A transgender activist was utterly surprised when a Democrat party leader addressed her for displaying a blatantly racist sign at a rally held outside a Virginia school board meeting.

Pro-trans rights supporters assembled outside the Arlington County School Board meeting on Thursday evening to back the district’s policy permitting transgender students to access girls’ locker rooms and restrooms.

The protest seemed largely peaceful, but one woman ignited significant controversy with her sign, which directly attacked Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.

Earle-Sears was speaking out against the bathroom policy which has caused the Department of Education to threaten to cut off the district’s federal funding.

‘Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then Blacks can’t share my water fountain,’ one side of the woke protester’s sign read. The other side said: ‘Hey Winsome, you have a gender neutral bathroom in your house.’

Steve Baker, chairman of the Arlington County Democratic Party, confronted the woman about the overtly racist sign after it caused an uproar in the local media.

‘That’s getting a lot of play on TV right now,’ he told the protester, an unidentified elderly liberal white woman. He confirmed the press was ‘negative’.

The woman appeared shocked and responded with an embarrassed shrug after Baker’s remarks, video captured by Virginia journalist Brandon Jarvis shows.

As photographs of the woman’s sign – also captured by Jarvis – went viral, statements from Virginia leaders in both parties rushed to condemn the protester.

‘I’m disgusted, but not surprised. This is the “tolerant” left Abigail Spanberger defends,’ Earle-Sears told the Daily Mail in a statement, referencing her Democratic opponent in this November’s general election. 

Earles-Sears is the Republican nominee in the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial election.

‘I’m the sitting Lieutenant Governor, second in command in the former capital of the confederate states,’ she added.

‘I’m an immigrant, a Marine, and above all, a human being. There is no place for this disgusting hatred in our Commonwealth.

‘Anyone who doesn’t condemn this sign is complicit in approving it.’ 

Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor, did disavow the protester by referring to the sign as ‘racist, abhorrent and unacceptable.’

However, Republican leaders all over Virginia came to Earle-Sears’ defense while bashing the left.

‘The hypocrisy of the liberal left on display again. Winsome is so much bigger than this idiocy,’ wrote Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin on X. 

The state’s Attorney General Jason Miyares agreed, adding: ‘This is wrong. @winwithwinsome – and Virginia – deserve better.’

Virginia state Sen. Minority Leader Ryan McDougle branded the incident as ‘the tolerant left strikes again.’

Democrat state Sen. Schuyler Van Valkenburg was also disappointed by the sign, writing on X: ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right. Been teaching my kids – and students – that for years. 

‘In the age of Trump it’s easy to get in the gutter. We should insist on betting the better angels of our nature’

The liberal protester, who declined to be identified, defended her the sign as ‘satire’ in a statement to WTTG.

‘It was satire meant to provoke conversation around the absurdity of prejudice,’ she told the TV news outlet.

‘If anyone thinks we are actually supporting separate drinking fountains based on race, they are mistaken. 

‘In the same way, that drinking fountains should be usable by all races, bathrooms should be non-discriminatory.’

Spanberger is currently the favorite over Earle-Sears in the Virginia governor’s race with most public and private polling showing her tracking ahead. 

The Earle-Sears-Spanberger contest guarantees that Virginia will elect its first female governor after more than 400 years as a state.