A conversation with Danica Roem: Virginia’s first openly trans state senator

Danica Roem is a fearless, courageous Virginia State Senator (D-30) who loves metal music, has worked in an Afghan kebob shop and was a journalist covering Virginia’s transportation and state legislature for ten years. I sat down with her in December 2023 to chat about her November victory for State Senator in Virginia Manassas City and Manassas Park districts. Since being sworn in on Jan 10, 2024, she’s made incredible progress by writing and introducing numerous bills on the Senate floor. What follows are portions of my conversation with the newly-minted state senator on the heels of her victory.

Q: What are your music recommendations for a newbie in metal?

A:  Always start at the beginning. So start with the first Black Sabbath album titled “Black Sabbath.” The title track, which is the first song of the album, the song “Black Sabbath,” is pretty much the basis for everything that’s been heavy metal for the past 33 years. 

As a good introduction, especially for women in metal who are amazing, I always recommend ⸺ if you read my book [Burn the Page] ⸺ then you are familiar with the “Comalies” album from the band Lacuna Coil from Italy. Twenty years ago, I followed the band pretty extensively, and “Comalies” is one of those albums that changed my perspective on music. It was so instrumental to my life. It also has so many different types of dynamics to that album. There’s a lot of gothic metal doom to that.

Between the male and female vocals and the different vocal interplay, they can get very heavy with a song like “Tightrope” or “Angel’s Punishment.” At the same time, they can be very melodic and beautiful with a song like “The Ghost Woman and the Hunter” or  “Humane.” …When the first single from that album dropped it was “Heaven’s a Lie,” but the first single I heard from it was “Swamped.” That intro vocal from Cristina Scabbia was just mindblowing to me, just unbelievably incredible, so I always recommend the Comalies album. 

My all-time favorite album, when you’re ready for it, is “And Justice for All” by Metallica.

Q: What has touring with your band, Cab Ride Home, taught you about life and about being a representative and state senator?

A: We performed in Belfast, in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and one thing I learned was that I’m willing to move mountains to chase the things that are important to me and to chase my goals. When you are an unsigned band and have no promoter, no record label, and no manager, you have to do it yourself. It’s incredibly draining, you have to do so much. It’s wildly expensive, and at the same time, I would have done it a hundred more times if I could … 

What it came down to, that is transferable to what I do now, is having a particular mission and having a goal. That means having to do all of the planning it takes to achieve that goal, and to navigate all the personalities of it. It also means having to navigate the business end and logistics especially. All of this is really transferable to running an office or being in office.

Q: I know you were just elected to be a state senator, what are your hopes and goals for that?

A: I want to continue working on the same subject matter I’ve been working on for six years, like fixing roads, feeding kids, protecting the environment, and making Virginia a more inclusive commonwealth. I want all these same things, knowing that I now have two and a half times more voting power, because in the house we have 100 delegates, and in the state senate, I’m going to be one of 40 delegates, which means that there are a lot fewer members… That also means I have two and a half times more constituents. A typical district is supposed to have about 86,000 people in it, and my district has about 101,000 because of the population increase in the last ten years. 

Now, I have almost a quarter million people in my state senate district so it’s really important for me to be super responsive to constituent service requests so that we don’t get overwhelmed. When they come in, let’s get them processed, let’s get them going, so that we don’t have a deluge of them that becomes too much.

Number two, even though I was elected, I don’t even get sworn in until Jan. 10, but I’ve already had a town hall in Gainsville, where we had about 60 people show up, just so I could already start telling people what I’m planning to do. I showed up at the Manassas Park government body, which is basically the state counsel, and took questions from them, and said, these are the issues I want to work on. I already spoke to the Manassas City Counsel and the Manassas school board…

Q: What do you feel your most courageous moment was, and why?

A: The way I like to put it, being vulnerable just to be visible – just declaring my run for office in 2017. No out trans person has ever put their name on the Virginia ballot before. I had announced my campaign on Jan. 3, 2017, and my first day out knocking on doors was Jan. 7. I remember there was snow on the ground — it was Sudley Park, Manassas, Prince William County — and when you’re the first trans person to run for office anywhere in Virginia, you don’t know how they’re going to react to you at the door. What’s it going to be like when they see a five-foot-eleven trans woman at their door? Who knows? 

