Sylvia Swayne, 26, is having a busy fall. The Alabaman has repeatedly told the press that she’s not a “career politician,” but after her State House representative resigned, prompting a special election, she suddenly — with less than two months — pulled together a campaign. “Having so little time is a blessing and a curse,” she says with a grin, seated for a Zoom call two weeks out from the special election.
Swayne is one of seven Democrats running for the open seat in House District 55, representing parts of Jefferson County. “We don't have a year to fundraise thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars, we don't have a year to do multiple rounds of mailers and TV ad campaigns and all that,” she says. “But the blessing is that no one else can do that. You win an election by knocking on doors and making calls to voters.”
That’s exactly what Swayne’s been up to, running a campaign on the ground in Birmingham and on social media (she has nearly 30,000 followers on TikTok). She says the race has been largely friendly among the Democrats who are running. One quality that makes Swayne unique among them is that she is the first openly trans person running for state office in Alabama. If she wins the primary on September 26, and, later, the general, she would become the first openly trans person to be elected in the state.
But Swayne says she’s focused on making sure the conversations are not necessarily about her: “So many times, politicians talk about themselves when they're making their pitch. But when we talk together about the issues that matter, that's where the magic happens.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Teen Vogue: Can you share more about your decision earlier this summer to run for office?
Sylvia Swayne: I never saw myself running for office. Not just this year — obviously, with it being a special election, that came out of nowhere — but really in general. I'm not a career politician. This is not a career aspiration for me. I've been saying, so many times now, this isn't a dream, but it is a calling.
I spent the first half of this year, to be honest, crying. I was so disheartened and stressed at the sort of tragic irony of spending my entire childhood in Alabama wanting to escape — feeling like I didn't belong here, being bullied, being assaulted, for being part of the LGBT community. [After] finally [getting] to a place like Birmingham five years ago and realizing that Alabama is so much more than that, that I am part of the state and that I do belong, this year it was almost like, if these bills passed I would have to leave.
And the reality is, most trans people don't have that option. Most trans people are trying to survive. So, if I have the ability to leave, it also means I have the ability to stay and try to change things in the best way that I can, with the resources and perspective that I have, with my story.
The way I found out this special election was going to happen was back in May, I went to call my representative after HB 405, the “What Is a Woman” act, left the health committee to be added to the House calendar. After crying, I went to call my representative, and I had no one to call because he had resigned that same week. That's when I realized. Governor Kay Ivey didn't announce a special election until mid-June, but I was thinking about it because I had tried contacting my representative.
TV: You’re not the only one to have that response. We’re seeing a rise in LGBTQ+ candidates alongside the records shattered in anti-LGBTQ+ bills and legislation.
SS: Part of the reason I'm running is this idea that trans people and drag queens and other members of the LGBT community are this threat to society, and that is purely artificially injected into the conversation. Whether or not people support us as trans people is not my concern. My concern is while they're using the trans community, and the LGBT community at large, to distract all of us, they're leaving the rest of Alabama behind. We all lose when we engage in divisive politics and pointing fingers at one group while disenfranchising another.
We saw it in the special legislative session in July, to redraw the congressional district maps in Alabama. They were supposed to spend that special session drawing a map that complied with Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, because they were ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States. In that time, not only did they draw a map that did not meet those standards, they tried introducing and passing a bill to defund the Alabama Archives for a one-hour event they hosted in June on LGBT history.
That bill failed. It was going to fail — you have to have a two-thirds majority in a special session to pass anything unrelated to the reason for the special session. They were trying to [turn] a special session to address the wrongs done to Black voters in Alabama [instead into being about] this bill that had nothing to do with anything — again, pointing the finger at the LGBT community as being a problem.
TV: What issues are your priorities with this campaign?
SS: As a trans person in Alabama, I basically have to be a single-issue voter. I have to think about the people who are running for office and determining whether they're going to advocate for our community. By running, I no longer have to be a single-issue voter. I hope that in the various debates and interviews and conversations I've had with voters, people recognize that I know about so much more than LGBT issues.
Expanding Medicaid is a very standard Democratic policy-platform talking point. I like to talk about it in terms of the language that you need to speak to get the people across the aisle on board, which is the economic benefits of it. It creates 20,000 jobs a year for the next six years, just by taking those federal dollars that we're leaving on the table right now.
