Insurgent Democratic women running for Congress are pushing the party to rethink its approach to politics if they retake control of Capitol Hill in the fall.
At the annual meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus Friday, black female candidates who prevailed in primaries over established incumbents said it’s time for a conversation about how the party is structured. They expressed frustration that the party is tilted against rising politicians — especially those of color — and argued that if Democrats flip the House in November, it would be the result of organization and turnout amount black voters, particularly women.
If that happens, the candidates said, gratitude won’t be enough. They want a seat at the leadership table and a role in re-examining how the party works.
“It is not enough to just talk about a blue wave and Democrats being in the majority,” said Ayanna Pressley, the Boston city councilwoman now poised to become Massachusetts’ first black congresswoman. “What matters is who are those Democrats? We have to have a conversation about the guts and the soul of this party.”
Pressley won her primary last month by 18 points after challenging a 10-term incumbent initially endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus. Without a Republican challenger in the general election, she appears to have a clear path to Congress. Her comments foreshadow the challenges that lie ahead if Democrats regain control of the House in November. The party will have to reconcile the anti-establishment energy of a diverse set of freshmen with a leadership structure dominated by lawmakers who are mostly white and have held office for decades.
Connecticut House Democratic nominee Jahana Hayes also challenged a state political veteran to win her shot at becoming the state’s first black congresswoman. The former National Teacher of the Year told the CBC audience that she lacked support during her primary.
“Everyone said, ‘You don’t have the network, no one knows you.’ I had never run for political office, I had no money,” Hayes said. “I’m doing this for the people who don’t have a voice.”
Since her recent win with 62 percent of the vote, Hayes said, “it’s popular to support me now.”
After black women “showed up and showed out” this primary season, they are taking their rightful place, said Rep. Terri Sewell, who in 2010 was elected Alabama’s first black congresswoman. The Selma Democrat was instrumental in Sen. Doug Jones’ special election last winter, when he became the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the Senate in 25 years.
“We’ve been the backbone of the Democratic Party for a long time and we’re finally getting our due,” said Sewell. “There were a whole bunch of people he doesn’t even know that did a whole bunch of work to help him get there.”
Those people were the black women who often work with little or no financial support for infrastructure, she said.
“We need to activate the people on the ground who have been doing this work for free,” Sewell said. “They need resources. It’s not just about a seat at the table.”
LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, agreed, noting that grassroots groups like hers have long filled the gap when the official party apparatus was absent.
“It’s our table,” said Brown, who galvanized black women to support Jones. “We have to have some really deep conversations about how the landscape has changed.”
That also includes addressing priorities within the party, Pressley said.
“I reject the notion that this is about working class white folk and everyone else!” Pressley told the cheering crowd. “I reject the notion that we’re going to have an actual debate about if we are the party of jobs and the economy, or of criminal justice reform. I’m not choosing.”
Some CBC meeting attendees noted the party has made efforts this cycle. This summer, the Democratic National Committee launched an initiative aimed at black women. After voting overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016, many black women said they felt ignored or taken for granted by the party. Instead of being looked to as saviors, black women are calling for roles as decision and agenda makers.
This week’s gathering of black lawmakers also spotlighted black women’s political influence and impact. Much of the CBC agenda was focused squarely on black women and their issues, with black women as panelists, honorees and framers of much of the discussion.
“They’re not leading this nation in health care or pay, but when it comes to the democracy of this nation, black women are leading the way, and we need to be talking about those issues and more,” said New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who along with California Sen. Kamala Harris — the Senate’s only black woman — served as the convention’s honorary co-chair.
New York Congresswoman Yvette Clark, echoed his sentiments Thursday evening at an awards event honoring CBC women.
“The sisters on the Hill are definitely running things,” said Clark, one of 21 women in the caucus.
“When I think about the blue wave hitting and seeing Congresswoman Maxine Waters bring down the gavel, as chair of financial services, I get excited,” said Clark, currently the ranking Democrat on the committee. “When I think about Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson bringing down that gavel, as chair of the committee on science and technology, I get excited.”
