New York: If the 2016 presidential election reflected a primal roar from disaffected white working class voters that delivered for President Donald Trump and Republicans, Tuesday’s results showed the potential of a rising coalition of women, minorities, and gay and transgender people who are solidly aligning with Democrats.

A black transgender activist, Andrea Jenkins, was elected to the Minneapolis City Council. A Hispanic woman won the mayor’s race in Topeka, Kansas. A Sikh man was elected mayor in Hoboken, New Jersey. Latina, Vietnamese and transgender female candidates won state legislative races. Black men were elected lieutenant governor in New Jersey and Virginia. A Liberian refugee in Helena, Montana, was elected mayor.

Mark Keam, a Korean-American Democrat who was re-elected Tuesday to his seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates, said the wave of first-time minority candidates was a direct response to feeling snipped out of the American picture by Trump’s policies and divisive language.

“In Trump’s America, people are getting [expletive] and those getting [expletive] more than others are people who’ve never had a voice in the government,” Keam said. “Those are motivations a white guy wouldn’t have.”

Some are sceptical of reading too much into one off-year election. And even Democrats have had heated disagreements over whether identity politics help the party or drive people away.

But David Ramadan, a Republican who served in the Virginia General Assembly from 2012 to 2016, said the warning for his party was clear.

“Tuesday’s results show that unless the Republicans go back to being mainstream conservatives and run on issues like education, jobs and transportations instead of sanctuary cities and Confederate statues, they will hand not only Virginia to liberals, but they will hand the country to liberals and Congress to liberals next year,” Ramadan said.

Danica Roem

Even before her election, Danica Roem drew national attention as a transgender woman running against a Republican who had introduced a “bathroom bill” in the Virginia Legislature to bar transgender people from rest rooms.

Roem, 33, a former reporter for a newspaper in the Washington suburbs, tried to focus on issues like traffic, while fending off attacks from Republicans, including the state party, that she was morally degenerate and not really a woman.

“Help me protect conservative values in Virginia!” her opponent, Bob Marshall, a 26-year incumbent known for his social conservatism, wrote in a campaign flyer.

Roem, who came out in 2013, a year after beginning her transition to a woman, campaigned in a rainbow headscarf and will be the first openly transgender person in the country seated in a state legislature.

She was born and still lives in Manassas, and is something of a policy nerd. She also sings in a heavy metal band, Cab Ride Home, which she said would be taking a hiatus from while she focuses as a lawmaker on raising teacher pay, Medicaid expansion — and, a top issue in her suburban district, traffic congestion.

Justin Fairfax

While Gov.-elect Ralph S. Northam earned the top headlines for his surprisingly strong win over the Republican, Ed Gillespie, the victory by Justin Fairfax in Virginia’s lieutenant governor’s race also has long-term implications.

Fairfax became just the second African-American to be elected to that position, which has often been a stepping stone to the governor’s office, as it was for Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor, Sen. Tim Kaine and Northam himself.

Jenny Durkan

Jenny Durkan, who will be Seattle’s first openly lesbian mayor and its first female mayor since the 1920s, is a former US attorney and a former member of the Teamsters union.

In Seattle, where socially liberal values and a labor union history are ingrained in the political culture, Durkan bragged to voters about working as a baggage handler after college for a tiny airline in Alaska, where she was the only woman and learnt how to fix a forklift. “That union job helped me pay for law school,” she told voters.

Durkan, 59, calls herself a progressive Democrat who is also tough on crime. She touted her experience as the US attorney, appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2009 — where she became a specialist in cybercrime. But taking a page from Sen. Bernie Sanders, she also promised two years of free community or technical tuition to all Seattle high school graduates.

Wilmot Collines

When he started reading the nasty Facebook posts and hearing the hostile comments from politicians a few years back, Wilmot Collins decided he had to do something. They were accusing refugees, like him, of being terrorists, milking the welfare system and committing crimes.

“When I started listening to the rhetoric, I said, ‘This is crazy,’” said Collins, who settled in Helena, Montana, as a refugee from Liberia in 1994. “Here in Montana, we’re fighting the notion that refugees are terrorists. Part of me wants to show them that, ‘No, here’s the face of a refugee. These are who refugees are. Here is my family. This is what refugees look like. We are not terrorists.’”

On Tuesday night, Collins’ efforts came full circle when he was elected mayor of Helena, unseating the 16-year incumbent, James E. Smith. Collins is believed to be the second black person elected to serve as a mayor in Montana. Edward T. Johnson won the Helena mayoral election in 1873, according to Kate Hampton of the Montana Historical Society.

Michelle De La Isla

The new mayor of Topeka, Kansas, Michelle De La Isla, took a difficult and winding journey to the Midwest and politics.

Born in New York and raised in Puerto Rico, she became homeless at 17 and pregnant at 19. A pastor at the church where she sang in the choir told her she was smart and should go to college on the mainland. That led De La Isla, now 41, to Wichita State University.

Today she is a single mother of three, a son and two daughters, after escaping an abusive marriage with the help of a program at the YWCA in Topeka, she said Tuesday after narrowly winning the mayor’s race.

Hala Ayala

Hala Ayala, one of two women who will be the first Latinas in the Virginia General Assembly, plunged into politics after helping to organise a contingent from Prince William County to attend the Washington Women’s March in January.

“After the Women’s March it was like, no more,” she said. “Run for office. Make change.”

Ayala, 44, quit a job in cybersecurity for the Coast Guard to run for office. The state party emphasised that she had a security clearance to rebuff Republican TV ads and mailers raising fears of illegal immigrants and crime.

— New York Times News Service