The NPR Politics Podcast - Midterm Update: Ayanna Pressley's Upset Victory Shows Power Of Women Of Color

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

In a surprise defeat that reflects a changing Democratic Party, Boston City Council member Ayanna Pressley has defeated 10-term Democratic Rep. Mike Capuano in Massachusetts' 7th Congressional District. Pressley is poised to become the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in the state's congressional history. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Christina from Medford, Massachusetts. I'm just walking out of my polling place after casting my vote in the Massachusetts primary. This podcast was recorded at? It's 12.08 on Wednesday, September 5th. Things have definitely changed since it was recorded. Okay, enjoy the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and we're here with the latest on the surprise victory in the Massachusetts 7th Congressional District, where Ayanna Pressley, a black city councilwoman, beat out a 10-term Democratic incumbent. For our brothers and sisters behind the wall, change can't wait.

To our immigrants worried about the knock on the door, change can't wait. To women whose rights are perpetually under attack, change can't wait. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Danielle, why don't you start by just giving us a quick rundown of who Ayanna is and what she stood for. So Ayanna Pressley is a city councilwoman from Boston. She is the first black woman elected to the city council. Prior to that, she, you know, had worked

in Democratic politics. She had worked for Representative Joe Kennedy. She had worked for Senator John Kerry, both of them from Massachusetts. So someone who has been around for a while. So she ran this campaign against Mike Capuano, and she ran a pretty liberal campaign. Now, we should say from the outset here that Mike Capuano himself is pretty liberal. He backs Medicare for All. He opposed the Iraq War. He has his own bona fides. Now, she similarly is in favor of Medicare for All. That said, she, unlike Capuano, is in favor of abolishing ICE.

But one other thing that she brought up in her victory speech last night was her identity. We committed to running a campaign for those who don't see themselves reflected in politics or government and are forever told that their issues, their concerns, their priorities can wait. I should explain full disclosure for folks who don't know, I live in Boston, more or less, and I don't live in her district. But I did live in her district for the past four years, prior to just moving right across the line last year. And I will say candidly, there were elements of this race that I think were really, really surprising to a lot of people. And part of this is because Mike Capuano is not, I mean, this is not the Ocasio-Cortez part two race.

He took his opponent, Ayanna Pressley, extremely seriously from the beginning. He knew he faced a really formidable challenger. And so he went out and he sought the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC. He sought the endorsement of Deval Patrick, the state's first African-American governor. And he knew that he was going to face a really strong challenge. And he was out there. He was campaigning. He was raising money. And I think, you know, the Ayanna Pressley campaign will say, well, we were out there and they were really involved in grassroots organizing and reaching out to parts of the electorate that they really felt that they could energize. This district is majority minority. It's 40 percent white. So when she says people in this district who don't see themselves represented, she really is speaking

about a very real thing. And the thing about that, though, is that WBUR did a really interesting analysis. And they found that minority voters, however, are not in the majority when it comes to voting. They're not, you know, 55% of the district is registered voters are white. And in 2014, those midterms, 65% of voters who went out to vote in this district were white. So, you know, again, it's another one of these districts and places where you're seeing minority candidates try to sort of carry forward this progressive message in a way that Bernie Sanders was never able to do, right? I mean, in the 2016 primary campaign, Sanders really ran into a roadblock when it came to minority voters. He only won something like 20, 21% of black voters.

Hillary Clinton won all the rest. He won almost half of white voters. Had he won a little bit more of minority voters, he could have very well won the nomination, very well would have won the nomination. And what we're seeing this cycle so far with people like Andrew Gillum, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ben Jealous, Stacey Abrams in Georgia. carrying forward that message, but it's really taken black and Latino candidates to take that Sanders message to make Sanders more, make that message more mainstream within the party. So question for you, Domenico, because I also wondered when I saw what happened last night, whether this was a sort of strange reconnection of the Obama coalition, because you have these really highly educated white liberal voters, you have certainly voters of color in the district. And we saw Hillary Clinton struggle to recreate that coalition. And people have often wondered, can you really recreate that coalition?

And I wondered if in some small way, maybe we saw that. It is arguably, and I like the point you're making, that you could argue that it's a reconnecting of the Obama coalition. But one other thing to really keep in mind for this year, we keep talking about the wave of women who are running and especially, and this is especially on the Democratic side, women of color as well. One thing that I would add is things that pollsters have been telling me is that you can't separate identity from substance. Like those are two things you can't fully explain that a bit more. All right. So, for example, voters on the Democratic side, more so than on the Republican side as well, are more willing to say, I will vote for this candidate who is not a white man because I think they have a different perspective.

They don't think this person is necessarily like, quote unquote, better. But for example, I was looking at a poll from CBS News, and they were asking people about voting for a woman versus a man. And they said all other things being equal, Democrat woman, Democrat man, Republican woman, Republican man. If you had a choice, who would you pick? 42% of Democratic women said they'd prefer the woman. 15% of Republican women said they'd prefer the woman. Well, and you've seen that reflected in the numbers of women candidates this year skyrocketing and the number of women candidates to the House, for example, who have been largely on the Democratic side. Right. Absolutely. So what I'm saying is this, is that voters look at women for like women voters especially might look at a woman and say, you know,

women are underrepresented because they are. They are more than half of the voting public. They are one fifth of the members of Congress, for example, women of color being even less so. And they might say, oh, these candidates understand a larger breadth of issues that are not represented. We should elect them. Aside from that, there has been research that voters trust women candidates on particular issues more than men candidates and men candidates more than women candidates on other issues. Men tend to get the edge on national security and the economy. Women candidates get health care, which you may have heard something about this year, health care and education. So especially in a year that health care is such a big deal on the Democratic side, every time I hear that health care is a big issue, yes, I understand it.

