On Election Day, Consultant Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, joined some two dozen Black girls outdoors a polling place in Prince George’s County, Md., to rejoice the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The ebullient group included Angela Alsobrooks, who later that day grew to become one in all two African American girls elected to the U.S. Senate, which has by no means had a couple of Black woman serving at a time. Daybreak Moore, the primary woman of Maryland, was there too, as was the mayor of Bladensburg, Takisha James, and members of the City Council, all of whom are Black girls.
Because the group gathered for a photograph, an onlooker known as out, “Black girl magic, right there!”
The enchantment evaporated that night, as Ms. Lee, nonetheless sporting a T-shirt with Ms. Harris’s picture and the slogan “It’s Time,” stood in a thinning crowd on the vp’s victory celebration at Howard College. She had introduced her grandson to witness historical past. As a substitute they left with “tears in our eyes,” she stated.
The loss was deeply private for Ms. Lee, 78, a liberal icon and the highest-ranking Black woman within the Home management, whose first political job was engaged on Shirley Chisholm’s pathbreaking presidential marketing campaign in 1972. Elected to Congress in 1998 from the identical Oakland district the place Ms. Harris grew up, Ms. Lee suffered a dismal major loss within the race this yr to fill the Senate seat vacated by the loss of life of Senator Dianne Feinstein.
The victor was Consultant Adam Schiff, the California Democrat and favourite of Nancy Pelosi and the celebration’s institution. Males now occupy each Senate seats in California (the opposite is Senator Alex Padilla), which for 3 a long time had been America’s solely state with two repeatedly serving feminine senators. Campaigning throughout the nation for Ms. Harris, Ms. Lee had hoped to work in her administration.
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