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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/us/politics/ayanna-pressley-massachusetts.html
Ayanna Pressley Seeks Her Political Moment in a Changing Boston Ayanna Pressley, a Boston City Council member, will be the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress. Credit: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times
• Updated Sept. 4: Ayanna Pressley beat Michael Capuano in the primary on Tuesday night.
CAMBRIDGE,
Mass. — It’s not a sight you see every day, certainly not around Boston
— a black woman mounting a plausible challenge to a 10-term white
congressman from her own party, a politician with vast connections who
votes the progressive line and opposes everything Trump.
[ Rep. Ayanna Pressley opens ups about living with alopecia and hair loss .]
But
here was Ayanna Pressley, a Boston City Council member and rising
Democratic star, exhorting volunteers in a Cambridge restaurant with an
impassioned performance style she learned as a child at her
grandfather’s storefront Baptist church in Chicago.
“This
is not just about resisting and affronting Trump,” she declared, garbed
in a flowing red jumper. “Because the systemic inequalities and
disparities that I’m talking about existed long before that man occupied
the White House!”
The crowd went wild.
“Change can’t wait!” she shouted, echoing her campaign slogan, her voice raspy as it took on speed and urgency.
Ms. Pressley is herself an emblem of change that can’t wait — and isn’t
waiting. She is part of a rising tide of women, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cynthia Nixon in New York and Stacey Abrams in Georgia , that is challenging historically white male power structures
in politics — not only to advance their policy ideas, but also to
reflect the changing diversity of their constituents, who have long
lacked one of their own in congressional seats or governor’s offices.
In
doing so she is taking on a well-respected Massachusetts Democrat,
Representative Michael Capuano, who was expecting to coast once again
unchallenged for re-election in the Seventh Congressional District,
which includes much of Boston and its suburbs. The primary election on
Tuesday is one of the last marquee Democrat vs. Democrat battles of
2018.
Massachusetts is well known for
deeply entrenched politics that favor incumbents, from the Kennedy
dynasty to long-serving mayors, senators and House members. Mr. Capuano,
66, has widespread establishment backing, including Boston Mayor Martin
J. Walsh, several labor groups, and prominent black leaders like former
Gov. Deval Patrick, Representative John Lewis and Representative Maxine
Waters. He also has an army of experienced election workers behind him,
and a 13-point lead in a poll published in early August.
[Read a conversation with Michael Capuano.
But
Ms. Pressley, 44, may be the rare Boston insurgent whose ambition is in
sync with a national political moment that has favored women and
underdogs. Last week she achieved an unusual feat for a challenger:
Winning endorsements from the city’s major newspapers, The Boston Globe
and The Boston Herald. Her supporters are highly energized, and some
polling in other recent races has failed to detect strength for minority female candidates .
The congressional district is the only one in Massachusetts with more
people of color than people who are white. While Mr. Capuano has his
advantages, a Pressley win no longer seems far-fetched.
Their race has
been hard fought but not particularly negative. The mere fact of Ms.
Pressley’s challenge gives the primary its frisson. Mr. Capuano has
tried to ignore her and focus instead on his years of experience, his
reputation as a progressive and his opposition to President Trump. She
has had the harder task of trying not to disparage a fellow progressive
while still making a strong enough case for herself.
The
puzzle for many voters is why Ms. Pressley is challenging a strong
progressive in the first place, one who has brought home millions of
dollars for much-needed transit, housing and health care projects.
Especially when, as Ms. Pressley and Mr. Capuano agree, they are likely
to vote the same way on most issues.
The
answer says as much about Ms. Pressley as it does about Boston. For
her, voting is where her representation would start, not end. She
promises “activist leadership” beyond the votes, whether the Democrats
retake the House or not.
“I’m not running to keep things as they are,” Ms. Pressley often says. “I’m running to change them.”
Ms. Pressley was the first black woman elected to the City Council and for three elections in a row was the city’s top vote-getter. Credit: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times
As
for Boston, it is a city where wide disparities still exist between
white and black residents in income, employment, housing and police
stops, and where the political hierarchy has rarely welcomed outsiders.
And until recently, “outsider” meant not just black people but women.
If Mr. Capuano is
the consummate insider — born in the Seventh District, in Somerville,
which he went on to lead as mayor before entering Congress — Ms.
Pressley has been an outsider in many ways throughout her life. She was a
struggling student of color, the daughter of a single mother, at her
largely white, affluent, private high school in Chicago. She was a
Midwesterner who moved East in 1992 to attend Boston University. And her
life experiences are unlike those of many leading politicians: she has
long spoken of being sexually abused as a child and raped in college,
that her father struggled with drug addiction and spent most of her
youth incarcerated.
“What probably
makes me an outsider is my story and how I came to this work,” Ms.
Pressley said in an interview. “I am probably an outsider because I
challenge conventional narratives about who should have a seat at the
table.”
