Senate Republicans are trying to tie Democrat Jon Ossoff to anti-trans smear

In a move straight from President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign playbook, Senate Republicans are launching a multimillion-dollar ad blitz against Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff — and once again, they’re targeting transgender kids to do it.

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Timed to hit Georgia’s airwaves during the NCAA Final Four, the Masters tournament, and Atlanta Braves games, the ad is the GOP’s first of the 2026 cycle. It’s running courtesy of One Nation, the issue advocacy arm of the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans.

What is the ad?

Axiosreports the ad slams Ossoff for voting against a Republican-sponsored bill that would have barred transgender women and girls from participating in school sports. “Man-to-man defense isn’t woke enough for Ossoff. He’s for they/them,” the ad says, as an Ossoff look-alike dunks a basketball over a female player — a callback to the Trump campaign’s 2024 attack on Vice President Kamala Harris when the GOP spent millions on misleading and bigoted commercials. The spots aired during major sporting events.

But here’s what the ad attacking the senator doesn’t say: The bill Ossoff opposed wouldn’t have blocked “men from playing in girls’ sports,” as Republicans misleadingly frame the issue. It would have stripped federal funding from schools that allow transgender girls to participate in sports with their friends — threatening programs that provide free meals, counseling, and extracurricular support — and would have subjected girls and women to invasive genital inspections to “prove” their sex to play.

And it’s built on a phantom threat. During a December congressional hearing, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified that of the more than 500,000 college student-athletes in the U.S., fewer than 10 are believed to be trans.

GOP uses trans kids as political pawns

Human Rights Campaign National Press Secretary Brandon Wolf said the ad reveals more about the GOP’s desperation than about voters’ concerns.

“Georgians deserve political leaders who respect and value every child,” Wolf told The Advocate. “But, in their desperation to distract from their tanking economy, national security catastrophes, and looming billionaire tax break, the GOP is going back to their tired playbook: using trans kids as political pawns.”

“Just like Wisconsin voters, Georgia families aren’t buying it,” he added.

Wisconsin rejected similar attacks — and won

Just days ago, voters in Wisconsin elected liberal justice Susan Crawford to the state’s Supreme Court, rejecting a barrage of transphobic attack ads aired by her Republican-backed opponent, Brad Schimel. Rather than get mired in culture-war rhetoric, Crawford’s campaign responded by going on offense — turning the conversation to Schimel’s record on child sexual abuse cases and portraying Crawford as a “common-sense judge and mom” who would protect kids. The word “transgender” never appeared in her counterattack, Washington Monthlyreports. Her victory — by 10 points — affirmed that Democrats don’t need to mirror right-wing messaging or throw trans people under the bus to win.

Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said Wisconsin offered a clear rebuke of anti-trans fearmongering. “Voters deserve leaders who speak the truth, fight for fairness, and protect all Americans, including the most marginalized,” Ellis said in a statement to The Advocate. “Stoking the flames of anti-transgender fear is a losing campaign tactic: In Wisconsin this week, voters rejected a late surge of anti-transgender ads to elect a new state supreme court justice and re-elect the state superintendent of schools, who both voiced support for transgender youth.”

Wolf added, “While voters will see through these ads, they still come with a cost — emboldening hate and empowering cruelty. Shame on those who have nothing to offer but chaos and division when Georgians and Americans across the country are crying out for a future that is better for all of us.”

How did Ossoff respond?

Ossoff’s campaign is also pushing back.

“Instead of working to find bipartisan solutions on issues impacting Georgians’ lives, like lowering costs at the grocery store, gas pump, and pharmacy counter, the GOP is shamelessly using trans individuals as a prop for political division,” campaign spokesperson Ellie Dougherty told The Advocate.

Earlier, she told Axios, “American parents don’t need federal bureaucrats confirming our children’s genitalia. Athletic associations and local school districts can ensure fair, safe competition in childhood athletics.”

Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, said the attacks are part of a yearslong misinformation campaign and distraction.

Will the manufactured crisis work?

“There has never been a single transgender athlete identified in any of these hearings,” he said. “It’s a made-up issue. Georgia voters care about affordable housing, jobs, healthcare, and schools. Trans kids who want to play sports with their peers is not what’s motivating voters.”

Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at the University of California Los Angeles and one of the country’s leading experts on campaign effects, said ads like this are effective only under certain conditions — and right now, the conditions are ripe.

“First, the effects of campaign ads generally are small, and they go away rapidly,” she told The Advocate. “They’re larger in Senate or House races than in presidential contests, but the effects come from imbalances in the ad environment. You have to have more ads than your opponent to get effects — and even then, those effects are in the single digits.”

Still, Vavreck warned, this kind of messaging works not because it’s persuasive but because it plays into existing attitudes.

“This particular message is effective at the moment because public opinion on many identity-related issues, like trans equality, is lopsided — and Republican politicians are on the popular side of these issues,” she said. “There are lots of poll results that will show these imbalances.”

That disconnect might not matter in a different political moment, she said. “This wouldn’t matter if the issue were not at the top of people’s minds when considering political choices, but that is not the political landscape.”

Polling underscores her point. A 2024 Gallupsurvey found just 18 percent of voters considered transgender rights “extremely important” to their presidential vote. The economy topped the list at 52 percent. And a Human Rights Campaign post-election poll found only 4 percent of voters said policies attacking trans people influenced their vote — the lowest-ranked issue among 22 options.

Still, as Vavreck explained, even ads with minimal persuasive power can help a campaign reinforce existing narratives and energize core voters when identity is at the forefront of their minds.

“Identity-inflected policies are at the top of people’s minds. Whether that fades as the stock market crashes and prices go up is yet to be seen — but right now, identity-inflected issues are top issues for people,” she said.

Experts warn: Don’t let the attacks go unchallenged

Jami Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Toledo and an expert on transgender policy, said Republicans are sticking with messaging that plays well with conservative sports audiences. “It was effective in the last cycle, and there’s no reason for them not to try it again,” she told The Advocate. “Public attitudes haven’t improved. And unfortunately, some Democrats are starting to back away from the trans issue in sports because it’s toxic.”

Andrew Flores, associate professor of government at American University, said that despite the optics, the actual electoral impact of these ads is questionable. “I remain skeptical if this is a winning message. It surely is not a losing message,” he said. “In experiments I’ve done in the past, I have always found that anti-transgender ads did not move the needle on people’s opinions on transgender rights.”

But Flores warned that if Democrats allow the message to go unchallenged, the GOP-aligned outside groups may get to define the narrative unopposed. “The ‘success,’ per se, is allowing the outside group to go unchallenged,” he said.

He advised Democrats to respond with clarity and conviction. “A response that emphasizes the common values in bringing people together, that people at the end of the day want to do the right thing and treat people fairly, and identifies the divisiveness of the current national climate that is dominated by Republicans,” Flores said. “Something like: ‘Ossoff is for Us All – they are for Elon Musk.’”

The real-world consequences

In 2024, Republicans poured more than $150 million into anti-trans messaging. But HRC polling showed that Equality Voters — a large, multigenerational voting bloc united by support for LGBTQ+ rights — overwhelmingly rejected those messages. Across key battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona, Equality Voters delivered double-digit margins to Democrats. And 84 percent of LGBTQ+ voters backed Harris.

Still, Georgia passed its own trans sports ban just last week, highlighting the real-world consequences of political scapegoating. Graham said similar laws in other states have led to cisgender girls being wrongly accused of being trans — and subjected to invasive scrutiny to participate in sports.

“The harms we’re already seeing in other states are about to come to Georgia,” he said. “And none of it has anything to do with fairness in sports.”