This year’s court and legislative wins were also accompanied by historic gains in political representation. According to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, at least 230 out queer and trans candidates won their elections in 2023. That number is a record for a year outside the midterm and presidential election cycle, and it includes several significant milestones. Fabian Nelson, a 38-year-old realtor, became the first-ever LGBTQ+ candidate to win election in Mississippi, where he will represent District 66 in the state House. Rue Landau made history as the first LGBTQ+ member of Philadelphia’s city council, while Danica Roem became the first trans state senator in the U.S. South (after previously becoming America’s first out trans lawmaker in 2017). Roem will be joined next year by eight other LGBTQ+ representatives in the Virginia Legislature, all of whom won their elections.

In total, 71% of Victory Fund’s endorsed candidates won their races in 2023, despite a wave of attacks against them. Sean Meloy, the group’s vice president of political programs, says Roem faced “almost a million dollars in anti-LGBTQ+ ads” in her historic race, and she still won by 2.3 points.

“Trans lives are being politicized for political gains, but the good thing is that voters largely ignored those terrible attacks,” he tells Them, saying that the ads’ failure to resonate with voters indicates that the far-right lives in a “different reality.” “In their reality, they think their neighbors are going to turn on trans people. They think that their neighbors want censorship in libraries and schools. And so they think that these issues will be motivating, when they’re only motivating the same type of people in that extremist group.”

Even as right-wing candidates attempt to use transphobia to activate their base, advocates say the big LGBTQ+ political victories of 2023 indicate that these tactics pay small dividends at the ballot box. According to Geoff Wetrosky, vice president of national campaigns for the Human Rights Campaign, Republican groups spent more than $4 million on anti-LGBTQ+ attack ads attempting to unseat Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in Kentucky after he vetoed omnibus anti-trans legislation that banned gender-affirming care for youth, required teachers to out trans students to their parents, and barred trans students from using gender-congruent bathrooms at school. (The veto was ultimately overridden.) The ads claimed that Beshear supports “child sex changes with permanent consequences” and wants to kidnap the trans children of parents who don’t support them. Beshear’s opponent, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R), still lost by five points, and in one of America’s reddest states.