ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Minneapolis has elected a black transgender woman to its city council, another national first in what advocacy groups have described as a banner night for transgender people in public office.
Andrea Jenkins easily won the race Tuesday for an open seat in south Minneapolis, with roughly 73 percent of the vote. Jenkins, a 56-year-old poet and historian who transitioned in her 30s, spent years as a policy aide to two previous council members in the same ward.
She won the same night that Danica Roem became the nation’s first openly transgender state lawmaker by winning a Virginia statehouse seat. Roem soundly defeated Bob Marshall, a longtime Republican delegate who sponsored legislation that would have restricted transgender bathroom use and who called himself the state’s “chief homophobe.”
Jenkins was not immediately available for comment.
Victory Fund, a group that advocates for LGBT candidates, called Jenkins the first openly transgender woman elected to the city council of a major U.S. city.