Beth Anders-Beck is Primarying Representative Seth Moulton
Assigned Media spoke with the nonbinary software engineer challenging a Massachusetts congressman who thinks the Democrats need to cater to transphobes.
by Evan Urquhart
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton has made headlines with his comments disparaging trans women. Though Moulton comes from a district and state that overwhelmingly supports Democrats and ran unopposed in 2024, he feels that the Democratic party needs to distance itself from trans issues to win elections.
Beth Andres-Beck is a nonbinary software engineer from Middleton. They recently announced that they’ll be challenging Moulton in the Democratic primary for the 2026 congressional midterm elections. I spoke with Andres-Beck via Zoom to ask about their candidacy and what they see as the role of trans people in the Democratic party. Our interview has been condensed and lightly edited.
Assigned Media: Why don’t you start by telling me why you decided to run for congress?
Beth Andres-Beck: Like a lot of people right now I’m frustrated with national politics.
The situation right now calls for creativity and a willingness to try new things. It’s something I have a lot of experience with from my time in tech, working with companies to make them better places to work and build software that works better for users, and combining that experience with my experience at the local level, working on the affordable housing trust, working across Middleton to make things better here.
I think I have an opportunity to jump in and do something new and exciting that gives people hope about politics again. I think it’s easy to feel discouraged if no one in these positions of leadership is setting an example.
AM: Representative Seth Moulton also has ideas about how Democrats can change to meet the moment, and one of the biggest ones is changing how Democrats talk about the trans community.
He said “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on the playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m not supposed to say that.” What does that type of rhetoric do for Democrats, and do you think it’s helpful or harmful?
Andres-Beck: I think it’s actively harmful. What that tells me is that he’s not in communities where trans people are. He’s envisioning something he probably heard about on Fox News.
We shouldn’t be trying to build strategy based on tales of monsters living under the bed. We should be basing it on our community and on the people here.
Having someone who just thinks about the politics of how things will play on cable news - that’s where he’s talking. He’s not talking to people on the street or at his brunch spot, he’s talking to cable news and he’s looking at what will get him on cable news rather than what’s good for the people of the district.
AM: I was struck by a line in your press release that says trans people aren’t political props, we’re leaders and I wanted you to expand a little more and tell me what does that mean to you?
Andres-Beck: The Democratic party is a coalition of a lot of different people with a lot of different things that we care about, but we share the same basic values. If we try to kick trans people out of that we’re going to lose a lot of good organizers, a lot of good candidates, a lot of good talent that can help otherwise make this movement successful.
One of the things Seth Moulton talks about a lot is what Democrats should do, which I think is ridiculous because he doesn’t run in competitive elections. So, what would he know?
This is an opportunity for me to test that out and see if his strategy actually works. Because I don’t think it does. I think he has it exactly backwards. People don’t care about what the people representing them look like, they care about knowing that someone’s on their side, someone who understands what they care about and shares their values.
AM: You also mentioned AI in your press release, so I wondered if you had a little bit to say about how it may be changing our social environment, and what you think the role of legislators should be there?
Andres-Beck: Right now it’s much cheaper to employ a machine than it is a person. The effective tax rate is about 85 percent lower if a company employs a machine than it does a person.
And that combined with the excitement and the idea that you don’t need to manage people anymore, I think, means companies are preferring machines even if they do a worse job than a person would.
It’s a choice that we’ve made, to prefer machines over people. Everyone’s had the experience of trying to get customer service from a system that does not want to connect you to someone that can help, and I think the policy that got us there is something we should address. We should make sure that as we automate more things, that that’s benefiting everyone, and not just shareholders.
AM: I know you are also a Unitarian Universalist. Can you talk about the moral leadership that UUs can provide at this moment?
Andres-Beck: For me, I think faith is an incredibly powerful tool in the face of hopelessness. That, even when things feel overwhelming, faith says that we can keep going, and that we should keep going, that whether we are going to succeed or fail, this is what we should do.
That can be an incredibly powerful tool in times when things are really hard. In times when things are overwhelming.
Unitarian Universalism, the core of it, is that every human being has inherent worth and dignity. And to me it’s such a powerful statement of intention, that every time I’m looking at someone I’m looking for what is special and interesting and unique. Even if we’re talking for 30 seconds at a drive-thru, I’m still getting to see somebody who is a miracle.
I think that’s really a beautiful core of community and it makes my life richer to have a community who believes that same thing.
AM: To finish up, what would you say to trans people who are really afraid right now and particularly to trans people who are afraid of being a sacrifice by the Democratic party right now?
Andres-Beck: I’d say that it is much harder to be brave alone than it is for us to be brave together. If we’re thinking of it as each individual trans person has got to stand up to the government of the United States, that is going to be overwhelming. But that’s not the situation that we’re going to be in. There is a huge coalition of people who support trans people and think we are worth defending, and those people are coming out for this campaign.
In terms of the Democratic party, I was already part of my town committee. There are trans people who were part of Democratic town committees across Massachusetts.
The people who want to have the Democratic party as a whole, and not just them as individual politicians being weird, to try to sacrifice trans people, I don’t think it would win us anything and I don’t think it’s gonna work because we’re here, and we’re involved. The more public those of us here are about that, the less it’s even a question. And shouldn’t be.
This shouldn’t be the thing that Democrats are putting their time and energy into. I think that it’s ridiculous that some people have tried to make it into one. Mostly it’s the Yankees fans at the New York Times, so I think we’ve got to stand up and make sure that everyone knows that trans people are part of the Democratic party and we’re not gonna go away because one representative who doesn’t even have a position in leadership is being weird about it.
AM: I think that’s a good place to end it. I appreciate the time and I appreciate you and I’ll be watching the campaign.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.