How the Congressional Black Caucus backed a white candidate over Ayanna Pressley and lost
Veteran black politicians typically support black candidates, but their choice to back a white liberal in Massachusetts Democratic primary proved to be a mistake
Tuesday night, Ayanna Pressley unseated longstanding incumbent Mike Capuano in Massachusetts’ Democratic primary and political insiders are still wondering how.
For decades, Rep. John Lewis has been a passionate civil rights activist – a responsibility he took on well before his tenure in Congress. But last weekend the veteran Georgia lawmaker made a rare case for traditionalism as he campaigned for Capuano, a ten-term liberal Democrat.
“People who have been around for awhile, they know their way around,” Mr. Lewis said. “They know where all the bodies are buried and they know how to get things done.”
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Saturday, Mr. Lewis argued to his audience inside Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church, that Capuano’s experience and seniority were needed in the Democrats’ uphill fight against President Trump, instead of the youthful energy of Pressley’s grass-roots campaign.
“It’s important to keep a leader, a fighter, and warrior like Mike Capuano around,” Lewis said at the event, which was equal parts gospel service and political town hall.
The New York Times reported the district under contest, the Seventh Congressional District, stretching from Boston’s Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods to the Cambridge and Somerville across the Charles River, is Massachusetts only majority non-white district, but Capuano, who is white, has never faced a serious primary challenger in his Congressional tenure.
But both Lewis and the Congressional Black Caucus chose to back a white member of the Democatic old boys club ahead of a Black woman who had her own political history in the district as part of the city council. Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the chairman of the black caucus’s political action committee, said the group endorsed Capuano because of their longstanding relationship with him.
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“We have nothing against the challenger, but when you have a colleague that’s done the right thing for 20 years, and has worked with you intimately, there’s not a reason for us to not endorse him,” Mr. Meeks told the Times. “We know him.”
And yet, as has been the case in similar political upsets in New York with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and in Florida with Andrew Gillum, voters in Massachusetts made it clear that they weren’t interested in “business as usual.”
Rev. Willie Bodrick II, an associate pastor at the church, attended the town hall with Lewis, but said he thought the endorsements of Mr. Capuano were “hasty.”
“The generational struggle, this pull and tug, is showing itself across the board here,” Bodrick said. “This is about just what kind of party the Democratic Party wants to be.”
“People who’ve been in D.C. for a long time are not necessarily bringing new ideas or challenging the status quo, challenging their own party,” said Patricia Montes, who leads immigrant rights organization Centro Presente in East Boston. “They’re accustomed to the fact that because they are Democrats, people are going to support them.”
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“I’m happy to see people running and challenging them,” she added.
Since she will not face a Republican opponent during the November midterm elections, Pressley is poised to become the first non-white person (male or female) to represent Massachusetts in Congress.