Waikinya Clanton, the DNC’s African-American Outreach Chair, encouraged the pressure to change the party dynamic toward black women candidates and voters.
“We need you all’s support, whether that comes in the form of criticism or whatever,” said Clanton. “One of the reasons I came to the party was because that was valid. I believed that I could only make the change that I needed by being there. All these people who haven’t for a long time felt like this was their party, feel like this is their party now because I’m there and I’m doing the work every single day.”
Religion’s role in politics and public policy is in the spotlight heading toward the midterm elections, yet relatively few Americans consider it crucial that a candidate be devoutly religious or share their religious beliefs, according to a poll released Tuesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Just 25 percent of Americans say it’s very or extremely important that a candidate has strong religious beliefs, according to the poll. Only 19 percent consider it very or extremely important that a candidate shares their own beliefs, and nearly half say that’s not very important or not important at all.
Still, most Americans see a role for religion in shaping public policy. A solid majority of Americans, 57 percent, want the influence of religion on government policy to extend beyond traditional culture war issues and into policies addressing poverty. Americans are more likely to say religion should have at least some influence on poverty than on abortion (45 percent) or LGBT issues (34 percent).
There is little public support for the campaign by some conservative religious leaders, backed by President Donald Trump, to allow clergy and religious organizations to endorse political candidates while retaining their tax exempt status. Such a change is opposed by 53 percent of Americans and supported by 13 percent. The rest expressed no opinion.
Trump’s stance on political endorsements by clergy is one of many reasons he has retained strong support among white evangelical Christians, despite aspects of his behavior and personal life that don’t neatly align with Christian values. The AP-NORC poll found that 7 in 10 white evangelical Protestants say they approve of Trump, a Republican.
The importance of a candidate’s religious faith varied across religious and political groups.
Among white evangelical Protestants, 51 percent consider it very or extremely important that a candidate has strong religious beliefs. An additional 25 percent think it’s moderately important. Far fewer Catholics and white mainline Protestants considered this important.
Roughly two-thirds of Republicans said it’s at least moderately important that a candidate has strong religious beliefs, compared with 37 percent of Democrats.
Jack Kane, an accountant from Key West, Florida, was among the Republican-leaning poll participants who said it wasn’t important to him whether a candidate was deeply religious.
“I’d much rather have a guy run the government and not spend all our money, instead of sounding off on what’s going on in the church or on things like abortion,” said Kane, 65, who describes himself as nonreligious. “Who is Catholic, Jewish, Southern Baptist — I could care less, as long as they’re going to carry the torch of freedom.”
Kent Jaquette, a Republican-turned-independent and a former United Methodist pastor who lives near San Antonio, said he does not base his choice of candidates on their religious faith.
“In politics, you need to look at a person where their morals are, where their values are,” he said. “It may or may not have anything to do with their religion.”
Jaquette also questioned the motives of evangelicals who support Trump.
“To me, it’s supporting someone who gives no indication he intends to live a Christian life,” said Jaquette, 63. “I believe that Christians should do things that Christ taught — feed the hungry, visit people in jail, help immigrants.”
Veronica Irving, a 55-year-old Roman Catholic Republican who lives near Chicago, says it’s extremely important to her that a politician has strong religious beliefs. She’s disappointed that Trump doesn’t demonstrate this more clearly through his behaviors and actions.
“It’s not about what faith you come from — it’s just important that you have faith,” she said.
At the highest levels of political office, it’s still rare for a politician to profess that he or she is an atheist; surveys indicate that roughly 10 percent of Americans do not believe in a higher power. In recent years, only a small handful of members of Congress have identified themselves as nonbelievers.
However, there is some evidence of increasing acceptance of religious diversity — for example, the recent victories by Muslim-American women in Democratic congressional primaries in Michigan and Minnesota.
The AP-NORC poll found broad interest in religion having at least some influence on a range of policy issues.
In addition to the concern about poverty, 49 percent of Americans want to see religion have some influence on education, 44 percent on health care policy, 43 percent on immigration, 38 percent on gun policy, 36 percent on income inequality, 34 percent on foreign policy and 32 percent on climate change.
