On Tuesday night, Joanna Whaley — a 38-year-old hospital chaplain from Lincoln Park, Michigan, and a former evangelical megachurch pastor — won the Democratic primary for Michigan’s 2nd House District with 56 percent of the vote. Frank Liberati, a former state representative from Allen Park, took 34 percent; Gary Schlack took 9. The district — Lincoln Park, Allen Park, Melvindale, and part of Southgate, in the Downriver suburbs of Detroit — is a Democratic stronghold. If Whaley defeats Republican Ron Kokinda on November 3, she will be the first openly transgender member of the Michigan Legislature. “People were ready for change,” she told the Detroit Free Press, “and they voted for it.”
In April, Liberati filed a complaint challenging Whaley’s place on the ballot, arguing her election paperwork was invalid because she had not filed under her former name. Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett rejected the challenge: Whaley had legally changed her name and met every requirement to appear on the ballot as Joanna Whaley. The Michigan Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus and LGBTQ+ organizations called the complaint “a transphobic political tactic rather than a legitimate election concern.” Whaley spent the months that followed campaigning on utility bills, health care costs, and medical debt.
Whaley spent years as a pastor at evangelical megachurches. When she brought questions about her gender to church leaders, they directed her into conversion practices that continued for 15 years. She lost her job when her plans to transition became known. She went back to school, graduated from seminary, and now works as a clinical chaplain in Detroit-area emergency rooms, intensive care units, and hospice care.
“I’ve experienced financial hardship firsthand,” she has said of those years. “Coming out as transgender meant rebuilding my life and career. My Christian faith, family, and community supported me as I went back to college and became a spiritual care provider.”
Her campaign platform lists affordable health care, medical debt relief, lower utility bills, civil liberties, and the district’s roads. Asked by the Free Press about the office she is now favored to hold, she said: “I’ve been professionally trained to be the calmest in the room.”
On July 30, U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering permanently blocked Michigan from enforcing its 2023 ban on conversion therapy for minors, ruling in a lawsuit brought by a Catholic Charities affiliate and a licensed counselor that the law violates the First Amendment as applied to therapy “that consists exclusively of talking.” The state agreed to stop enforcing the ban — the first state to drop its ban after the Supreme Court’s ruling in March, in Chiles v. Salazar, that talk-therapy bans regulate speech. The Daily Signal described the order as “a ruling that protects children.”
Five days after Beckering’s order, the Democrats of House District 2 nominated Whaley.
In November 2017, Danica Roem of Virginia defeated Bob Marshall — a 26-year incumbent and the author of the state’s bathroom bill — to become the first openly transgender person elected to and seated in an American statehouse. In 2020, Delaware’s Sarah McBride became the country’s first openly transgender state senator; in November 2024, its first openly transgender member of Congress. In 2023, Montana’s Republican House leadership barred Rep. Zooey Zephyr from the House floor for the remainder of the session; in 2024, her district re-elected her.
This cycle, four transgender women ran for the Michigan House. The chamber already includes Rep. Emily Dievendorf, who is openly nonbinary. Whaley would be the Legislature’s first transgender member.
Kokinda awaits in a district that has not been competitive for Republicans. Whaley has said she hopes her campaign makes it easier for future LGBTQ+ candidates to run without the same scrutiny. “It hits me when I’m talking to trans folks across the state,” she told the Free Press. “I understand in this moment in politics what it would mean to elect a trans woman could be monumental.”
Her name appears on the November ballot as Joanna Whaley.
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