The Working Experience: Podcast with Former Congresswoman Donna Edwards
Matty Kerr is co-creator with John Brancaccio of The Working Experience. 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.
Former Congresswoman Donna Edwards was the first African-American woman to be elected to represent Maryland in the United States Congress from 2008 to 2017. She regularly appears on numerous news outlets such as CNN, MSNBC and the Sunday morning news circuit to offer her commentary on politics. She is a lawyer who co-founded the National Network to End Domestic Violence and she is actively involved in many other political causes.
So how did I get her on the podcast?
I saw Congresswoman Edwards on an episode of Meet the Press with Chuck Todd and decided to see if I could find her contact information and send her an email. Which I did. I explained the premise of the podcast and that we would love to have her on as a guest. She got back to me that day and very graciously agreed to be a guest; in fact she said she would be “delighted”!
In my emails to potential guests, I always include a list of previous guests: Jesse Eisninger, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Chickenshit Club; Amanda Yates-Garcia, a practicing witch known as The Oracle of Los Angeles; Aparna Mathur, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute; and documentary filmmaker Nara Garber, to name a few. I want potential guests to know that we have some credibility to give them some incentive for coming on.
I also stress that the podcast focuses on the process by which a person does his or her job. For someone like Congresswoman Edwards, I wanted to know how a person actually runs for public office; how one takes the first steps in that process. I wanted to know how someone runs a political campaign.Turns out a lot of it involves raising money, making phone calls and asking people to donate. Campaigns are not free.
It also involves a lot of meeting and greeting with the public, that is people. Congresswoman Edwards described standing in the parking lots of supermarkets and walking up to people and introducing herself as a candidate for Congress. She told me that her mother was out there meeting and greeting with her, a fact I found incredibly endearing.
There are many people who aspire to elected office and I am sure that most of them do so with honorable intentions. However, as with many professions and pursuits, it is difficult to understand how grueling and unglamourous it can be. It takes an amazingly resilient person to withstand the grueling realities of a political campaign. It takes a huge amount of self-confidence to deal with the negativity that can come from the people one is trying to reach. Ms. Edwards described being dismayed by the attacks on her personally as well as the attacks on her family.
I vote for a candidate largely based on his or her stance on the issues and their voting record. I also try to take character into account but it is rather difficult, if not impossible, to really know a person’s character through the media. (At one time I was a fan of John Edwards and it turned out I was dead wrong; he basically has no character, so there you go).
Pundits will often talk about the “likeability” of a candidate. They said many people simply did not like Hillary Clinton. Well, I’m not looking to hang out with the person and have beers any more than I am looking to hang out with my accountant or my dentist. I want them to do their jobs: look after my money and take care of my teeth. I want Presidents and Senators or members of Congress to do their jobs, period.
Having said all that, I would never attack someone’s family members. First of all, what do I care? Secondly, don’t we all have family members who we wouldn’t go on a game show with?
However, a candidate for public office must face these realities. Donna Edwards is a person who is willing to face it and that is why she was in Congress.