From each of the largest religious groups, there was strong support for greater religious influence on poverty policy — 71 percent of white evangelical Protestants, 54 percent of white mainline Protestants, 75 percent of nonwhite Protestants and 67 percent of Catholics.
The Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the Christian social justice organization Sojourners, said the poll findings signaled a potentially broader and more vibrant role for organized religion in U.S. politics.
“Religious issues are much broader and deeper and different from the issues chosen by the religious right,” he said. “The issues like poverty, immigration, what happens to the homeless — those are becoming the moral and political and voting issues for more and more Christians.”
The findings were welcomed by Maureen Malloy Ferguson, a senior policy adviser for The Catholic Association, which depicts its mission as “being a faithful Catholic voice in the public square.”
“It’s encouraging to see that so many Americans recognize that religion can be a force for good in society,” she said.
However, attorney Emilie Kao, a religious-freedom expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether faith-based organizations might face roadblocks in trying to expand their role in social services. Some jurisdictions, she noted, have sought to exclude religious organizations from various activities, such as adoption and foster care, because of opposition to same-sex marriage and other beliefs.
Associated Press Polling Editor Emily Swanson and AP writer Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.___
The AP-NORC poll of 1,055 adults was conducted Aug. 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The Latest on the New Hampshire primary election (all times local):
A candidate endorsed by the Trump administration has won the Republican nomination for a U.S. House seat in New Hampshire, and he’d be the state’s first black congressman if elected in November.
Eddie Edwards, of Dover, won a six-way race in Tuesday’s GOP primary for the 1st Congressional District.
Edwards is a Navy veteran who also served as a police chief and as chief enforcement officer for the state liquor commission.
He sought to make the campaign about character and integrity and criticized his main rival, state Sen. Andy Sanborn, for Statehouse behavior that included making a sexually explicit comment to an intern. Edwards, who was endorsed by Trump administration attorney Rudy Giuliani, said he wants to bring public virtue back to politics.
The 1st District seat covers much of the eastern half of the state. It’s being left vacant by Democrat Carol Shea-Porter, who is stepping down after four non-consecutive terms.
In this Sept. 6, 2018, photo, Michelle Jagodzinski, left, and Mary Reczek, right, of the West Rutland Historical Society in Vermont stand next to a new historical marker honoring Lemuel Haynes, first ordained black minister in the U.S. in West Rutland, Vt. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)
More than 220 years after the first ordained black minister in the U.S. became a pastor in a small, predominantly white community in Vermont and preached about brotherly love, freedom and unity, people there are honoring his life and work with an historic marker.
Lemuel Haynes ministered in the Parish of West Rutland for 30 years starting in 1787, drawing people from neighboring communities and hours away, with sermons that historians say at times touched on racial equality.
Local historians say now is an apt time to celebrate the popular preacher and author and inspire others with an historic marker near where the church once stood. The West Rutland Historical Society is holding a public dedication ceremony Saturday.
“I think it is so timely in the fact that we have this African American person that was here so many years ago speaking out for interracial peace and acceptance … And that’s what this whole nation is crying out for that now,” said Michelle Jagodzinski, treasurer of the West Rutland Historical Society.
Haynes was born to a white mother and black father in West Hartford, Connecticut and indentured to a devout churchman at the age of 5 months.
Lemuel Haynes
He read everything he could and became well versed in the Bible, Jagodzinski said.
After leaving his adopted family at 21, Haynes joined the Revolutionary War but arrived too late for the battle at Lexington and Concord. He later wrote a poem about the skirmish, including a line about Americans not wanting to be enslaved by the British. He later penned “Liberty Further Extended” in 1776, making the case that liberty should be extended to all, said William Hart, an associate professor of history at Middlebury College.
“There he begins to connect Republican liberty and virtue with abolition,” Hart said.
Vermont, where Haynes made his home, was the first state to abolish adult slavery.
“He was one of not too many men at the time who believed … that the Declaration of Independence was meant for all people — not just the landed gentry who could vote but also for the blacks,” said Mary Reczek, vice president of the historical society, who lives just down the road from where the church once stood next to a cemetery.