People afraid of Obamacare being dismantled. But also you can't fully separate that from gender because women candidates, for whatever reason, voters for some reason give women candidates a certain amount of an edge on that. with Capuano versus Presley here was Capuano recognized that identity was going to be something that could potentially have some impact. And he seemed to recognize that. I mean, look, I cannot be a woman of color. And if that's what people care about, look, that's fine. I accept that. I understand that. I just don't think there are that many people who will vote for me because I'm a white male or vote against me because I'm a white male. Some will do that both ways. 99% of my constituents will look way beyond those things. It's a factor. But the bigger factor is what can you do for me? What can you do for my family? What position are you in to push the issues we care

about and to successfully do that? You know, this is something that he's talked about for some time where he said that he's never been fired up by identity politics. Well, he's a white male, so he's sort of being hopeful to not want people to just vote for or against him because he's a white male. But to your point, Domenico, on that, I met with the former head of the Massachusetts Democratic Party at some point this summer, and he was supporting Ayanna Pressley. He's an older white guy. And his argument was that we always say to various candidates in Massachusetts, you know, sort of wait your turn, wait your turn, and there aren't enough women,

there aren't enough women candidates of color. And this is not a wait your turn year. And that's what he said. Here is a supremely qualified candidate. And I don't see why. I mean, I'm sort of paraphrasing him here, but I don't see why she shouldn't be given this opportunity, all things equal. And to me, what's interesting is, you know, maybe that did really resonate with a lot of people who aren't necessarily women or even black and brown voters. I think that's entirely true. Actually, this weekend, I was in Illinois in their 14th district where 31-year-old Lauren Underwood, a black woman, is also running. And I was talking to voters there. And the overwhelming majority of the voters who were at her event were white. And what I'm trying to say is that this idea of voting

for underrepresented groups isn't just a thing that women are doing or that minorities are doing. I, you know, even some white men on the campaign trail, and, you know, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by this, will say to me, yeah, you know, I think we do need more women in Congress. I've had multiple white men on the campaign trail say this, relatively older, old ones to say, we need more women, we need more people of color. And it's important to me to see Congress become more diverse. Yeah, it's an interesting point, especially on the Democratic side. You're seeing that a lot less so on the Republican side. Now, one thing about him, though, that I think is fairly consistent for why the progressive base hasn't liked some of these kinds of candidates. He's a chief lieutenant to Nancy Pelosi. You know, he is seen as a Democratic establishment guy.

And he talked about that, that he brought experience and that if the Democrats take control of the House, you know, they would lose some of that seniority by putting on someone who's newer. So I think that there's a different way that younger liberals are viewing politics and they see it with a negative connotation, especially young voters on the left who don't like just Washington generally. And they think, frankly, the elephant in the room here is that a lot of these younger voters think that some of these folks are too old. And we can't think that that perhaps wasn't a factor also in the Massachusetts 7th congressional race because Ayanna Pressley is 20-some years younger than Mike Capuano. Right. And the district, I was looking this up before we came in here,

the median age in it is 31.8. Oh, wow. So it's a pretty young district. Yeah, the U.S. Right. Absolutely. Lots of college kids. I get it. Like the U.S., the median age is somewhere. It's almost 38. So, I mean, a six year difference might not sound like much, but it really is. 38. I guess I'm on the downhill slope. You're past the median. Oh, man. You know, this race, I think, gives us some really, really important clues about the direction of the Democratic Party in a way that the Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez race didn't. Because Ayanna Pressley is an institutional woman. She's not a Democratic socialist. This district is not nearly as diverse as a district where Ocasio-Cortez won. And I'm wondering what lessons we could take for where the Democratic Party not only going to be in 2018, but 2020. I think that there's a certain professionalization that's going on

throughout this campaign cycle where you're seeing candidates who have maybe a little bit more political experience, who know how to run a campaign and who aren't just looking to sort of make waves and push Democratic candidates toward the left with their issues. They've made those issues a main part of their platforms and have really started to make them more mainstream within the party. And that's what I meant about earlier when we were talking about Barack Obama. This is not Barack Obama's party. It's not Bill Clinton's party, but it's also Barack Obama got into big battles with the left because it felt like they weren't willing to take half a loaf. I'm not sure right now anybody coming to Washington is willing to take a half a loaf. are running and winning really big this year with some pretty, what would have in the past

been considered, I think, relatively extreme positions, at least some pretty big ideas, abolishing ICE, job guarantees, Medicare for all, you know, positions that would not have been considered mainstream a few short years ago. These people are winning. And should they get into the House? I'm wondering if, you know, the Democratic Party now with this particular group of relatively liberal people has trouble keeping its votes together, for example, in the House, the same way that Republicans, you know, have had this faction of Tea Party members who first came in after the 2010 election. Well, look, it's zero sum now, right? I mean, when you look at the Senate and even these Kavanaugh hearings, you hearings, this is what happens when you get

rid of the filibuster. And you've got people yelling at each other about process that has Senates turning into the House, and the House has always been zero-sum and is going to continue to be. If they can keep that coalition together, that's who's going to make policy. When I see these, at least on the national scene, newcomer candidates, I recognize Presley's been around Boston for a while, but when I see these newcomer candidates get all of this attention and, you know, become darlings on Twitter and Facebook and that sort of thing from people who are not in their district, I just think, you know, a big part of that, in my mind, is a Democratic Party that is desperately looking for another champion, for someone to embrace. I feel like the last real

person they had that unified them and that excited them was Barack Obama. And I feel like Democrats are just really hungry for anyone to wrap their arms around. All right. That is all we have to talk about around Ayanna Pressley's surprise win in Massachusetts' 7th congressional district. We'll be back later this afternoon with the latest at the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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