How 2 Black women conquered Senate primary politics

[brooklynite]

Politico

As Black women running in two of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races, Democratic Rep. Val Demings of Florida and former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley are poised to make history if they’re successful in November. But that’s only part of what makes their campaigns stand out this year.

Demings and Beasley have drawn notice — and a heavy dose of respect within their party — for accomplishing a feat that has all-too-frequently eluded candidates of color, especially Black women: Managing to clear their Senate primary fields of heavyweight competition.

In the process of squeezing out top prospective challengers with a show of political force, the two Democrats managed to break through a different kind of barrier to high office — longstanding perceptions about the profile of an electable statewide candidate. In the past, those perceptions have often worked against Black candidates. Now, two Black women are frontrunners and poised to appear on the ballot in at least two top Senate races in November.

“This is definitely, I think, a paradigm shift,” said Stefanie Brown James, co-founder and senior adviser to the Collective PAC, which supports Black progressive candidates for office. “We’ve had qualified candidates all along. The problem is that we’ve had to spend too much of our time having to convince people that what you see in these candidates is enough to stand toe-to-toe with anybody else that’s in the race. But we don’t have to do as much convincing.”