This article originally appeared at The 19th .

The Republicans vying to be governor of West Virginia are trying to outdo one another on how much they aim to restrict LGBTQ+ rights, with transgender individuals specifically in their bull’s-eye.

Ahead of the state’s May 14 primary elections, the two candidates leading the GOP field are Patrick Morrisey, the current attorney general, and Moore Capito, who resigned from the West Virginia House of Delegates at the end of last year to focus on his bid to be the state’s top executive.

Recent independent polling shows Morrisey and Capito neck and neck, with Chris Miller, the owner of a chain of car dealerships, in a distant third place, followed by Mac Warner, the current secretary of state.

All four candidates — all White, cisgender, straight men — are fervent backers of former Republican President Donald Trump, who won the state by more than 38 points in 2020 and remains highly popular. With little daylight between them on guns (they love them) and immigration (securing the U.S.-Mexico border some 1,500 miles away is often cited as a top failure of Democratic President Joe Biden), the final weeks of the gubernatorial contest have featured a series of one-upmanship ads about who will be the most anti-trans governor.

The ads have accused rivals of supporting LGBTQ+ people while private citizens and criticized the records of those who have held elected positions for being insufficiently committed to restricting LGBTQ+ rights. One particularly harsh ad supporting Morrisey suggests being LGBTQ+ is a slur.

At least 589 pieces of anti-trans legislation were considered by lawmakers at various levels of state and federal government last year, according to an analysis by the Trans Legislation Tracker , representing what the group called “an escalation against transgender people at both the state and national levels.” Most bills were in deep red states. Wyoming attempted to make the provision of gender-affirming care to minors a form of child abuse; Oklahoma considered a ban on gender-affirming care up to 26 years of age.

A poll conducted last year by Survey Monkey for The 19th showed that just 17 percent of Americans — and only 29 percent of Republicans — believe that politicians should focus on restricting access to gender-affirming care. GOP politicians in West Virginia and elsewhere — including in the Republican presidential primary — have nevertheless made pushing anti-trans policies central to their campaigns, seeing it as a way to communicate their political identity to the most fervently anti-LGBTQ+ portion of the Republican base.