The election of Danica Roem, Virginia’s first transgender member of the House of Delegates, could have set the stage for an apocalypse of sorts—a culture war gone nuclear, with never-ending battles about bathrooms and pronouns. Certainly, many on the right were arming themselves during the 2017 campaign.
“Why does my suburban community have to be the first one that elects a tranny?” wondered Black Velvet Bruce Li, a right-wing blog in Prince William County, shortly before Election Day. “And more to the point, why should a guy be taken seriously as a candidate for elected office for the sole reason he wants to become a woman?”
This argument was not confined to the dark corners of the internet. It was mainstream Republican thinking. In the closing days of the campaign, the Republican Party of Virginia funded a vicious piece of direct mail that called Roem a him—misgendering the candidate just as voters were heading to the polls. Their candidate in the race was incumbent Republican Delegate Bob Marshall, a conservative stalwart whose chief claim to fame was that he sponsored an unsuccessful bill to prevent transgender people from using the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
“Imagine if you were being misgendered by someone,” Roem told me at the time. “It’s not consistent with the way you live. It’s not consistent with the way you express yourself and it’s not consistent with the values of the 13th District.”
The voters agreed, and sent Marshall packing. What happened next was somewhat of a surprise: a culture war that ended before it began. Perhaps the most startling thing about the first transgender member of the Virginia House of Delegates was how familiar it all seemed.
Yes, Roem made history last year as the first transwoman to be elected to an institution that traces its history back to 1619. And yes, Republicans were unapologetic about misgendering her during the campaign. But by the time the session gaveled into order, the only real reaction was a change in protocol: The GOP leadership said they would call her the “delegate from Prince William” rather than the “gentlewoman from Prince William.”
“I have so many more important things to deal with than whether I’m being called gentlewoman or delegate,” Roem told me the next day.
For some, it was a letdown. This could have been the first culture warrioress moment for Roem, who made international headlines after unseating Marshall. Now, as a freshman member, Roem was choosing the path of least resistance. Instead of taking on the House leadership, she let it roll off her back. Republicans denied the new language had anything to do with Roem.
“I don’t think it’s a reaction,” Republican Caucus Chairman Tim Hugo told me. “I think everybody’s been very welcoming to the new delegate, and I think she deserves respect and I think everybody’s going to give it to her.”
As she had done so many times during the campaign, Roem looked past the transgender issues and focused on Route 28. That’s the bedraggled state highway running through the eastern side of her district from Osbourn Park High School to Bull Run. Fixing this traffic-clogged mess was the central organizing principle of her pitch to voters last year. Over and over again, when people wanted to talk about gender and identify, Roem was focused on transportation.
Unsurprisingly, Roem had her eye on the Transportation Committee, but the Republican leadership denied her request. Most freshmen don’t get the committee they want. But this particular denial struck many as particularly passive-aggressive, especially for a party that came within one randomly selected House race from losing the majority. She did get the other committee she requested, though: Counties, Cities and Towns. Usually this is considered somewhat of a backwater, but Roem specifically requested it because of years of experience covering local politics as a journalist with the Gainesville Times and Prince William Times.
“I could easily see myself, if we’re in the majority in a successive term from now, chairing that committee,” Roem said several weeks into the session. “I really like Counties, Cities and Towns a lot. And the reason for that is that the bills we deal with are not, in general, inherently partisan.”
Some of the biggest clashes Roem had in her freshman year were with fellow Democrats. Several say that early closed-door caucus meetings featured clashes between Roem and members who have been around awhile. Some say they felt her initial approach was a bit heavy-handed, like she walked into the Capitol building with the wind behind her back and a head full of ideas. Many freshmen feel that way at first, of course, but something about Roem’s directness struck some as imperious.
“She has a lot of energy, and that kind of energy rubs some people the wrong way,” notes Delegate Mark Levine (D) of Alexandria, Roem’s mentor in the House. “She’s going to be who she is, and if people have a problem with that they’re just going to have to suck it up and learn that she’s there, you know?”
For Roem, being who she is was a long and difficult journey. It’s one that she carries with her into every caucus meeting and subcommittee hearing. It’s the reason she transitioned from “Dan” to “Danica” in 2015. And it’s also the reason she’s fond of quoting the Catholic saint, St. Francis de Sales: “Be who you are and be that well.”
“As someone who did 13 years of Catholic schools, obviously that didn’t always work out well for me,” she said in her office in the middle of the session. “If there was anything I could take out of that saying is that basically reinforced the idea that the only way to live is as your authentic self.”
So is Danica Roem a practicing Catholic?
“Next question,” she responds, followed by an awkward pause.
A minute later, after the conversation had moved on to a different topic, she changed her mind and circled back to religion. Like many people who were raised Catholic, she has a complicated relationship with the church. She describes herself as somewhere between “non-practicing” and “fallen away,” although she still identifies herself as Catholic.
“It has certainly influenced how I think about social justice, especially regarding the homeless,” she says. “My housing-first policy on homelessness prevention directly goes back to the emphasis the Catholic church puts on taking care of the least among us.”
Taking care of the least among us was a theme of the bills she introduced before the beginning of the session—a laundry list that included everything from making sure people with autism have health insurance to creating a searchable database for unsolved crimes. None of her 11 bills made it to the House floor, leaving her with no legislative achievements to take back to the district after the session was over.
“There’s two reasons why the majority would deny a freshman the chance to get to the floor at all during their first session: either you’re in a competitive seat or you’ve done something to piss them off,” says Delegate Paul Krizek, a Democrat from Fairfax County. “With Danica, it’s that she’s in a seat Republicans feel they can win back in the next election. So they don’t want to do anything that might help her.”
Roem expected that Republicans might push back on her agenda, especially when it came to improving Route 28. She spent more time during the campaign hectoring her opponent for ignoring transportation than she did talking about the bathroom bill. Now Roem was ready to strategize against Republicans, who were not about to hand her the trophy they want back in 2019. Thus was born H.J. 68, which called for the Virginia Department of Transportation to study Route 28.
“The reason I put that in was for the budget amendment that came with it,” she explains. “The point of that was we would be introducing new money to VDOT, so I wouldn’t have to use the existing pool of money that could go to other districts. But that died, so now we are going to do it administratively.”
The General Assembly may be controlled by Republicans, but the governor is a Democrat, which means that every state agency is headed by a Democrat political appointee. Those people want to keep the 13th District blue, and Roem met with a series of cabinet secretaries and deputy secretaries to figure out ways to use the executive branch to bypass the legislature.
“They have an entire department of inter-modal design, and this is what they do,” she says. “One of the criticisms I received from my [Route] 28 bill was why are we filing bills to direct agencies to do their jobs? Well, funny you should ask.”
She said that last part with a rapid-fire chuckle, a feature of the way she handles even the most intense situations with a searing sense of humor. The staccato chug of her laugh mimics the palm-muted thumping of heavy metal, a style of music that Roem spent years playing for audiences around the world. Her office features a Metallica calendar, and she told me she was looking forward to the end of session because she had Judas Priest tickets.
“She’s very down to earth. She’s very funny. She’s very charismatic,” says Gabrielle Slais, Roem’s legislative aide during the session. “She’s a millennial. That definitely makes our working relationship fun and exciting.”
Roem is one of a dozen millennials who are now members of the General Assembly, most of whom were swept into office by the blue wave of 2017. One of the most noticeable changes in the halls of power this year was the look and feel of lawmakers. The average median age had dropped substantially, and the new crop of millennial lawmakers were eager to make their mark on history.
“If there’s a centralized theme that you’ll see from the millennials, it’s good government,” says Roem. “Government accountability, transparency, consumer protection and basically making sure that we’re putting the public first.”
Millennials are often accused of being self-absorbed, expecting the trophy for participation without really putting in an effort. Roem belies this. She often stayed at the office until late at night returning emails from constituents, and she oversaw the largest staff of employees in the Pocahontas building. They spent their days focused on pushing the agenda beyond the day-to-day grind of the General Assembly.
Roem says the most surprising aspect of being a delegate was the freedom she had to do her own thing. Part of her suspected that the closed-door party caucus meetings might be arm-twisting sessions, where leadership bullies freshmen into voting the party line rather than the way they might want or their constituents want. But when she finally made it into that room, she discovered they were actually policy discussions.
“What was surprising, if you were to have a jaded point of view about government, is how policy-focused caucus meetings really are,” she said. “I could have been really jaded about the system and been like, ‘Oh, they don’t care. They just want to talk about donors.’ But that’s not the case.”
Roem wasn’t just walking in Jefferson’s Capitol. She was also shackled to his rules. One of the quirks of being a Virginia lawmaker is that there are two sets of guidelines. First, there’s the House rules. Then, there’s Jefferson’s Manual. The House rules can change from year to year. But Jefferson’s Manual remains constant. Perhaps the most important commandment prevents lawmakers from amending bills they plan to vote against, essentially preventing members from attaching poison pills. It also prevents them from bringing forward amendments they know don’t have the votes.
“I had my Route 28 budget amendment ready to go, submitted and everything. When I found out I didn’t have the votes for it, I talked to the House Appropriations chairman and said, ‘Alright, let’s work on this in the offseason and get this right and come back with it.’”
One of the quirks of being a freshman is that more senior members haze them when their first bill gets to the floor, asking a series of silly questions about the bill or trying to stump them with trick questions. Roem didn’t have the privilege of being hazed because none of her bills made it out of committee. But she was able to have some lighter moments. When Delegate Kathleen Murphy (D) was celebrating a birthday, Roem presented her with a Black & Mild cigar to rib her for comments earlier in the session about setting a standard for premium cigars.
“For two bucks, you can pull a pretty good prank,” she says. “And that was pretty good.”
Perhaps the most notable thing about Roem is how notable she is. Because her election grabbed headlines across the globe, she walked into a General Assembly full of relatively anonymous people as a major celebrity. That caused a fair amount of jealousy, especially after she attended the American Music Awards with Demi Lovato to send a message about bullying. Ironically, that may have led to some bullying from her fellow lawmakers, a breed of people who perpetually crave their moment in the spotlight.
“She’s kind of like Jackie Robinson in a way because she’s the first,” says Krizek. “And it’s tough being Jackie Robinson.”
The shadow of Danica Roem may have been cast longer in Prince William more than anywhere else. This was where she spent years covering the local government and playing the heavy metal circuit. And she was the focus of the world’s media the night she won the upset victory over Marshall. So when WUSA9 showed up the night of the election, they were trying to track down someone—anyone—who could talk about the election of Virginia’s first transgender delegate. The guy they eventually found was Lee Carter, a red-headed socialist who had just unseated Republican Jackson Miller.
“They stuck a camera in my face, and they said, ‘Are you with Danica’s campaign?’ I said no, and they sprinted back to the van,” says Carter with a chuckle. “I hollered across the parking lot, ‘I won an election too.’ But they kept on going.”