Ms. Pressley has also been in
the vanguard of a small group of women who have been breaking down
barriers in Boston politics. She was the first black woman elected to
the City Council and for three elections in a row was the city’s top
vote-getter. Today, of the 13 council members, six are women of color.
“She
didn’t grow up here, she didn’t have 14 cousins who ran different
precincts for her, she didn’t have a mom and dad who went to high school
with so and so,” said Jesse Mermell, a close friend, describing
advantages of some native Boston politicians.
“There is a shift happening in this city,” she said. “Win or lose on
September 4, Ayanna is the face of that shift — generationally, racially
and in terms of gender.”
By
her senior year in high school, Ms. Pressley was a member of student
government, as well as a cheerleader, and had developed a reputation for
being politically inclined. Finding her voice in Chicago Though Ms. Pressley left Chicago more than 25 years ago, her time there was transformative.
She
was immersed in public speaking at her grandfather’s church, Rise and
Shine Missionary Baptist Church. By age 10, she had volunteered on her
first political campaign — for Harold Washington, who became the city’s
first black mayor in 1983.
Ms.
Pressley grew up on Chicago’s North Side in a Lincoln Park mixed-use
apartment complex. With her father, Martin Terrell, absent, Ms. Pressley
said she felt “a fragility of circumstance.”
“Coming
home to an eviction notice on the door,” she said. “Coming home alone.
I’m an only child. My mother was raising me alone. We couldn’t afford
child care; child care hours didn’t work according to her schedule.”
Her mother, Sandra, a social worker, community organizer and legal secretary, was a ferocious champion for her daughter
“Everything
she did was for Ayanna,” said Myrna Smith, a close friend of Sandra
Pressley, who died in 2011. She said the elder Ms. Pressley made
“personal and financial” sacrifices for her daughter.
Ms. Pressley recalled: “It was me and her versus the rest of the world. Cagney and Lacey. Thelma and Louise.”
Ms. Pressley took a moment to herself after a day of campaigning last month. Credit: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times One
of her mother’s achievements was enrolling her daughter in the Francis
W. Parker School. Named for the founder of the progressive school
movement, it is consistently ranked among Chicago’s best private
schools. When Ms. Pressley attended, it was largely inaccessible to
lower middle-class black children like her.
Daniel B. Frank, the longtime principal, said the school helped Ms. Pressley “try out another part of herself.”
“She
had her own family struggles, but she found at Parker a place that
would not only support her, but give her an opportunity to be something
other than a kid who had struggles at home,” Mr. Frank said. “Here she
could just be, and grow, and develop, and have voice.”
By
senior year, Ms. Pressley was much less of an outsider. She was a
member of student government as well as a cheerleader, and had developed
a reputation for being politically inclined. At graduation she was
named both class salutatorian and “most likely to become mayor of
Chicago.”
“If nothing else, I am a survivor,” read one of her senior quotes.
“Oh, I do not talk loud, I just get my point across,” read another.
Mr.
Terrell, Ms. Pressley’s father, recalled that as he watched her
salutatorian speech, he realized his bubbly little girl had become a
young woman with powers of public speaking that she could wield in a
new, politically astute manner.
“She
electrified her classmates,” said Mr. Terrell, who is now an author and
retired director for the United Negro College Fund. “And I felt that,
although she was a good writer, she was a great public speaker.”
Ms.
Pressley has had the difficult task of trying not to disparage her
opponent, a fellow progressive, while still making a strong enough case
for herself. Credit: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times A changing Boston. A changing of the guard, too? Mr.
Capuano, a mild-mannered man who speaks in a thick Boston accent, moves
with the ease of a seasoned politician, talking knowingly about local
issues with a range of leaders he has cultivated for years. He has opted
to campaign only on his progressive record, rather than attack or
insult Ms. Pressley.
“I don’t compare
myself to the councilwoman,” Mr. Capuano said in an interview. “In my
mind I’m running on the basis of my record both back in Washington and
back here.
“We’re in the fight of our
lives with Donald Trump in the White House, and this district — like all
districts, but particularly this one — needs the best fighter we can
get in Washington, someone who’s experienced.”
In Somerville,
his hometown, Mr. Capuano has held nearly every political office of
import — alderman, mayor and now congressman — and he uses his campaign
stops to gently remind voters that his history of leftist activism could
stand next to anyone’s. Mr. Capuano has stressed to voters that, if
Democrats retake the House, his seniority and relationships with other
lawmakers would make him a prime candidate to sponsor bills and serve on
valuable committees that are critical for achieving results. Ms.
Pressley would be a freshman.
Ms.
Pressley has long been an advocate for girls and women. She volunteered
at little-known nonprofits, served as a mentor and Big Sister and has
been a regular presence at events like the Boston Area Rape Crisis
Center’s annual Walk for Change.
