Danica Roem becomes the first transgender state senator in the South
Danica Roem, a three-term Virginia lawmaker and former journalist, on Tuesday became the first openly transgender person elected to a Southern state Senate seat. She won a competitive race that helped Democrats take control of the Virginia legislature.
Her victory in the 30th District, in densely populated Northern Virginia, was heralded by LGBTQ groups, who highlighted that she had been the target of persistent anti-transgender rhetoric during the campaign.
She is only the second openly transgender candidate in the country to win a Senate race. The first was Sarah McBride, who was elected in Delaware in 2020 and is currently running for Congress.
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Roem, a Democrat, said her opponents went out of their way to attack her identity, through a barrage of ads and negative mailers.
“To them, transgender was scary,” she said.
Ms. Roem, 39, defeated Bill Woolf III, a Republican, by fewer than 2,000 votes, giving her just under 52 percent support in a race that attracted widespread attention, according to The Associated Press.
Mr. Woolf, a former police detective, had endorsed Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. The governor, a staunch conservative with national ambitions, has tried to do just that prevent transgender girls from participating in girls’ athletics.
Since she was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2017, something no other transgender person in Virginia history had done, Ms. Roem said her political opponents have spent millions to spotlight her identity . In the Senate race, she said, she had been the target of 30 negative mailers.
“They went all in on transphobia and lost,” she said.
Ms. Roem attributed her electoral success to her focus on helping voters with everyday quality of life issues, including transportation, the environment and universal preschool meals for children.
Her victory added to a big night for Democrats and LGBTQ candidates in Virginia, where Republicans, led by Mr. Youngkin, tried to flip the Senate to give them a monopoly in state government.
Instead, Republicans lost both chambers of the Legislature as voters rejected the blueprint Mr. Youngkin laid out, which included restrictions on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and policies toward transgender people.
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund said Ms Roem’s victory was part of a national “rainbow wave” and noted that all nine candidates it had supported in Virginia had been elected.
“Danica faced an unprecedented outpouring of anti-trans hate during her campaign, but she was not surprised or distracted,” Annise Parker, the group’s president, said in a statement.
She added: “Her victory tonight will make national headlines and serve as a deafening rebuke to bigots who continue to try to silence the LGBTQ+ community and transgender people in particular.”