Danica Roem’s message to LGBTQ youth: ‘You have to care’ about politics

It was a moment captured for the history books.

Danica Roem, on her knees with her face in her hands, crying. It was 2017 and she had just become the first state lawmaker who identifies as transgender elected in Virginia.

She will always be the first, but four years later, she is no longer the only person in the US who identifies as transgender to be elected and serve in a state legislative body. It’s not a well populated trail, but one she is proud to have blazed.

“They were willing to look at me and they go, ‘Yeah, we know she’s trans and she’ll do a great job,’” Roem said of her constituents in an interview with CNN earlier this month.

“I never say ‘trans but,’ always ‘trans and.’ Because it’s like, no, I don’t hide who I am. People know exactly who I am here.”

And during this Pride Month, Roem has a message to the younger people in the LGBTQ community who say they don’t like politics: “When you are an LGBTQ person, you have to care.”

Roem represents Virginia’s 13th District in the House of Delegates — an area near the home of the first major battle of the Civil War. Roem jokes that there are still more things named after Confederate general Stonewall Jackson in her county than there are Starbucks locations.

She says her success is built on deep knowledge of local issues since she grew up in the Manassas area she now represents.

“When I was asked on election night, ‘Hey, what does this mean?’ It was…