Could she be the first Black trans person in Congress?
Every step Precious Brady-Davis has taken has been a first.
She was the first transgender bride on the TV show “Say Yes to the Dress.” She and her husband are the first transgender parents in Illinois history to be listed as their accurate genders on their children’s birth certificates.
“This idea of, ‘I won’t be erased,’ that’s something that brewed in my childhood,” she said. “I think that’s where the fight comes from. … I don’t want to fail, and I haven’t failed yet. I think that’s the scary part. I’ve never, ever had a floor beneath me.”
Brady-Davis is currently the only Black trans person holding public office in the United States, serving on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. She previously shared that title with Minneapolis City Councilor Andrea Jenkins, who retired in January.
And while water reclamation commissioner, a job that involves juggling budgets and managing wastewater and stormwater for Cook County, might not sound like a big title, those in the know are eyeing Brady-Davis carefully. She recently toured Washington, D.C., with Rep. Sarah McBride, who made history herself as the first trans person elected to Congress.
Brady-Davis doesn’t rule out the possibility of a congressional run. But she’s coy about her ambitions, talking around a bid for national office.
“For now, my focus is on being effective at the local level — but I’ve thought about how that work could expand to have a broader impact on issues like the environment, LGBTQ rights, and education,” she said.
“I absolutely think she could be a congressperson,” said Tracy Baim, co-founder of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ newspaper Windy City Times, who has watched Davis’ rise. “There’s no doubt in my mind she has the qualifications.”
Early life
Brady-Davis largely grew up with her grandparents but eventually wound up in foster care, where she was confronted with a version of Christianity that saw homosexuality as sinful.
In her memoir, “I Have Always Been Me,” Brady-Davis recalls going to a Pentecostal youth retreat and having a pastor call her out specifically: “I bind the foul spirit of homosexuality out of you,” she recalled him saying. “You are not a woman. You are a man.”
The preacher and others in the group lunged toward her; Brady-Davis later awoke prostrate on a kitchen floor, traumatized from the experience.
While she worked to conform for a while, as she learned about the world and herself, she gradually rejected those ideas. In college, she began performing in drag, first in her home state of Nebraska and then in Chicago.
At this time, two transitions were taking place. Brady-Davis was starting to live full-time as a woman. And her professional career was starting.
She took a job doing HIV prevention work among youth of color at Chicago’s Center on Halsted, the LGBTQ+ community center in the heart of Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood, amid tension over violence at the 2011 Pride parade and the subsequent crackdown on crime.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)
The job would prove difficult to impossible. While residents were angry with the Center, youth advocates claimed that the Center over-policed young people, calling law enforcement on homeless kids looking for safe places to sleep. Brady-Davis was forced to defend an institution that was being attacked from all sides. It would be her first political test.
“I advocated for those young people the best I could,” she said. “It was just cruel. … When I think that something is wrong, I’m going to speak up about it.”
Baim said she watched Brady-Davis turn every challenge into an advance.
“Precious has managed to navigate so many of the land mines that others have not survived, and came from a very, very grassroots approach to the work, and has really reimagined herself for each iteration,” Baim said.
Brady-Davis would do a stint with About Face Theatre, the LGBTQ+ youth theatre troupe in Chicago, and then join the Sierra Club, where she eventually became northeast communications director and battled President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency during his first term.
It was work that made sense for her, she said.
“How can I say that my work is invested in diversity, equity and inclusion when I’m not working in all kinds of diversity?” she asked. “Environmental justice felt like another kind of diversity.”
A family legacy
During Brady-Davis’ stint at Center on Halsted, a young man came literally knocking at her door without an appointment. The man, Myles Brady, was bald and eager to chat. He wanted to get involved in programs with youths. He shared that he was transgender, too. The fact surprised Brady-Davis. But he was so talkative that Brady-Davis didn’t know what to make of him.
“Like it was weird to me, and I was very protective of the young people at the Center,” said Brady-Davis. She decided to never follow up with him again.
Brady was persistent. He kept appearing at events. One night he asked Brady-Davis to dinner. She reluctantly agreed.
“I was like, at least I’ll get dinner out of it, right?” she said laughing. “I was like, I’ll go on this date, and I’ll never have to see him again.”
But a few months later Brady-Davis was headed to the Philadelphia Health Conference. She got an email from Brady. “I can’t wait to see you in Philly,” it said.
The message struck her as cute. Later that night while she was out to dinner with trans friends Brady walked in and sat down. Brady-Davis didn’t know it, but he had been invited by others at the table. She was being set up. Brady told Brady-Davis she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and that he wanted to build a life with her and take care of her.
“I saw him so differently that night,” she said. “It was the first time that I truly saw him.”
The two left the conference together and have been together ever since. They were married in 2016, and Brady-Davis appeared on TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress,” the first transgender bride to be featured on the show.
“Myles and I have shown that two trans people can love each other and that we are worthy of love,” Brady-Davis told Buzzfeed News at the time.
They had two daughters, Zayn and Zyon.
The birth of their first daughter, Zayn, provided another opportunity for advocacy. Brady, who was carrying the child, learned in 2019 that the state of Illinois would list him as a “mother” on the birth certificate and Brady-Davis as “father.” The two teamed up with Lambda Legal and petitioned the state, successfully changing the policy. Brady would be recognized as Zayn’s father, and Brady-Davis was listed as her mother.
“I always say it brings me the most joy to take my kids to school in the morning,” said Brady-Davis. “It’s one of the most normal things that I get to do as a human being. And it’s not about me being trans at all. It’s about me being a mom. …I’m proud of the ways in which I’m parenting my girls to be a part of a world that I hope is more inclusive, diverse.”
Into politics
Sierra Club positioned her well for her next big move, into electoral politics. In 2022, she vied for a spot as a commissioner on the Water Reclamation District. Though she fell short in the primary, the next year Gov. JB Pritzker appointed her to finish the term of the candidate who had beaten her, who had since joined the state legislature.
“Precious Brady-Davis distinguished herself as a trailblazer even before her historic appointment to public office in Cook County,” Pritzker said of Brady Davis in a statement to The 19th. “Throughout her political and nonprofit career, Precious consistently stepped up as the first — first to speak up for the LGBTQ+ community, first to share the story of her path to activism and public office, and first to encourage others to claim their seats at the table.”
When time came for her reelection bid this year, Brady-Davis won her primary by large margins.
But whether she finishes her six-year term remains to be seen. Apart from her time in D.C. with McBride, she has been chatting up major political donors. McBride says she would not be surprised to see Brady-Davis serving alongside her in Congress.
“I think the sky is the limit for her, and she is someone who I respect deeply,” McBride said. “It was personally meaningful to walk these halls with a trailblazer whose story is only just beginning.”