The Breakthrough Fund is backing four candidates this fall, including Democrat Danica Roem in Virginia, who’s trying to beat a Republican behind the state’s anti-transgender bathroom bill.

Doug Stroud / Via Danica Roem campaign

Danica Roem, 32, didn’t want her campaign for the Virginia General Assembly to become about her being transgender. But to some extent, it was inevitable.

Roem would be the first out transgender politician to win and get seated in any state legislature, and her opponent, Republican Del. Bob Marshall, recently sponsored a bill to restrict transgender people’s access to bathrooms. Plus, Marshall keeps bringing up the issue. On a conservative radio show last month, Marshall said Roem “clearly is a male,” calling her “he” and saying her behavior “goes against the laws of nature and nature's God.” Roem brushed off the jabs this week, saying data collected by her campaign shows her race is very tight, and noting she ran a TV spot that addresses being trans head-on. “I’m dealing with it,” the former journalist told BuzzFeed News. “I’m a big girl — I can take care of myself.” She’s also managed to out-fundraise Marshall by tens of thousands of dollars, and she’s welcomed help from state Democrats and labor unions. And now, she’s welcoming help from a new type of backer — the first of its kind in the United States. The Breakthrough Fund, which launched this week, is a political action committee run by transgender activists and tailored specifically to elect transgender people to office. It’s starting with $60,000 to spend in four races, including Roem’s, according to the group’s co-chair, Hayden Mora. The PAC, an offspring of the group Trans United Fund, is attempting to raise another $120,000 before Election Day.

“We know what it’s like to have someone slam the door in our face and say, ‘I don’t vote for people like you, honey.’"

“Because they are transgender, they face different obstacles,” Mora told BuzzFeed News of the candidates. The new group is not exclusively focusing on fundraising — Mora said the organization is assembling a small army of paid staff and volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls to identify likely Roem voters, then turn those voters out by Nov. 7. “We know what it’s like to have someone slam the door in our face and say, ‘I don’t vote for people like you, honey,’” he said. In this role, Mora said the PAC’s leadership can serve as both tactician and counselor. “We talk to our candidates after 10 o'clock at night, so they can get out the next day to make the case to be elected. We don’t let transphobia and bias get in the way.” “Most campaigns never have to manage an opponent, and an opponent’s allies, aggressively trying to disparage them for being transgender,” Mora said. In addition to spending money this fall in Minneapolis, where Andrea Jenkins and Phillipe Cunningham are running for city council, the Breakthrough Fund will back Kristen Browde for town supervisor in New Castle, New York. Browde told BuzzFeed News that the Breakthrough Fund is “calibrated to deal with the pushback” inevitable for transgender candidates, adding by email, “We crafted a message that has largely taken gender out of the discussion.” Indeed, one challenge for trans candidates is shifting the focus toward traditional local issues. Roem, a policy wonk from her political reporting career, has oriented her campaign around unclogging Route 28, which runs from the suburban 13th District into Washington, DC.