Democratic state delegate Danica Roem, who won a Virginia Senate election on Tuesday, will become the first openly transgender person to serve in the state Senate once she is sworn into her post in January, and the second trans person to serve in a state Senate seat anywhere in the U.S.
Roem, 39, made history six years ago by winning her House of Delegates seat, becoming the first openly transgender person in the U.S. to win a state legislative election. She served in that position for three terms before deciding to run for the Senate this year.
Senate District 30 includes the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park, and the western portion of Prince William County. According to the most recent election count, Roem won with 51.52 percent of the vote; her opponent, Republican Bill Woolf, received 48.18 percent of the vote.
Senator-elect Roem’s win helped secure Democrats’ hold on the state Senate, upsetting Republicans in the state who had hoped to win that chamber and enact the right-wing agenda of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). Democrats also flipped control of the House of Delegates on Tuesday, and will be in total control of the state legislature starting early next year.
In an election victory statement on X, Roem expressed gratitude to the people of the 30th Senate district. “The voters have shown they want a leader who will prioritize fixing roads, feeding kids, and protecting our land instead of stigmatizing trans kids and taking away our civil rights.”
She added:
For the last six years I’ve focused on serving my constituents and our community, no matter what they look like, where they come from, how they worship if they do, or who they love. It’s those principles that have guided every vote I’ve taken, every Bill I carried and every stance I’ve taken, and they are principles I’ll carry with me into the state Senate.
Roem’s Republican opponent, a former Fairfax County police officer, centered his campaign on crime and so-called “parents’ rights” issues, which Republicans across the country have used as a means to attack transgender students’ rights in recent years. During his campaign, Woolf went after Roem for her belief that trans student-athletes should be able to compete on sports teams that correspond with their gender; Woolf, who was backed by Youngkin, openly supported the governor’s calls for bans on trans student athletes.
In an interview with The Hill that was published before the election, Roem rebuked Woolf’s views. “You attack trans kids in my district at your own political peril,” she warned him.
LGBTQ advocates celebrated Roem’s win on Tuesday. Her victory over Woolf “serves as a deafening rebuke to bigots who continue to try and silence the LGBTQ+ community and trans people in particular,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, said in a statement.
“Danica faced an unprecedented deluge of anti-trans hate on the campaign trail, but she was not phased nor distracted,” Parker added.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.