candidates

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

For Candidates Like Summer Lee Pennsylvania Didn’t Have A Pipeline — So She Helped Build One

When Summer Lee moved back home to the Pittsburgh area in 2015 after graduating from Howard University Law School, she did not plan to run for office. Lee was an organizer. She supported Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential primary bid, then Hillary Clinton in the general election. The next year, when the high school Lee graduated from became engulfed in scandal after video surfaced showing school officials using stun guns and physical force on Black students, including some with special needs, she attended her first school board meeting. “It was Black kids who were facing the worst outcomes, who were facing the worst and least amount of opportunities, who were being abused,” Lee recalled in a recent interview with The 19th. Most of the board members were White, and they were...

In Swing Districts Black Candidates Can Win

18Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

In Swing Districts Black Candidates Can Win

During the 2020 presidential election, there was a lot of discussion about what makes an electable candidate. Is it someone who is moderate? A candidate who can turn out the base? Do other attributes of the candidate matter? In my research, I looked at one specific characteristic of potential electability: the candidate’s race. Conventional wisdom previously held that Black Democratic candidates struggled to win swing congressional districts due to racial prejudice among white voters. As a result, they were encouraged to run instead in districts considered safe because most of their constitutents were Black and were strongly Democratic. In 2018, however, multiple Black Democratic candidates ran – and won – in competitive congressional districts that had high percentages of white voters. ...

Bias Keeps Americans From Voting For Candidates Of Color And Women

30Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Bias Keeps Americans From Voting For Candidates Of Color And Women

When Americans vote this fall, the candidates on their ballots will not reflect the diversity of the United States. Despite recent gains, women and people of color still do not run for office as frequently as white men. In part, this is because they face skepticism about their electability. When former Rep. Katie Hill launched her campaign for Congress in 2017, for example, Democrats told her a woman couldn’t win in her California district. In Alabama, meanwhile, when Adia Winfrey was exploring a 2018 run for Congress, a senior party official told her there was “no point” continuing with her nascent campaign. The problem? As a Black candidate, she seemed unelectable. And in Michigan, 2018 congressional candidate Suneel Gupta, an Indian-American, heard similar concerns. As Gupta recount...

Democratic candidates seek a big and unprecedented K-12 funding boost

18Feb

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POLITICS

Democratic candidates seek a big and unprecedented K-12 funding boost

Democratic presidential candidates are proposing new approaches to the federal government’s role in public education. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders want to triple the US$15 billion spent annually on Title I, a program that sends extra federal dollars to school districts that educate a high percentage of poor children. Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to go further and quadruple funding for that same program. Other candidates have similar proposals to substantially increase funding for public education, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn’t yet issued his education platform, or indicated where he stands on federal K-12 funding. Funding increases of this scale would tran...

Democratic candidates want to boost school funding – research shows that will help low-income students

14Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Democratic candidates want to boost school funding – research shows that will help low-income students

Research shows that school funding impacts student achievement. Rido/Shutterstock.com With few exceptions, the various Democratic plans for public education share a common theme: more funding, less privatizing. Candidates Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders have promised to dramatically increase or triple current federal funding for low-income students and curtail charter school growth. Elizabeth Warren recently went even further, promising to quadruple federal funding for low-income students and end federal funding for charter expansion. These proposals have provoked a deluge of harsh responses from commentators. Increasing public education funding and limiting charters, critics say, is nothing more than pandering to teacher unions and demonizing charter schools. While this cr...

Kennedy Resignation Sparks New Urgency for First-Time Women Candidates of Color

24Jul

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Kennedy Resignation Sparks New Urgency for First-Time Women Candidates of Color

If elected to Congress, they would counter conservative decisions from the court with progressive lawmaking. Nearly two years into the racially charged Trump administration and widespread exposure of sexual harassment and assault of women in public life, women of color have been engaged and eager to change the face of the Democratic Party and Congress. They now find new urgency in the recently announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose swing vote seat will likely be claimed by a hard-line conservative this year. President Donald Trump announced his list of replacements for Kennedy, many of whom are White social conservatives hostile to organized labor and young enough to steer the direction of the court for decades. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation ...