Black Men Winning Was the Real Story of Tuesday’s Primaries
2020 looks like the year the movement for racial justice is going to help elect more Black men to Congress
President Trump’s 2016 election helped spark a wave of Democratic women running for office, leading to a record number of women winning congressional seats in 2018. Now the summer of anti-racism protests across America appears to be helping lift Black men to victory.
The campaigns of several candidates — including those of Jamaal Bowman, Charles Booker, and Ritchie Torres — picked up steam after protests erupted nationwide in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. Now the moment, filled with calls for lawmakers to take action against systemic racism in policing and beyond, appears to have helped tilt the scales in Tuesday’s congressional primary elections. Most of the races have yet to be officially decided as states pore over the unusually large number of mail-in ballots they received thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. Still, early results show that candidates in New York, Kentucky, and Virginia seemed poised to pull off several upsets and potentially make history.
“We are bending the arc of our future right now in real time,” Booker, a 35-year-old state representative, told supporters as it became clear he was…