I want to talk about restorative justice. I want to talk about how the Alabama prison system is so unethical and inhumane, and we have to move towards decarceration, we have to decriminalize marijuana, we have to pass Second Chance laws so that people can get a new trial for harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes. I'd love to work towards expungement entirely. Of course in Alabama, we have to take smaller steps than other states, but those are the things we need to focus on.
Going back to voting rights, we need to invest in automatic voter registration and mail-in ballots. It's very difficult to vote in Alabama, and they do that for a reason. They tried passing a bill last session to make it even harder to vote absentee; they wanted to increase the penalties for helping someone with an absentee ballot — if you accept any sort of money, they make it a felony. Every time I look at a bill and I see something new is now a felony, I just think of all the ways in which they're trying to disproportionally incarcerate Black people, take away their right to vote.
And in the prison system, there's [not much of a] transition process or help for people who have finished serving their sentence. Once they're out of prison, there are no resources for them to transition back into a life. It's difficult to get a job, it's difficult to find support. Those are the things that we need to be talking about.
We don't need to be talking about whether a trans person has the right to health care, and for their doctors to practice based on their expertise that they got from medical school, right? Those are things that we don't even need to be talking about. And I don't think it's just the trans community and the LGBT community as a whole who thinks that.
You'll have to do the fact check on this, but there's a survey that even a significant portion of Republican voters think there were too many anti-trans, anti-LGBT laws this year. It may not be because they support the trans community, but it's a waste of all of our time to not focus on the important stuff, getting people to work, getting people to their doctors, getting kids to school. These are basic things that we're still far behind on in Alabama. And people know that.
TV: What kind of conversations are you having with voters, whether young people or constituents more broadly?
SS: So many times, politicians have all the answers. They say that they're going to do this, they're going to do that. Why are we not saying, “Here's what we're going to do”? Because the work in the community is being done. There are nonprofits and neighborhood schools that are picking up the slack of what the state legislature won't do.
Young people, I think, are excited because they can actually have a candidate that they resonate with, that they can see, Oh, this can actually be done. Not just trans people seeing me as the first trans woman to run for state office, but as a young person. I hope that no matter what happens on September 26, more people in my age group run the next time there's a state legislative election in 2026. I want to see more people in their 20s running.
TV: What does your day-to-day look like from now until September 26? And if you don’t win, do you plan to stay politically active, whatever that looks like?
SS: The next two weeks, it is absolutely boots on the ground: knocking on doors, making phone calls, getting people out to vote. Voter turnout is very low in a special election. This will be the only thing on the ballot, so I am spending all of my waking hours thinking about that and trying to reach voters. I was literally talking to three people right up until this interview started, trying to secure some votes.
I don't know how it's gonna go on the 26th, I'll be completely transparent. There's so much up in the air with all this, and I think all the candidates feel that. I built really good relationships with many of the other candidates in this election. We got dinner after our last forum on Tuesday, and that was kind of the general consensus: We have no idea what's really going to happen.
Often in Alabama politics, we get surprised. People expect, Oh, it's always going to be this. It's always going to be that. It may be true for the presidential elections, but we saw with Doug Jones versus Roy Moore, people were shocked. It was so important that we showed up and said, “No, we've had enough of this.” So I'm thinking that no matter what happens on September 26, we have changed the conversation.
Where I see my part in all this moving forward is never say never to running again or engaging further. I know that I have made commitments to the community, that I will be showing up at neighborhood meetings, I will be in conversations with members of the community who did not know me before this election started. I will honor that regardless of what happens in this turnout.
But again, I'm not a career politician. My goals are much bigger, beyond winning an election. Whatever I do after this, the goal is to change the conversation and to connect people and to unify — and show not only the state, but the country who Alabama really is. That can be done in a large number of ways, and I'm excited to see where that conversation goes from here.
TV: Do you sense that your campaign is already having an impact?
SS: I've seen a number of comments on social media posts, on TikTok or Instagram, saying, “Wow, for once I'm proud to be from Alabama,” or “I just moved away from Alabama as a trans woman, but I'm so grateful to see you doing this.” I think about who I was when I was a middle schooler and a high schooler, thinking about that kid who never felt like they belonged. I hope that this campaign tells those kids that they belong, and that there's a future here, and they don't have to leave to be who they are.
Photo credits: Claire Brickson and Myles Cain, courtesy of the Sylvia Swayne campaign. Styling: The Clothing Library. Studio space: Studio Lucid.
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