UPDATED: Roem headed to Virginia Senate; Dems hold the legislature there
Majority of LGBTQ candidates win around the country On Tuesday, Virginia House of Delegates member Danica Roem became the first openly-transgender person elected to the Virginia Senate and only the second openly trans person in the country elected to a state senate. LISA KEEN | Keen News Service UPDATE: Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins, who in 2017 became the first Black openly trans woman to win an election in the U.S., narrowly defeated a progressive challenger in Tuesday’s municipal election. ORIGINAL POST: Off-year elections are typically dull, with no presidential, Congressional or other big spotlight races on the ballot.
But results from the Tuesday, Nov. 7, elections had many moments for LGBTQ people to celebrate. Much of that success came in Virginia, where Danica Roem, a transgender member of the House of Delegates, won election to a state senate seat from northern Virginia.
Roem, up against a Republican opponent endorsed by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, won by about three points, becoming only the second transgender woman in the U.S.
to be elected to a state senate. (Sarah McBride was the first, winning her state senate seat in Delaware in 2020.) “You attack trans kids in my district at your own political peril,” Roem said in an interview with The Hill newspaper.