It
was this background that led some of Boston’s “kingmakers,” Ms. Pressley
said, to suggest in 2009 that she not run for City Council and instead
pursue a career with nonprofits.
Ms.
Pressley ignored their advice. From her years of working for
Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II and former Senator John Kerry,
including as Mr. Kerry’s Massachusetts political director during his
2004 presidential campaign, she had built an extensive political network
of her own. Senator Kerry even knocked on doors for her.
Ms. Pressley won that first race. And in 2011, in her first bid for re-election, she pulled in more votes than anyone else.
If
the outsider was now working on the inside, Ms. Pressley still focused
her energies on helping marginalized people like those who were
incarcerated, homeless or caught up in human trafficking. And while she
doesn’t often talk in detail in public about her personal experience
with sexual assault — “I’ve just kept going, like millions of people do
every day, because life does not allow them to do anything else,” she
said in the interview — she said she wanted to be a voice for those who
have gone through traumatic events. It has given rise to a central point
in her current campaign stump speech: “The people closest to the pain
should be closest to the power.”
Ms. Pressley with her husband, Conan Harris, during a service at Greater Love Tabernacle Church in Boston last month. Credit: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times Ms.
Pressley, who lives in Dorchester with her husband and stepdaughter,
was so plugged in with her community that she was already meeting
privately with some of Boston’s female firefighters before the media
aired their complaints about sexual harassment and discrimination, said
city councilor Michelle Wu. Just 16 of Boston’s 1,500 firefighters are
women.
“Ayanna is in rooms that no
other elected officials are in,” said Ms. Wu, who in 2013 became the
first Asian-American woman elected to council and in 2016 the first
woman of color to serve as its president. “Whenever she stands up and
speaks on the floor, everybody stops and listens because she speaks with
moral authority.”
Boston’s strong
mayor form of government generally precludes City Council members from
making much of a splash, but Ms. Pressley is credited with at least one
major accomplishment: increasing the number of valuable liquor licenses
so some could be distributed to help restaurants in disadvantaged
neighborhoods become more economically viable.
“For
the issues she’s speaking on, she does the work and is prepared,” said
Sam Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a
nonprofit research group that monitors council activity. “She has a
penchant for coming late,” he added, “but she does come.”
Ms.
Pressley’s race against Representative Michael Capuano has been
hard-fought but not particularly negative. The candidates acknowledge
they are likely to vote the same way on most issues. Credit: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times Erin
O’Brien, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts
Boston, said there were two different assessments of Ms. Pressley’s
standing in the council.
“Some people
think she’s a showboat, that she likes to come in and give a speech and
isn’t doing the nitty-gritty work,” said Ms. O’Brien. “But in many
communities of color, she is viewed as incredibly exciting and voicing
issues the council has ignored.” It was the “old guard,” Ms. O’Brien
added, that viewed Ms. Pressley as a showboat. But, she said, its power
was waning.
“If the old guard were in charge,” she said, “this primary wouldn’t be happening.”
Later,
Ms. Pressley nearly erupted at the showboat suggestion. “I’ve not been a
decisively re-elected city councilor and top vote-getter three times
because I haven’t done the work and because I don’t work hard,” she
said.
The
old guard may be losing its grip in part because of demographic changes
across the Seventh Congressional District. Once represented by John F.
Kennedy, the district is now 57 percent people of color and 30 percent
foreign born. Single women head nearly 40 percent of the households.
“What
has shifted is the willingness of people who come from these
backgrounds to step up and run,” Ms. Wu said. “We’ve now set a new
narrative for what is possible in Boston politics and in Massachusetts
politics.”
Ms. Pressley’s supporters are highly energized. Credit: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times Still,
Massachusetts has never sent a black person to the House of
Representatives. It was not until 2012 that it sent a woman — Elizabeth
Warren — to the Senate. Two years later, Maura Healey, a first-time
candidate, bucked the party establishment and ran for state attorney
general against a fellow Democrat. She prevailed and became the nation’s
first openly gay state attorney general. Ms. Pressley was one of the
few elected officials to endorse her back then. Ms. Healey, now arguably
the most popular Democrat in a state brimming with them, has endorsed
Ms. Pressley.
At that rally in
Cambridge, Ms. Healey stood by Ms. Pressley’s side and told the crowd
that Ms. Pressley had educated her about trauma, sexual violence,
domestic violence and gun violence. “Not only did she teach me,” Ms.
Healey said, “she helped me come up with solutions and ideas.”
When Ms. Pressley took the stage, she acknowledged the forces arrayed against her.
“They
might have you think we’re traitorous to primary a 20-year incumbent,”
she said. “But that’s democracy, and choice. And after 20 years, this
district deserves one.”
Massachusetts has never sent a black person to the House of Representatives and did not send a woman to the Senate until 2012. Credit... Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 1, 2018 , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: An ‘Outsider’ in Boston Pushes Change, Starting in Her Party. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |
