A Texas Democrat voted against rights for trans kids. This queer Black mom challenged her – and won

Lauren Ashley Simmons was heartbroken.

Simmons, a queer Black woman and labor organizer from Houston, watched her Democratic state representative break with her party and vote in favor of three Republican-led bills limiting rights for transgender teens and children. All of them became law.

Those laws supported by State Rep.Shawn Thierry “put a target on some families that are already extremely vulnerable and dealing with so much, living in a state like Texas,” Simmons tells The Independent.

“To know that this Democrat representative for a big blue district in a pretty blue city turned her back – that betrayed and hurt me,” she says. “But then knowing that people had to leave the state, it really sent me over the edge.”

So Simmons ran against her.

Thierry has represented the Houston-area district in the state House since 2017.

On May 28, Simmons defeated Thierry in a Democratic primary election with 65 per cent of the vote. Now the progressive candidate is widely expected to win in the mostly nonwhite and heavily Democratic-leaning district in November’s general election.

Simmons will join an incoming class of other recently elected LGBT+ lawmakers preparing for a GOP-dominated body that routinely legislates against them and their families.

“Something that I’m focused on is thinking about all of the LGBT families whose very first interaction with the government was having to come to the Capitol to fight for their children’s lives,” Simmons tells The Independent.

“After you call your state representative, after you’ve written letters, after you travel to the Capitol, and have them deny your existence and treat you like you don’t matter, what does that do?” she says. “We have a lot of work to do to heal some of those