Summary

VA House District 13

District Map (PDF)

Danica Roem

Current Position: State Delegate for VA House District 13 since 2018
Affiliation: Democrat

Candidate: 2019 State Delegate VA House District 13

For more information, see Danica Roem’s post.

Danica Roem is an American journalist and politician of the Democratic Party. In the 2017 Virginia elections she was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, winning the Democratic primary for the 13th district on June 13, and the general election on November 7. She is the first openly transgender person to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly, and in January 2018 became the first to both be elected and serve while openly transgender in any U.S. state legislature. In December 2017 The Advocate named her as a finalist for its “Person of the Year”. In January 2018, Delegate Roem was included on the cover of Time Magazine in their “The Avengers” feature, highlighting new female candidates and elected officials from around the country.

Early life and education
Roem was born at Prince William Hospital and raised in Manassas, Virginia, the child of Marian and John Paul Roem. Her father committed suicide when she was three years old, and her maternal grandfather, Anthony Oliveto, acted as a father figure. Living in Manassas, Virginia for her whole life, she attended the majority of her schooling there. She went to Loch Lomond Elementary School for grades K-3, and then All Saints School for grades 4-8. She then attended Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax, Virginia and then went to her aunt and uncle’s alma mater, St. Bonaventure University in St. Bonaventure, New York to pursue journalism.[10] As a student at St. Bonaventure University, she had a 1.1 GPA her first semester and was more focused on music than homework. During her second semester, she made a comeback and raised her GPA to a 3.48 and made the Dean’s List. Her professors described her as tenacious, persistent, and one who worked for those who voices were often ignored. She moved back to Virginia after graduation.

Roem has stated that her role models growing up were Senator Chuck Colgan (D-29) and Delegate Harry Parrish (R-50) because, although they were affiliated with a party, they had more independent ideologies.

Journalism career
When Roem was a child, her grandfather would tell her, “the basis of my knowledge comes from reading the newspaper every day.” This influenced her to become a journalist. She was a journalist for ten and a half years. Her first job out of college, in 2006, was at the Gainesville Times in Gainesville, Virginia. Roem worked for nine years as the lead reporter for the Gainesville Times and Prince William Times. She then went to work as a news editor in August 2015 at the Montgomery County Sentinel in Rockville, Maryland, where she was employed there until December 2016. She then decided to run for public office. She said she has a wide knowledge of policy issues due to her journalism career. She won awards from the Virginia Press Association seven times.

Kelly McGinn

Current Position: Former Senior Counsel for International Human Rights
Affiliation: Republican

Candidate: 2019 State Delegate VA House District 13

For more information, see Kelly McGinn’s post.

Values

Kelly grew up in a faith-filled, close-knit family that valued hard work and serving others. She babysat throughout high school for many families, earning enough money to visit her grandparents in Ireland for a summer and to self-finance her living expenses in college. Kelly’s family also regularly served at soup kitchens and volunteered in the community.

Patriotism

As a high school exchange student on a government scholarship program in Germany during the 80s, Kelly’s love of our country and her appreciation for our free market system grew. Visits to East Berlin and Moscow impressed upon her the stark reality that the communist system meant poverty and limited life options for millions of those walled inside the Eastern bloc.

Education

Kelly is a summa cum laude graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University where she studied International Politics. She went on to earn a law degree at the University of Virginia Law School. She knows that promoting access to education and job training is vital to our community and that one’s education is not limited to formal schooling but is instead a lifelong endeavor. She’ll work to promote a rich cultural environment in our area where libraries, the arts, and civic organizations are valued.

Advocate

Kelly’s dream in law school was to be a human rights lawyer. It came true when she was hired as Senior Counsel for International Human Rights to Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Advocating on behalf of political prisoners, child slaves, and the poorest of the poor and serving as a voice for persecuted people around the world deepened Kelly’s passion to continue fighting for the most vulnerable at home and abroad.

Mom

Since she decided to become a full-time mother, Kelly has devoted herself to the most important work in the world – raising the next generation. She and her husband built their first home in Prince William County because they wanted their kids to grow up in a diverse community where they could play outside and truly enjoy the innocence of childhood. She believes parents are the first and most important teachers of their children and will fight to protect the rights of parents against governmental overreach into the upbringing of their children.