Arienne Childrey, the first out transgender person on any city council in Ohio, wants her constituents to know she can serve her town’s needs as well as anyone else.

Her presence “means the same thing as having any other type of person on the city council,” Childrey, who was sworn in Monday as a member of the St. Marys City Council, tells The Advocate. “This is about good local government.”

But she’s also eager to stand up for trans people and show that “we’re just your neighbors,” she adds. “I think it’s incredibly important to be on the council and show our LGBT community, our trans community, that we can make a difference,” she notes.

“I want people outside our community to see the inspiration that we can make change,” she says.

Childrey was appointed to the Fourth Ward seat on the council to replace Robin Willoughby, who resigned for health reasons. The Auglaize County Democratic Party Central Committee chose her for the seat, which was and remains the only one held by a Democrat. The way the appointments work is that each party gets to choose who will replace a council member who steps down. Childrey will serve the remainder of Willoughby’s term, which goes until the end of the year, and if she wants to continue on the council, she will have to run to be elected for a full term — which she intends to do.

This isn’t Childrey’s first venture into electoral politics. Last year, she ran for state representative from Ohio’s 84^th District but lost to Republican incumbent Angie King. Childrey, however, survived a challenge to her candidacy over not using her deadname on her qualifying petitions, under an obscure Ohio law that was enforced unevenly. She’s also a veteran activist, having founded Rainbow Advocacy Network, an LGBTQ+ rights group. And she’s a member of the Ohio Democratic Party Pride Caucus Steering Committee.

Childrey says she’s excited to get started on the council and appreciative of the welcome that the body extended to her and another new member, Republican David Lunz. She plans to be accessible to her constituents and make sure the city serves them.

“It’s really about the everyday things,” she says of the council’s duty. Those include fixing streets and alleys, maintaining public parks — St. Marys has beautiful ones, she says — and attract and keep businesses.

St. Marys is a small town — its population is a little more than 8,000 — in northwestern Ohio near the Indiana border. It’s a heavily Republican area. Childrey, who worked for 20 years in retail management, moved there for work. She’s a native of what she calls “a quaint coal town” in Virginia.

“I am a coal miner’s daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter,” she says.

She first moved to Ohio as a teenager, then went back home for about 10 years, and has now been in St. Marys for about a decade. When she was in retail, “where the promotion was, that’s where I went,” she explains. She’s now devoting herself to politics full-time.

She came out as trans during 2016 election cycle, perhaps “not a great time to be doing it,” she observes. She transitioned on the job as manager of over 200 employees.

“It definitely led to some estrangement from family,” she recalls, adding, “My transition was a last resort, but I couldn’t stand waking up anymore — transition was truly lifesaving.”

She worried at one point that she would “spend life alone in the shadows,” but then she met the man to whom she’s now been married for six years — he’s a union construction worker — and other friends and allies. Transition gave her confidence and “opportunity to be my best self,” she says.

Childrey is continuing her activism with the Rainbow Advocacy Network. Much of that work involves public speaking, often countering misinformation about gender-affirming care for trans youth, which has been outlawed in Ohio. “I will never stop fighting on civil rights front,” she says. She also doesn’t shy away from criticizing her own party, such as the Democrats who voted for the National Defense Authorization Act even though it denied gender-affirming care to minors under the military’s insurance plan.

During the 2024 election campaign, “every day, here in Ohio, I was watching vile anti-trans ads coming across the TV,” she says. She even heard one on the radio while she was being interviewed.

“I encourage our trans community to refuse to back down,” Childrey says. That’s why getting involved in politics is important: “If they’re going to make laws about us, we need to have a seat at the table.”

All the anti-trans rhetoric and legislation, she adds, not only hurts trans people but takes attention away from the real problems facing Americans — food insecurity, housing insecurity, underfunding of schools. “We need politicians at all levels who are focused more on who they can help than who they can hurt,” she says. “This is a distraction technique being used by Republicans … because they got nothin’.”

At the same time, as the council’s “Democratic caucus of one,” she’s ready to work with its Republican members. Having been in retail, “I know about struggling financially and forming teams from varied backgrounds,” she notes. She’s used to dealing with people who have different perspectives and finding consensus.

She also is planning to run for state representative again in 2026, a different election cycle than her race for a full term on the council. “I am used to a very hectic, busy schedule,” she says. “I can do the work for people of St. Marys and ensure we have good representative at the state House of Representatives.”

Childrey would be Ohio’s first out trans state representative. The only other trans public official in the state is Dion Manley, a trans man who was elected to the Gahanna-Jefferson City School District board in the suburbs of Columbus in 2021 and was sworn in the following year.

The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which supports out candidates for office, celebrated Childrey’s appointment to the St. Marys council. “LGBTQ+ Victory Fund congratulates Arienne Childrey on her historic appointment to the St. Marys City Council, trailblazing a path of representation for transgender women in city government in Ohio,” said a statement from the group. “Arienne is a fighter and will be an important voice for her constituents in championing civic pride, jobs, and economic development for her city and region. At a time when LGBTQ+ and specifically transgender rights are under attack, including direct attacks on her, the news of Arienne’s appointment is a bright light that demonstrates that trans people are here and ready to serve their communities. We look forward to her service and are confident she will continue to be a changemaker for her city and all Ohioans.”