First Openly Transgender Black Woman Elected to Public Office in the U.S.

A candidate for Minneapolis City Council became the first openly transgender black woman elected to public office in the U.S. on Tuesday evening.

Andrea Jenkins, a biological male who lives as a female, won 73 percent of the vote in Minneapolis’s Eighth Ward, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

The Advocate magazine reports that Jenkins ran in the nonpartisan race with a Democratic Party affiliation and ran on a platform of raising the minimum wage and increasing access to affordable housing.

Jenkins, a former policy aide to Minneapolis council Vice President Elizabeth Glidden, defeated three other candidates in the race.

The former policy aide was not the first openly transgender candidate to win an election Tuesday night.

Virginia House of Delegates candidate Danica Roem, a biological male who changed his legal sex from male to female and dresses as a woman, defeated the GOP incumbent Rep. Robert Marshall to become the first openly-transgender elected to public office.

During the campaign, Roem supported teaching kindergartners that people can change their sex in an “age-appropriate” fashion.