Danica Roem Raises $113k in July in Campaign to Unseat Anti-LGBT Bigot, Del. “Sideshow Bob” Marshall (Faaar-Right “R”)

by Danica Roem

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to announce we raised $112,974.21 from 820 donations in July. That’s more money than even House Majority Leader Kirk Cox (R) raised during the last reporting period, June 2-30 ($112,311).

In fact, the number of donations we received exceeded the total number of donations received by the top 18 Republican fundraisers from June combined.

Just on Monday, July 31, we received 135 donations totaling about $6,692, entirely from donations between $1-$250. That’s 108 more donations than Del. Bob Marshall (R-13) received from June 2-30 combined and about $2,000 more than he raised that entire month.

We’ve outpaced Del. Marshall in fundraising from the four communities that make up the 13th District – Manassas, Manassas Park, Gainesville and Haymarket – from the greater Prince William County area, from the state and across the country, so he can’t justify complaints that we receive out-of-state money when we out-raised him locally too in the 13th District.

In fact, our largest donation of the day July 31 ($250) came from someone who lives in Signal Hill precinct, the same precinct as Del. Marshall (I live next door in Yates Ford).
More than $70,000 of our July haul came since last Wednesday, when President Trump took a page directly out of Del. Bob Marshall’s (R-13) discriminatory playbook from 2011 by announcing he wanted to ban transgender people from serving in the military. That came six years after Del. Marshall filed HB 2474 to ban gay and lesbian Virginians from serving in the Virginia National Guard.

Delegate Marshall’s own party killed his bill then, just like they killed 27 of his 30 bills this year, and President Trump’s tweets received immediate push-back from Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yet Del. Marshall sent out a fundraising letter to constituents last week in which he said, “I support the President on this issue.”

Discrimination has no place in our community, especially in Prince William County, home of the United States Marine Corps Base – Quantico. Last Wednesday, while standing in Lafayette Square protesting the proposed ban, I talked with a transgender Marine Corps veteran who use to serve at Quantico and now works for the Pentagon. She has contributed to the leadership and readiness of our military in Prince William County, she proved herself to be capable and able to handle the duties of her job, and she is a patriotic veteran who served her country and continues to serve her country as a proud and out transgender woman.

Simply put, transgender people can do the job. See the story of Staff Sgt. Logan Ireland for details.

I also talked to a 14-year-old transgender girl whose transition-related medical care is covered by TRICARE. The Republicans’ attempts to strip health care benefits from transgender people didn’t just include active and reserve members of the military but their spouses and children too and that’s horrible.

Transgender health care is health care. It is necessary, it’s is not elective, and we are following our doctors’ orders by taking our prescriptions and undergoing needed surgery. It’s wrong for Del. Marshall to interject himself into this but then again, he’s also the only delegate on a 94-1 vote to vote against expanding birth control access (HB 2267) earlier this year, so I can’t rationalize where he’s coming from in even the slightest way.

The bottom line here is discrimination is awful public policy and people aren’t putting up with it in the 13th District, in Prince William County, in Virginia or across the country. They took out their frustration with the president’s declaration and Del. Marshall’s support of it by donating heavily to my campaign during the past week and by knocking on doors with us this past weekend, when more than a dozen LGBTQ volunteers and straight allies headed out to Gainesville to knock doors for us in Buckland Mills and Glenkirk precincts while I knocked in Stonewall precinct.

The more President Trump and Del. Marshall push discriminatory social legislation designed to single-out and stigmatize their constituents instead of serve them, the more money we’ll raise, the more doors we’ll knock and the more likely it is we’ll win this race Nov. 7.