How Danica Roem brings her most authentic self to heavy metal, politics, and the press

The first thing to know about Danica Roem is that she gets asked about the similarities between heavy metal music and local politics a lot. “That question is actually surprisingly common,” says the Virginia state delegate, who made national headlines in 2017 after defeating a long-serving Republican in her home district and becoming the first openly transgender politician to be elected to and seated in a U.S. state legislature.

And yet the insights that Roem has applied to politics from her headbanging days and nights as the vocalist of a thrash-metal band are no less surprising. “What unites the two is that authenti­city matters,” she says. “In metal, no one is going to buy your album if it doesn’t come from the heart. The same attitude prevails in politics—no one is going to show up for you or support your message [if it isn’t authentic].”

Roem has had a prolific five years as a legislator: Thirty-two of her sponsored bills have been signed into law—everything from expanding insurance and school-meal access to preventing child-welfare fraud—and she decisively won reelection in 2019 and 2021. (She also recently announced a bid for Virginia’s state Senate and wrote a memoir, Burn the Page, that came out in April.) She explains how to get things done in a political climate known more for paralysis than productivity.

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Roem spent more than a decade as a journalist, covering local issues in her hometown of Manassas in northern Virginia. As with music, criticism came with the territory. “If you’re any good at your job, that’s just part of the deal,” she says. “Someone will always hate your news stories.”