Published
5 years agoon
BOSTON — Ayanna Pressley is all but assured of becoming the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, the latest example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of diversity and liberal politics as the recipe for success in the Trump era.
For Pressley, as with many other ascendant candidates of color, unabashedly liberal credentials smoothed her path to victory in the primary. No Republicans were running, so only a write-in campaign in November could possibly stand between her and Washington.
Pressley tapped into growing cries within the Democratic Party for newer, more diverse leadership. She and Ocasio-Cortez both defeated older, white congressmen who were reliable liberal votes, but who didn’t look like many voters in their districts.
“With so much at stake in the era of Trump, tonight’s results make clear what Ayanna Pressley knew when she boldly launched her campaign against a ten-term incumbent: Change in the country and Congress can’t wait,” said Jim Dean, chair of the liberal group Democracy for America.
The district she’s competing in includes a wide swath of Boston and about half of Cambridge as well as portions of neighboring Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, Somerville and Milton. It includes both Cambridge’s Kendall Square — development there is booming — and the neighborhood of Roxbury, the center of Boston’s traditionally black community.
Pressley has bristled at the notion that race was a defining issue in her campaign.
“I have been really furious about the constant charges being lobbed against me about identity politics that, by the way, are only lobbed against women and candidates of color,” she said in one debate. “I happen to be black and a woman and unapologetically proud to be both, but that is not the totality of my identity.”
Massachusetts’ last Democratic primary upset came in 2014, when Seth Moulton defeated Rep. John Tierney in the state’s 6th Congressional District.
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