Bree Taylor May Not Win, but Her Congressional Run Shows Trans People Belong on the Ballot
The Trans Unity Coalition founder is challenging Rep. Debbie Dingell with a promise to listen and a plan to livestream her office
I've never regretted coming out and affirming my gender, or sharing that truth with the world. But along with the euphoria of living my true life, I also took on the stigma and fear that come with being transgender in America.
It's one thing to read insults and slurs from brain-dead online trolls and quite another to watch governments, local and federal, pass laws targeting my community for simply living truthfully. Making our lives harder still is the trend of supposed cisgender allies deciding that siding against trans rights is politically expedient. Trans journalist Erin Reed named the danger in a September guide to anti-trans Democrats, writing that "the gravest long-term threat to transgender Americans is not just the Republican Party. It is also the campaign to strip support for transgender people out of all parties."
As most marginalized communities eventually learn, one of the most effective ways to win legal rights and protections is to elect our own. But few trans people run for office, and fewer still take the leap to a federal seat. Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., is currently the only trans member of Congress. So I was intrigued, and quite pleased, to find a trans candidate running in my own congressional district.
Bree Taylor, founder of the Trans Unity Coalition (TUC), is running as an independent write-in candidate for the U.S. House seat in Michigan's 6th Congressional District, currently held by Democrat Debbie Dingell. With the Nov. 3 election less than two weeks away, her campaign rests on a promise to listen, and she's asking voters to hand her an assignment.
Oct. 3 was a typically beautiful fall day, perfect for cider mills and campaign rallies. When Taylor kicked off her run at Clubview Park in Ypsilanti Township, I literally saw her running, scurrying between her car and a park bench with camera equipment and a coffee urn. No campaign staff helped her, and I was the only person who showed up.
Taylor said she had notified local TV stations and other news outlets about the kickoff, and she promoted the rally on Bluesky and on her campaign site, breewins.com. The lack of response surprised me. Nobody but this lone reporter cared to show up, not even other members of the trans community, despite Taylor being a well-known trans advocate.
I sat down with Taylor for a one-on-one interview and asked why she'd chosen to shoot so high for her first run at elected office.
"Why am I running? Because I can, and so can you! This is how you build democracy," she said. "You don't tell people these are their only [two] options."
"You don't tell people to turn off their critical thinking. You challenge others to challenge you back."
Taylor has spent the last two years building TUC, which grew out of informal gatherings and became a registered nonprofit in October 2024. The group lobbied for Michigan's name change reforms, which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law in January 2025 to make legally changing your name simpler. Taylor said TUC now has representation in all 50 states, where it works to pass similar protections.
More recently, Taylor said, she started looking past trans issues to the broader problems facing the country and the 6th District. She filed a write-in Declaration of Intent with the Michigan Bureau of Elections, which Michigan requires before write-in votes for a candidate can be counted.
The idea of being challenged runs through her whole campaign. During our conversation, she handed me a sheet of paper listing three handwritten offers she makes to everyone who attends her rallies. "Which issues matter to you?" reads one. The others are "Give me an assignment" and "Ask me anything."
Those are bold offers compared with those of most candidates, who respond with canned answers and tiptoe around anything they don't want to talk about.
"The call to action I would like to inspire is that we need to begin rebuilding this very second. And to find opportunities to come together," Taylor said.
An outside observer might expect a trans candidate to be closed off to anyone outside a generally progressive sphere, but Taylor says she'll meet with anybody. Period.
"Bring me where you are and let me talk to your community, let me talk to your people. Let me learn. Let me listen. I should be doing more listening than talking for the next month," Taylor said. "Why wouldn't I? These are my constituents. These are real people with real lives. These are people with problems that I would never have thought of."
"Those are your neighbors; those are the people you cross paths with on the street," she continued. "You don't need to keep fighting. We're all going to have disagreements. It takes a lot of hard work for people to find safe space to say, 'These are my opinions, these are my viewpoints. I know you're going to scream at me, but I'm asking you not to. After that, I want to hear from you.'"