One thing I learned from my yoga practice, in 2013 when I first started practicing, is that the hardest part of yoga is showing up to the door for the first time. And the hardest part about launching a campaign is knocking on your first door. It’s just getting out there and actually doing it. You’ve filled out the paperwork, you’ve done all this stuff that you’ve prepared to do, and now you’re going to build a campaign. 

I can give you a million reasons why not to do something. It’s easy to not do something. Doing something takes initiative and it takes a leap of faith, in a way. Especially when you’re the first one doing it. You’re going up to people, and you’re saying, “I know I’m different, and I’m asking you to take a chance on me.” In the democratic primary, where there are three other candidates, all men, and those three men could say easily, “Hey, this is why I’m the best person to win against someone who’s been in office for 26 years, thirteen times, and to win this seat, and flip it from Republican to Democrat. You don’t want to take a risk on someone like that, you need someone you can trust who is normal.” 

“And [the incumbent] has described himself as the chief homophobe of Virginia. If you ran a trans woman against the chief homophobe of Virginia, might get under his skin a little bit! He might make a whole lot of mistakes. He might be a little bit afraid of this. And he was, and we won. We did something that had never been done before.”

I’m asking them to take a chance on someone who’s not your normal candidate. I’m asking them to take a chance on someone who is different. I’m able to say, “Normal didn’t work the last 13 times. Why do you think ‘normal’ is going to work this time?” You need someone from the area. You need someone who is a reporter, who knows the area, who has been a lifelong resident here. And [the incumbent] has described himself as the chief homophobe of Virginia. If you ran a trans woman against the chief homophobe of Virginia, might get under his skin a little bit! He might make a whole lot of mistakes. He might be a little bit afraid of this. And he was, and we won. We did something that had never been done before. 

When I was elected in 2017 and I became the first out-and-seated transgender state legislator in American history, we went from one when I was sworn in on Jan 10, 2018, to four the next year in Colorado and New Hampshire, to eight and then ten. Now we have seventeen out-and-seated transgender, gender non-conforming, or non-binary state legislators throughout the country. That’s great. At the same time, it shouldn’t have taken 400 years. It shouldn’t have taken four centuries for us to get to this point. This is your America too, and you have just as much of a right to represent it as anyone else. 

So the only courageous part about me is just writing my name on the ballot, and saying that my ideas count as much as anyone else, and if you give me a chance to explain why my ideas count, and you trust me with your vote, I’m going to do a good job for you. And even if you disagree with me, I’m still going to show up for you. 

Q: How did it feel being on the cover of Time magazine? Can you tell me about the quote, “It’s not trans, but. It’s trans and.”

A: I don’t care about being on the cover of Time. That was nice. Then I got asked to sign a bunch of copies of them. Okay, I’m glad they were highlighting the democratic women of Virginia, who ⸺ just like me ⸺ made themselves vulnerable enough to be visible. I wasn’t the only historic first elected to the House of Delegates in 2017. We had the first two Latinas ever elected to the general assembly that year. Right here from Prince William County, we had a record number of women of color who were elected. We also had the first Asian immigrant woman elected.

I’m glad a lot of us had the platform to tell our stories, so that other people could enjoy it, and other people could be inspired because representation matters. For what it does for the public, to be able to see someone like them on the newsstand, that’s cool. For me personally, I don’t care. It doesn’t mean anything to me.

That said, there’s a line where I said, “I’m not trans but, I’m trans and.” In Tina Fey’s book “Bossypants,” she writes about how to do improv, and the number one rule in improv is, “yes, and.” You’re taking that and you’re building and adding to it. I am not contradicting the fact that I’m trans. I am trans, and I care a lot about your community. I’m trans and – yes, I do care a lot about civil rights including my trans constituents. Absolutely, I do. I’m trans and I care a lot about a lot of things.