Tag: Ayanna Pressley

The Story: Frequently lumped together in discussion of a so-called progressive "squad," four Congresswoman, each elected to the House for the first time in 2018,...

CNN political commentator Jennifer Granholm and Trump 2020 Campaign National Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany had a heated exchange about President Trump's remarks targeting four Democratic congresswomen. #CNN #News

Happening Now: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar hold a news conference to call on Congress ``to cut funding for President Trump's deportation force.'' FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to…

There were so many women running, in fact, that many firsts came in pairs: Two Native American women and two Muslim women were elected to Congress. MC: Why did you want to run? I’m ready to work diligently, but I realize that things don’t happen overnight. MC: What does it mean to you to be one of the first Native American women elected to Congress ever? MC: How does it feel for you to share this victory with so many other women, Republicans and Democrats, who ran and won this year? How have things changed in the last 25 years? MC: What women’s issues will you take on in Congress? All this work and all this training that I had and all of my experience representing people from our community was something we really needed in Washington, so I decided to take on a nine-term incumbent because I felt like he really wasn’t representing our district, and that I could do a better job. I’ve lived in this community nearly all of my life and I’ve been representing people [as a lawyer] from this community from all walks of life for a decade. It’s hard to see yourself in a place when you don’t see anybody that looks like you, and that’s one of the reasons that representation matters.

Outgoing U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano says he knew even before his eventual successor Ayanna Pressley challenged him in the September primary that this year’s election was going to be a tough one for him. But he dismissed the notion that he was targeted by voters hungry for change during a WBUR interview that aired Tuesday. “It’s whoever was in office in a place that has progressives. And that’s fine. That’s not a problem to me.” The 10-term incumbent garnered 41.4 percent of the vote to Pressley’s 58.6 percent amid an election cycle that catapulted a wave of women, people of color, and Democrats into Congress. Capuano, reflecting on his loss, said this week that voters are angry and upset with the direction of the country under President Donald Trump. He heard that anger from constituents, and, although it wasn’t directed toward him specifically, “when that happens, you have a tough opponent,” he said. “My hope is that it ends up something positive,” Capuano told WBUR. “My hope is that the people who came out to vote for the first time or one of the few times from this primary continue to vote and learn these issues and figure out how to actually change the system. “There’s nothing wrong with new blood, but it has to be balanced as well with people that have been around, that know the history of what has happened, know the internal relationships between people, know what you can do and what you can’t do.

Ayanna Pressley is the first black woman that Massachusetts has ever elected to Congress. In a tweet Monday afternoon, the 7th District congresswoman-elect announced that she’s getting the former office of Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman in the country elected to Congress. Pressley, who has repeatedly called Chisholm her “shero” and inspiration for running for public office, said she got the late Brooklyn congresswoman’s space after trading House office lottery numbers with fellow Democrat and soon-to-be freshman Rep. Katie Hill. Wow! TY Mommy for the extra bday luck! We just learned my Congressional Office designation will be #ShirleyChisholm 's former office. How's that for divine intervention, AND the selflessness of my colleague @KatieHill4CA who drew a better lottery# but still wanted me to have it. She died in 2005 and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. During her visit to the Capitol for freshman orientation last month, Pressley tweeted a photo of herself posing in front of the iconic portrait of Chisholm. #ChangeCantWait #vote pic.twitter.com/JtfhIBE76N — Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) November 6, 2018

The future of politics in Massachusetts is female. I’ve thought that for a while, but Ayanna Pressley put an exclamation point on that sentence Tuesday night. You’ll recognize that as Pressley’s campaign slogan, but it also should be the rallying cry of an entire movement, led by a formidable troika of Pressley, Maura Healey, and Michelle Wu. They are the epitome of impatient women, and Massachusetts politics will never be the same. ), when she ran for state attorney general. Like Pressley, Healey trounced her opponent on her way to becoming the nation’s first openly gay AG. While the stalwarts of the Democratic Party backed Capuano, Healey and Wu stood their ground with Pressley, bringing not only their clout but a constellation of supporters and donors. But let us not forget the biggest queenmaker of all: Barbara Lee, the Cambridge philanthropist who has bankrolled female candidates for two decades, including early support for Pressley, Healey, and Wu. Lee got political because she wanted to change the face of leadership, and she thought if she could elect more women to office that would inspire young girls and women to become leaders in every arena. In many ways, Lee wanted to solve a problem summed up in the mantra: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” After 20 years and a historic win from Pressley, Lee can start altering her message: “You can be what you do see.” Shirley Leung is the interim Editorial Page Editor.

The Story: On Tuesday, September 4, the Democratic Party's primary voters nominated Ayanna Pressley to represent Massachusetts' 7th Congressional District in the US House of...

Unfortunately for Bachrach, Joseph Kennedy II—Robert Kennedy’s son—soon entered the race, as well. Kennedy won endorsements from O’Neill, Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, the Boston Herald, and The Boston Globe, and went on to win. In O’Neill’s famous dictum, all politics really was local. Capuano, Kennedy’s successor, was born in Somerville, in the heart of the Eighth (now the Seventh) District. He garnered the endorsements of Boston’s top Democrats. It didn’t matter that Capuano had the stronger Boston accent and Boston lineage. And in 2018, regional identity matters less than it once did and ideological identity matters more. But overall, as the University of Pennsylvania political scientist Dan Hopkins argues in his book The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized, “the debates in states and even some localities have taken on a national hue.” Party platforms don’t differ much by region anymore. Which helps explain why Democrats in Texas increasingly resemble Democrats in Massachusetts. Ayanna Pressley may not have as strong a Boston accent as Michael Capuano.

A friend captured the moment Boston city councilor Ayanna Pressley won the Massachusetts primary for the US House, unseating 10-term Democratic Rep. Mike Capuano.