Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Ayanna Pressley, a Boston City Council member, greeted voters outside of a polling station in Chelsea, Mass., on Tuesday.

Photo Credit - Sarah Rice for The New York Times

BOSTON — Ayanna Pressley upended the Massachusetts political order on Tuesday, scoring a stunning upset of 10-term Representative Michael Capuano, who conceded to her in a Democratic primary that few said she could win.

Ms. Pressley, 44, is now poised to become the first African-American in the state to be elected to the House of Representatives. There is no Republican on the November ballot in this storied Boston-based district, which was once represented by John F. Kennedy and is one of the most left leaning in the country.

In brief comments with barely 13 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Capuano said: “I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but this is life, and this is O.K. America’s going to be O.K. Ayanna Pressley is going to be a good congresswoman, and I will tell you that Massachusetts will be well served.”

Ms. Pressley’s bid was in sync with a restless political climate that has fueled victories for underdogs, women and minorities elsewhere this election season, and it delivered another stark message to the Democratic establishment that newcomers on the insurgent left were unwilling to wait their turn. Ms. Pressley propelled her candidacy with urgency, arguing that in the age of Trump, “change can’t wait.”

Her victory carried echoes of the surprise win in June by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who trounced a longtime incumbent, Joseph Crowley, in New York.

“This is a big wake-up call to any incumbent on the ballot in November,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist. “We’ve been in a change election cycle for years. But Trump may have opened the door for all these young candidates, women, people of color, because voters want the antithesis of him.”

Ms. Pressley, who in 2009 became the first black woman elected to the Boston City Council, overcame a powerful lineup of the Massachusetts political establishment. Mr. Capuano, 66, who has held the seat for 20 years, was endorsed by almost every major political figure, including Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who deployed his extensive political machine on Tuesday on Mr. Capuano’s behalf.

Primary races for Congress in the state’s all-Democratic delegation are exceedingly rare, and Ms. Pressley, long perceived as one of her party’s rising stars, had shocked the Democratic establishment in January when she announced she was taking on the 10-term incumbent.

Only two of the state’s nine House members are women, and one is retiring. It was not until 2012 that Massachusetts elected its first woman – Elizabeth Warren – to the Senate. It has never elected a female governor.

“It felt like a good time to give someone who’s not a white male a shot,” said Linus Falck-Ytter, 26, a software developer, after voting in Cambridge. “And I liked that she’s more outspoken about helping under-represented communities.”

 
Representative Michael Capuano, the 10-term Democratic incumbent, visited a polling station in Everett, Mass., on Tuesday.
Photo Credit - Sarah Rice for The New York Times

But perhaps one of Ms. Pressley’s biggest obstacles was Mr. Capuano’s liberal voting record, which denied her the chance to paint a stark ideological contrast with him. A reliable progressive vote, he was an early advocate of sanctuary cities, opposed the Iraq War and the Patriot Act and sat out President Trump’s inauguration. Over time he funneled millions of dollars home for much-needed transit, housing and health care projects.

Ms. Pressley and Mr. Capuano readily agreed they would likely vote the same way most of the time, leaving Ms. Pressley instead to shape her candidacy into a broad, multifaceted call for change.

She argued that the needs of the district – the only one in Massachusetts where a majority of residents are people of color — had changed over time and that the overwhelming “hate” coming from the White House required more than simply voting the right way. Battling President Trump and overcoming economic and racial inequities of longstanding required an entire movement, she said, suggesting she was better positioned than Mr. Capuano to spearhead that effort with what she called “activist leadership.”

Moreover, she argued that her life experience — her father struggled with drug addiction and was incarcerated for most of her youth, and she is a survivor of sexual assault – better prepared her to help people who have lived through trauma and other struggles. Perhaps the defining line of her stump speech was this: “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.”

Mary MacDonald, 49, a biotech researcher who voted for Ms. Pressley in Cambridge, said Ms. Pressley “represents a perspective that Congress is lacking and that resonates with me. As a woman of color, she understands my concerns, as a lesbian. Capuano has done a great job for the district, but he doesn’t get it.”

Mr. Capuano, who had not faced a serious challenge since he first won the seat in 1998, conceded he was out of practice in confronting a competitive race, or, as he told WGBH, “there was some rust on the machinery.”

Nonetheless, he quickly lined up a formidable array of establishment endorsements. They included not only Mr. Walsh, but Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon, and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick; both are black, which seemed to undercut Ms. Pressley’s argument that she better reflected the district.

But Ms. Pressley was not without her backers. Most notably, she had the support of Maura Healey, the state’s popular attorney general, who had also bucked the establishment when she won her race in 2014, as well as Michelle Wu, the first woman of color to serve as president of the Boston City Council.

The fact that the state’s two Senators – Ms. Warren and Edward Markey – remained neutral in the race was seen as a win for Ms. Pressley.

Schools including Harvard University, Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are all housed in the district, which gives it more voters with white collar jobs and college degrees than almost any district in the country. But Ms. Pressley worked hard to activate the more diverse voters of what some call “new Boston.” This includes the black voters of Boston neighborhoods such as Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Dorchester, but also includes the college students who may have sat out past elections past.

Her campaign got a shot of adrenaline when Ms. Ocasio-Cortez ousted Mr. Crowley in New York. Although the parallels between Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Pressley were inexact, that surprise victory provided fresh hope that beating Mr. Capuano was within the realm of the possible.





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