Danica Roem of Virginia to be first openly transgender person elected, seated in a U.S. statehouse

The Democrat defeated 13-term incumbent Del. Robert G. Marshall, who called himself Virginia’s “chief homophobe.”

“Virginia has changed so rapidly over the past 20 years. It’s gone from a state where no politician would dare to condemn the Confederacy to a state where a suburban district would elect a transgender candidate,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political-science professor at the University of Mary Washington. “The Old Dominion gives way to a very different New Dominion.”