If she wins, Taylor wants to rethink what a congressional office can do.
"I want to take the current framework for what a congressional office looks like and adapt it to modern-day challenges, which are only going to continue to evolve," she said. "I would like to push the office to its limits to really demonstrate how it can be used by the people, for the people."
Among her ideas is what she playfully calls "Bree-Span," a nod to C-SPAN, the network that airs unfiltered live coverage of Congress.
"We talk about keeping our elective leaders accountable ... You don't know what's happening unless there is a medium for the public to peek inside those conversations," she said.
If an interest group wants to meet with her office, Taylor asked, why shouldn't the public be able to "see every single moment, hear every single word" of that conversation?
"When you have the means of mass communication intersecting with public transparency, that gives more power to the people ... at least for the district doing it."
Taylor said her team is building Bree-Span with existing open-source tools and plans to have it running before Election Day. She also plans Community Days, visiting places of faith, unions, nonprofits and other local groups by invitation, along with what she calls "live bill proposals," meaning legislation drafted before she'd even take office.
"No reason we can't already have bills written and ready to submit [upon attaining office]," she said.
Those are the ideas Taylor hopes to put into action if her dark horse campaign happens to win. But it's the deep compassion she feels for the people she hopes to represent that drives her run.
"I pretty much cry every day," she said, "and I have transformed that into concern for the general public and people I love, to passion on the road."
Her history shapes that message. Taylor never met her father, and her mother died when she was a toddler. A grandmother raised her early on, but by her teens she was moving between foster homes, and at one point she was unhoused. Her voice caught and her eyes filled as she described the connection she feels with her would-be constituents.
"There are a lot of people who still want to believe in hope," Taylor said. "Because the world right now feels it's depriving them of the only hope they have left and these are the people that we lose. And it's just not our [trans] community, it's people who could have given more. These are real human lives. And beyond that, it's the day-to-day living of those lives. There is no big reason we should not be able to come together."
Taylor is, in her own words, woke, an evaluation best summed up by her assertion that there are "things that I cannot compromise on, things that are fair to all. Give everyone a chance. True equality." She hopes those values will be "the key deciders" that lead voters to think, "If I'm electing Bree, it's because those are values to me, too."
"But I can guarantee to you that they are not as extremist or radical as maybe some people wish them to look," she said. "Because I'm an American. I just happen to be trans."
The trans community has been forced to realize that waiting for others to stand up for us often ends in disappointment. Our rights have eroded while we've been demonized and ostracized at the highest levels of government, and those facts impose on us a responsibility to elect representatives from among ourselves whenever possible.
Realistically, Taylor's chances are slim. Her message is long on inspiration and bridging disagreements, and her platform lacks specific goals for the trans community. Still, her run is an encouraging sign. If writing in her name mostly serves as a protest against the status quo, it may also inspire other trans people to realize they, too, can be a louder voice for our community by running for office themselves. If so, Taylor has won, no matter how many votes she gets Nov. 3.
What to know at a glance
Who is Bree Taylor?
Bree Taylor is the founder of the Trans Unity Coalition, a Michigan nonprofit registered in October 2024 that lobbied for the state's name change reforms signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in January 2025. The scientist-turned-activist is making her first run for office.
How do I vote for a write-in candidate in Michigan?
Write-in votes only count if the candidate has filed a Declaration of Intent with the Michigan Bureau of Elections, which Taylor has done. Voters in the 6th Congressional District can write in her name on the Nov. 3 ballot.
What is Bree-Span?
Bree-Span is Taylor's proposal to livestream meetings held in her congressional office, named as a nod to C-SPAN. She said her team is building it with open-source tools and planned to have it running before Election Day, letting the public watch interest-group meetings.
What is her platform on trans issues?
Taylor's campaign centers on listening, transparency and bridging disagreement rather than specific trans policy goals, and her platform lacks concrete aims for the trans community. Her advocacy record comes through the Trans Unity Coalition, which now has representation in all 50 states.
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