220 minutes with … Sarah McBride

Strolling Wilmington with Delaware’s history-making new state senator.

- BROCK COLYAR

On the tree-lined, redbrick residential streets of northwest Wilmington, newly elected state senator Sarah McBride is high-school-cheer-captain level popular. “Hello!” says a woman pushing a baby stroller. “Hello!” greets a man walking his dog. “Hello!” squeals a trio of children in the yard of a Catholic school. “Sarah!” exclaim two middle-aged women in a Christmas-wreathed, red-Adirondackfronted coffee shop. “Congrats on the new house! How’s the renovation going?” McBride shoots back immediately to one of them, making a “Yellow Wallpaper” joke about the woman’s actual soon-to-be removed yellow wallpaper.

It’s a brisk, sunny day in mid-December, and McBride—who was elected to represent Delaware’s First District in November, securing her place as the highest-ranking openly transgender elected official in U.S. history—is living up to her high-school nickname: Tour Guide McBride. She waxes poetic about state history, “constituent services,” and how to pronounce the name of the city of Harrington like a true Delawarean. Dressed casually in loose jeans, tennis shoes, and a gray jacket with a stain on its furry white lapel, McBride has a charm that’s part corny grandfather (“I like a little coffee with my cream and sugar,” she says, winking) and part super-eager, super-nerdy Rachel Maddow. Her cheery chatter is often accompanied by snorty laughs.