ability to help lobby for state legislation to help transgender people. “I also said, ‘Sarah is going to do more as Sarah than you ever imagined.'”
Both statements proved true. In the fall of 2012, McBride became the first trans woman to work in the White House when she interned with the Obama administration. The following year, she helped pass a bill in Delaware protecting transgender people from discrimination.
In 2013, immediately after graduating from college, McBride joined the Center for American Progress to work on LGBTQ policy. And in 2016, she joined the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, as national spokesperson. That same year, she became the first transgender person to speak at a major political convention when she spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
But in between doing the work he loved, McBride’s life took a heartbreaking turn.
“First principle”
McBride married Andrew Clay in August 2014, four days before she died from oral cancer. McBride said she still values the many lessons she learned from Clay and their relationship. Clay, a former trans attorney at the Center for American Progress, said she understands that creating change requires nuance and “meeting people where they are.”
“At the end of the day, we can say the right thing,” McBride said. “But if you can’t actually bring real, tangible results to people, if you can’t actually make a difference, it doesn’t mean anything. I think I was able to bridge all of that, not just the complexities, but often the contradictions, and figure out a way to move forward.”
Andrew Clay messaged McBride on Facebook in 2012, saying the two would be “quick friends.” Jana Williams (NBC News)
McBride said Clay had a childlike goofiness similar to one of his favorite television characters, Ted Lasso.
The two met in June 2012 at a White House Pride celebration. They began dating, and they wrote in their memoir that their relationship was “built on a unique shared experience, the byproduct of years of fighting to be who we were.”
When McBride and Clay moved in together in 2013, she said, “I felt more fulfilled and happy than I ever imagined.” But then Clay was diagnosed with oral cancer after seeing a doctor for a sore on his tongue. After surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, she was declared cancer-free in the spring of 2014, but the cancer returned a few months later. As Clay, who was only 28 years old, became ill, McBride became his caregiver. The two were married on the roof of his apartment in August, shortly before his death.
emerge by overcoming contradictions
Politicians close to Mr. McBride say he shares Mr. Clay’s ability to “bridge contradictions” and create real change. The best example, they said, is her efforts to get paid family leave in Delaware.
McBride was elected to the state Senate in November 2020, becoming the first openly transgender state senator in the nation. In her first term, she introduced the Healthy Delaware Family Act, a program that gives eligible employees up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave and up to six weeks of paid leave for medical needs or to care for a family member. ” and contributed to its passage. The Governor will sign the program in May 2022, and it will go into effect on January 1, 2026.
