John Lewis and Other Black Leaders Spurn Black Challenger in Boston
BOSTON —
Representative John Lewis helped change America as a passionate civil rights activist before his tenure in Congress, but Saturday afternoon, inside the brick-lined walls of Twelfth Baptist Church, the Georgia lawmaker made a rare case for traditionalism and seniority.
Mr. Lewis had come to Twelfth Baptist to campaign for Representative Michael E. Capuano, the liberal Democrat who faces a grueling primary challenge from Ayanna Pressley (the first woman of color to be elected to the Boston City Council in its 108-year history) who is trying to become the state’s first nonwhite member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“It’s important to keep a leader, a fighter, and warrior like Mike Capuano around,” Mr. Lewis said at the event, which was equal parts gospel service and political town hall and held at the same Massachusetts church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as an assistant pastor in the 1950s.
His argument is emblematic of the bitter intraparty debates that Democrats are having across the country ahead of the 2018 midterm elections — debates that often split liberals across the touchy fault lines of race, age and gender. The campaign appearance by Mr. Lewis and the recent decision by the political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus to back Mr. Capuano has made this primary race a microcosm of a larger search for identity among Democrats, while igniting friction between national black politicians and local ones.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/john-lewis-elections-black-caucus.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront
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And they are trying to make a race issue out of something that has nothing to do with race.
Funny how when black people support black candidates over white candidates, we’re accused of doing it only because they’re black. But when we support a white candidate over a black candidate, we’re revealing “race divisions” in the party.
Hunh?
for leaders who need to back one of two good candidates to try to build/protect a relationship for the future with the other. No doubt anything like that would be misrepresented as well and best held close.
I like this picture.
Wish she was running in our Georgia district -- she'd lose big but it'd shake things up and be a lot less boring than a bunch of white men vying for most calloused knuckles. A big screaming-yellow card arrived today trump-eting: "Hill (sic) say anything to get elected. He even claimed Trump would be no better than Obama!"
Now this is the sort of subtly divisive spin that costs dearly. 