Could This Be Our Year?

There are more candidates running this year than ever before; the big race is in Virginia where a trans candidate has a very good chance of winning.

Virginia Could Elect An Openly Transgender Legislator Tomorrow
Huffington Post
By Sarah McBride, Contributor National Press Secretary, Human Rights Campaign
November 6, 2017

Zero.

Out of the nearly 7,400 state legislators across the United States, today in America, exactly zero identify as transgender. Despite historic progress toward greater visibility and inclusion of transgender people throughout public life, our representation in positions of political power lag woefully behind. Today, there are roughly one and a half million transgender Americans, including thousands of transgender youth across Virginia — and yet they see no one like them in any state legislature anywhere in the country.

Next Tuesday, that could change. Danica Roem could make history. If elected to represent the 13th House District in Northern Virginia, she will become the first openly transgender person to be elected to and serve in a state legislature in our nation’s history.

Roem, a former journalist and native of Prince William County, has run a campaign based on smart policy ideas and real issues affecting her district, from expanding economic opportunity to addressing the congestion on Route 28. She’s spent nearly every day for the last several months knocking on doors and meeting voters, all the while facing disgusting attacks on her identity from the 25-year incumbent she faces on the ballot.

Roem’s opponent, Bob Marshall, has ditched facts and substance to run a campaign based almost entirely on hate and fear, attempting to use Danica’s very existence as a trans person as a weapon against her.

I think that Bob Marshall is feeling the burn; I think he realizes that he could lose the election to his nightmare; I think that the voters realize that hate is wrong.

Meanwhile across the country…

Transgender candidates hope to make history in California
Mercury News
By Casey Tolan Bay Area News Group
November 5, 2017

When Lisa Middleton was a 12-year-old living in East Los Angeles, she checked out a book at the library about Christine Jorgensen, a World War II veteran who became the first person to publicly go through sex reassignment surgery. It was after devouring those pages that a wide-eyed Middleton first realized she was transgender.

Fifty years later, Middleton is hoping to make her own history. On Tuesday, she’ll be on the ballot in a City Council race in Palms Springs, and could become the first openly transgender person elected to political office in California.

She’s part of what activists describe as a new wave of transgender candidates running for local, state and federal offices around the U.S. in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election and anti-transgender policies gaining traction in some states.

Lisa Middleton, a former insurance manager and auditor, is running for the City Council in Palm Springs and could become the first transgender person elected to political office in California. (Courtesy of Lisa Middleton)

“We have been the preferred target of conservative forces,” Middleton said in a recent interview. “If transgender people are being attacked, you need transgender voices to respond to those attacks.”

We have teeth and we bite!

We run on issues, not hate.

As a council member, Middleton is hoping to focus on issues like homelessness and renewable energy, including passing a requirement that all new residential buildings in the city have solar panels. While she does talk on the campaign trail about being transgender, it’s not something she often focuses on, she said. “Most everyone in this town knows who I am and knows that fact, and there’s usually not the need to bring it up,” she said.

I think the voters are looking for issue candidates and running a campaign on hate will not work anymore. Let’s hope that the voters feel the same way.