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Amanda Becker, The 19th

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    Leveraging big ideas

    Pennsylvania didn’t have a pipeline for candidates like Summer Lee — so she helped build one

    Amanda Becker, The 19th
    April 26, 2022
    Pennsylvania congressional candidate Summer Lee
    Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    Originally published by The 19th.

    When Summer Lee moved back home to the Pittsburgh area in 2015 after graduating from Howard University Law School, she did not plan to run for office.

    Lee was an organizer. She supported Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential primary bid, then Hillary Clinton in the general election. The next year, when the high school Lee graduated from became engulfed in scandal after video surfaced showing school officials using stun guns and physical force on Black students, including some with special needs, she attended her first school board meeting.

    “It was Black kids who were facing the worst outcomes, who were facing the worst and least amount of opportunities, who were being abused,” Lee recalled in a recent interview with The 19th. Most of the board members were White, and they were “so nonchalant about it,” she said.

    Lee is the presumed front-runner in the Democratic primary to fill an open U.S. House seat in a recently redrawn Pittsburgh-area House district when Pennsylvanians vote May 17. Her progressive primary campaign faces headwinds from the local party, which backed one of her opponents, a more moderate, White man without political experience. If elected in November, she would be the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress.

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    Leveraging big ideas

    Republicans see schools as 2022 political battleground

    Amanda Becker, The 19th
    March 25, 2022
    Parents rally for Glenn Youngkin in Virginia

    Voters listen as Glenn Youngkin speaks during a “Parents Matter Get Out The Vote Rally” in October 2021 in Culpeper, Va..

    Alex Wong/Getty Images

    Originally published by The 19th.

    Marianne Burke can pinpoint the moment she knew Democrat Terry McAuliffe was in danger of losing the Virginia gubernatorial race to Republican Glenn Youngkin.

    It was late September, and McAuliffe and Youngkin were facing off in a final televised debate, discussing school curricula and library books related to race, gender identity and sexuality in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, where clashes over what students are learning and COVID-19 protocols made national headlines.

    “We must demand that they include parents in this dialogue,” Youngkin said, adding that school systems were “refusing to engage with parents.”

    “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe countered.

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