The news of President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris has injected a renewing shot of optimism and energy into left-leaning Black political leaders across the state of Massachusetts and beyond.
“I vigorously endorse Kamala Harris,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley on GBH’s Boston Public Radio Monday. “I have great confidence in her ability to build the coalition that we need to win in November.”
Pressley, the first woman of color to be elected to Congress from Massachusetts, was among the list of near-immediate endorsers who announced their support for Harris within hours of Biden revealing his exit via social media Sunday.
“With Vice President Harris now topping the ticket, we will advocate for her to pick up the torch and continue to implement and advance policies that unite the nation in the fight for equity for all Americans,” said Rahsaan Hall, president of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, in a statement to GBH News.
The shift in presumptive Democratic presidential nominees comes with less than four months left before the Nov. 5 general election. Despite the unusual timeline, multiple voices pointed to a new sense of excitement.
“Prior to the president stepping aside, my thoughts were of a very precarious nature,” said Steve Tompkins, Suffolk County sheriff, describing a feeling of uncertainty about Biden’s appeal which intensified in some circles after he gave a shaky debate performance last month.
“I feel incredibly enthusiastic about Vice President Harris’ potential possibilities of being the next president of these United States,” Tompkins said.
Tompkins predicted that Harris’ candidacy would both bring a “youthful vigor” to the election cycle and trigger a “different look” at politics in the country.
That enthusiasm was widely reflected in dollars, too.
ActBlue, the Somerville-based PAC and fundraising platform that supports left-leaning candidates and causes, announced via social media that in less than eight hours of Harris launching her now-presidential campaign, supporters donated more than $46 million — “the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle,” the group said in a post on X.
Altogether the Harris campaign said it raised more than more than $81 million in the 24 hours following Biden’s withdrawal.
Marie St. Fleur, the first Haitian American elected to state office, was one of several thousands of Black women who mobilized on a late night call pledging to support Harris and rally other voters to choose the Democrat ticket. The group reportedly raised $1.5 million for Harris’ campaign within a matter of hours.
St. Fleur pointed to racism and sexism as obstacles Harris’ supporters must now be vigilant to address as her historic candidacy plays out.
“For us in this country, those are twin heads that we refuse to, to really deal with,” St. Fleur said. “I think it’s an opportunity for us to really face it and begin that march forward to eradicate it and continue to level the playing field.”
“It’s a political cultural moment,” said Glynda Carr, CEO of Higher Heights for America, a PAC exclusively dedicated to electing progressive Black women candidates into federal, state, and local offices. The group counts Harris’ election to the vice presidency as a victory and was working to reelect the former Biden-Harris ticket.
Carr said that beyond Blackness, she considers Harris’ multiple identities a “super power” that can broaden the Democrat’s coalition. Harris is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica.
“I believe that she is positioned, and all of her support that has come in across this country for party leaders, elected officials and organizations like higher heights and women’s organizations, are going to engage their memberships in their constituencies to organize in this moment,” Carr said, adding that “it’s also going to be the power of the everyday voter, particularly the everyday Black woman voter.”
Michel Curry, president of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers and NAACP National Board member, echoed that sentiment on GBH’s Boston Public Radio Monday afternoon.
“I think she has an opportunity to speak a strong message, pull black men, and I’m going to tell you, the key driver is Black women,” Curry said. “And the thing I love about black women is they’re going to pull Black men and their children, their husbands, their uncles and cousins, they’re going to pull them to the polls. So whatever we would have lost in a state of a Biden presidency by people who lost excitement about the election, I think Kamala Harris has a chance to pull them in.”
