WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) — When Rosemary Ketchum gets introduced as the first openly transgender person to win elective office in West Virginia, there's often a shocked look that comes across people's faces.
“Folks will be like, ‘How did that happen?’ As if it's like I won the lottery or solved a Rubik's Cube in front of them or something,” she said. "They think it’s magic."
To her, it doesn't feel like magic. But in some ways, she can understand their surprise. Out of the handful of transgender officials in the U.S., only a few were elected in similarly rural, GOP-controlled states.
Ketchum, 29, is one of them. And next week, she could be elected again — this time as mayor of Wheeling, a former coal and steel production hub that's about 60 miles (97 kilometers) outside Pittsburgh.
Growing up, she said she saw businesses shutter, and people struggle to find housing and mental health support amid the opioid epidemic. Her spirit is optimistic though, and she often comes back to a memory of first encountering "the friendly city” motto of Wheeling on a welcome sign.
“I didn’t run for city council to make history — I ran to make a difference in my community," she said, of her motivation to run.
Wheeling is a city of 26,000 residents with a unique place in West Virginia history. It's nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, along the Ohio River in an area that split from Virginia and the Confederacy in 1863.
More than a century later, a group portrait hangs in Wheeling’s city hall. Ketchum is impossible to miss: Standing next to seven men in suits, she is wearing a red dress and black heels, and has platinum blonde hair. She stands out in meetings too, with her painted-red nails and laptop adorned with a Taylor Swift sticker.
At a recent council meeting, she asked questions about pending water and sewer projects, thanked city employees for their work and urged residents exposed to recent flooding to get tetanus shots at the local health department.
For Ketchum, going to college — let alone working in politics — was not in the cards.
When she was in high school, a tragic house fire leveled the family's home and rendered the family homeless. They didn’t have home insurance or savings, and had to move temporarily into a neighbor's basement.
“We didn't have a backup plan,” she said. "And unfortunately, a lot of blue-collar families are in that same boat.”
After the fire, Ketchum arrived in Wheeling as a 16-year-old in the midst of a gender transition. The family received food stamps, and Ketchum worked as a bartender after high school. She later became the first in her family to graduate college — and credits being able to live in public housing for enabling her to do so.
She later served as associate director of the city's local National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter — a job that combined with her lived experience to shape the way she approaches public policy.
In 2023, Ketchum was one of only two city officials to vote against an ordinance designed to clear homeless encampments. She helped establish the city's first internal position focused on homelessness — to aid people in finding mental health support, permanent housing and employment.
Ketchum answers matter-of-factly when people ask her how she got elected as an openly transgender candidate: she put her name on the ballot, knocked on doors, made phone calls to ask residents what they care about, and then trusted them to make a decision.
“I didn’t pre-ordain or assume what they would think of me — I gave them the opportunity to think for themselves,” she said. “I didn’t walk up to a door, and say like, ‘Oh, this person has a Trump sign, they’re going to hate me.’”