As the 2017 Election season looms, Virginians are getting their first look at candidates in various State Senate and House of Delegates races. Drawing perhaps the most attention is the race for Delegate in Northern Virginia’s 13th District, as transgender “woman” Danica Roem, a liberal Democrat, has been nominated to take on the outspoken conservative incumbent, Republican Bob Marshall.
With a slew of media attention surrounding LGBTQ issues nationwide, the race in Virginia’s 13th District has gone from local to national news, and President Trump’s recent reinstatement of a ban on transgender persons serving in the military is sure to draw even more attention to the race. Bob Marshall, a committed conservative who has served 25 years in Virginia’s House of Delegates, has handily defeated each of his Democratic challengers, while once running unopposed. Danica Roem, a journalist and Northern Virginia native, has never held public office but seeks to become the first transgender, state-level elected official in Virginia’s history, in a year in which Democrats are running a number of transgender candidates nationwide.
According to The Victory Fund, a national organization devoted to ‘increasing the number of openly LGBTQ officials at all levels of government, ‘2017 will be ‘the year of the trans candidate,’ as Democrats open a new Pandora’s Box of identity politics. The Victory Fund, which endorses Roem, makes no bones about their commitment to advancing a left-wing agenda, with President and CEO Aisha Moodie-Mills, highlighting the role of their endorsed candidates in ‘the resistance,’ in a recent interview with NBC News. The Victory Fund, who prominently features Danica Roem on their website, fondly refers to Delegate Marshall as ‘Bigot Bob,’ citing, for example, a bill Marshall authored which called for using the locker room and bathroom of one’s biological sex in government-owned buildings, as evidence of his bigotry.
While taking a look at Roem’s website, which unlike Marshall’s, appears rather vague on policy issues, one can quickly come to the conclusion that her platform stands in stark contrast to Marshall’s. In addition to expanding the tax base in Prince William County and fixing congestion on Route 28, Roem advocates for a number of Democratic Party pet projects and talking points, pledging her support for ‘the DREAM Act, civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, raising the minimum wage, and making health insurance more accessible and affordable.’ Unfortunately, these issues have merely become standard talking points for Democratic candidates, who instead of detailing solutions or grievances, seem to prefer implying their opponents have an inherent distaste for basic constitutional rights and the poor, while avoiding the addition of much substance to the conversation.
The race for the Virginia House of Delegate’s 13th District has truly become a battleground of ideas in the 2017 Election season. In an increasingly blue region of Virginia, with thousands of dollars in out of state Democratic funds flooding in, traditional conservatism will be pitted directly against the new left, and their brand of identity politics. As the election season continues to heat up, we can all rest assured that we will hear much more out of this race.
