Congresswoman Donna Edwards: She Had a Job to Do
Matty Kerr is co-creator with John Brancaccio of The Working Experience. He is also a filmmaker and published author. Listen to our podcast on iTunes and Spotify and visit our website: theworkingexperience.com for videos, merchandise and more. You can also find us on Facebook, Linked In, Instagram, and Twitter.
Does someone know they are making history when they are making history? Does it matter? Maybe we just need to do our jobs and not worry about it. If I take care of today I can take care of tomorrow.
In 2008, when Donna Edwards decided to run for Congress to represent the Fourth District in Maryland she did not know that she would be the first African-American woman to hold that office. I asked her if she felt that 2008 seemed very late for that to happen she did not disagree but put the fact into perspective.
“When you look back on the history of Congress there are a little over 11,000 people who have served in Congress, about three hundred or so of them women and really only about thirty five or forty, maybe, have been black women. So that is a lot of history to overcome. I had to be cognizant of that fact because I was living a larger than normal role.”
“However,” she went on to say, “That did not constrain or define my service.”
There was a larger picture, a parallel story. Yes she was the first African-American woman to represent her district. But she had a job to do. Edwards came into office right when the financial crisis was wreaking havoc and many of her constituents, middle class African-Americans, were losing their homes because they had been the victims of predatory lenders. Her Congressional district had some of the highest rates of foreclosure in the country. She had to deliver services, help people save their homes. However, it was a tough battle for her to get into a position to help. She lost her first race by two percentage points and it had been a brutal battle, for her and for her family; her mother and her son had to hear attacks on her, many of a personal nature. She had to make a decision about whether she wanted to endure that again in another run for office.
“The research told us that when women lose elections they decide not to run again because it is so brutal and so I knew that and I didn’t want that to happen to me. So I decided to run again after I lost by only a couple of percentage points and I finally ended up defeating an eight term member of Congress, going from losing by two points to winning by twenty three.”
Donna Edwards did not want to be part of the accepted story about women who run for office and lose. She wanted to be the other story. The first thing she did was to start making calls to raise money. She has had a lot of experience in the philanthropic community, raising money for various causes but not for herself.
“I remember the feeling of picking up that phone and making a call to people who were friends but, you know, you don’t go around asking your friends for a thousand dollars or five thousand dollars…you lose a lot of friends like that.”
Many people would say no.
“I can’t tell you how many people would say. ‘Donna, I like you a lot but I’m not going to give you any money.”
They would say that they do not believe in giving in primary elections. They would tell her how much they liked her but, in a heavily Democratic district like hers people felt it was a waste of money because a Democrat was going to win anyway. That might have been true but it made it hard for Ms. Edwards to raise money for her campaign.
And if someone said no, she had to pick up the phone and make the next call.
Edwards is a military brat. During one two year span she attended fourteen different schools. The position of being the constant new kid made her develop the skill of making new friends fast and being comfortable as the outsider. This gave her poise and confidence and she was able to use these character traits during her campaign.
“You use what you have. And I have the ability to talk to people, no matter who they are, no matter where they come from and I used that skill while I was campaigning for office.”
She went to every Metro stop in her district for the morning rush and then returned for the evening rush to meet her constituents and have conversations with them.
“I would shake their hands, I’d talk to them, answer their questions…I would go to the grocery stores and greet people, walk with them to their cars, help them load their groceries while I talked to them about running for Congress.”
What is the value in that, I wanted to know. Why go out and meet all those people when it is really just a brief encounter. What is to be gained by that?
“It is a big deal for people to meet their reps. I can’t even tell you how many people remember meeting my mother who accosted them in a parking lot.”
She talked to people. She communicated with them face to face where they lived, where they bought their food. She got to know them and they got to know her. Years later, people still come up to her and tell her they remember meeting her and her mother. Being the outsider, the new kid at school, the first African-American woman to run for the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland, were aspects of her life that she was able to turn to her advantage.
Being the outsider is difficult but it can be a valuable tool. Being the outsider means that you can see a situation from a different perspective, which means that you can see things that others cannot. It means that you can realize that certain things don’t need to be done the way they have always been done. The outsider can come up with creative solutions that people who are too close to the accepted norms can’t or won’t see. Creative people are outsiders. Creative people are risk takers. They have to be. It is impossible to create anything without risk. Creative people embrace risk, look for it, feed off of it.
You can’t create anything if you see the world the same way everyone else does.