Nine years later Haynes was ordained a minister and served in a church in Torrington, Connecticut for three years before being called to minister in Vermont where other Connecticut residents had moved. He’s widely acknowledged to be the first African American ordained minister in the U.S.
Not only was he extremely well versed in the Bible but he also had a humility and wit, Reczek said.
He was let go from the congregation in 1818, but the accounts differ on why. Some historians believe it was about a doctrinal dispute within the church and others say it was because of his race.
He later served as a preacher in Manchester, Vermont, and then in South Granville, New York, where he’s buried. His contributions were noted at the time by Middlebury College, which granted him an honorary master’s degree in 1804.
Now local historians hope his legacy will gain new attention.
“Here’s a man and a group of people who were principled and worked hard to develop not just their families and their community and their land, and they stood for something. And they all worked together. And the fact that he was of a different race didn’t seem to bother them at all,” said Reczek.
“He’s important. People should know his name. And his contributions should be remembered,” Jagodzinski said.
A Jerusalem museum is breathing life into the ancient city with a new virtual reality tour that allows visitors to experience how archaeologists believe Jerusalem looked 2,000 years ago.
The Tower of David Museum, which is housed in the Old City’s ancient stronghold, plans to launch the high-tech guided tour this month ahead of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
The virtual reality guide, “Step into History,” offers visitors a chance to “walk in the streets of Jerusalem and enjoy the present and take a look back to the past,” said Tower of David Museum director Eilat Lieber.
Working with archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Lithodomos VR created 360-degree simulations of how Jerusalem’s citadel, palaces, streets and ancient Jewish temple are believed to have appeared during its heyday under King Herod in the first century B.C. and during the life of Jesus.
Herod, a Roman vassal who ruled Judaea from 37-4 B.C., invested heavily in large construction projects across his realm, including a major expansion of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and the fortress and palace where the Tower of David stands today. His monuments, including the mountaintop fortress at Masada and the port city of Caesarea, are among the most visited sites in Israel.
“Especially with Jerusalem, I think the biggest challenge was getting it right,” said Simon Young, founder of Lithodomos VR, an Australian startup. “There’s a lot of different opinions about how Jerusalem looked in the ancient world… Of course, we want to do justice to Jerusalem and to make it as accurate as possible.”
Lithodomos VR’s team of archaeologists and artists has produced similar projects in London, Rome, Athens and other cities.
The Tower of David Museum also houses an innovation lab in a chamber at the top of a Herodian-era keep that once served as the chambers of Jerusalem’s Ottoman governor. The lab, launched in October 2017, hosts startups such as Lithodomos VR that are developing technologies to enhance visitor experience, with a particular emphasis on virtual and enhanced reality. The site also holds an elaborate light show that projects moving images in intricate detail on the ancient walls of the Old City.
Accompanied by a guide, visitors will be able explore nine different vantage points in the city, starting at the citadel — an Ottoman-era fortress built atop remnants of several earlier bastions — then meandering through the Old City’s Jewish Quarter down toward the remains of the Second Jewish Temple. In order to keep from crashing into modern Jerusalem, visitors carry the goggles between sites, then put them on once they are stationary.
At each point, a narrator explains the historical significance of the structures they can see in the goggles: the columned marketplace of the Cardo, the heart of the ancient city; the soaring towers of Herod’s citadel; the opulent pools of his pleasure palace; and the temple. The VR tour around the Old City takes approximately two hours, the museum said.
The tour is confined to the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. The Old City lies in east Jerusalem — an area captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as their future capital. Israel rejects any division of the Old City — home to Jerusalem’s most sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites.
Young says the Lithodomos VR team would be interested in adding additional historical layers to the virtual reality guide that would allow people to explore Jerusalem during other periods, such as the Crusades.
Judy Magnusson, an Australian tourist who previewed the tour on Monday ahead of its launch, said the virtual reality-enhanced experience “brings history to life” and makes the stories about the city “more real.”
