CONGRESSIONAL RACE
By Josh Resnek
Everett could be a swing city that decides the congressional racein September.
“I have been to Everett many times recently,” said veteran Congressman Mike Capuano at a lunch among friends in East Boston recently.
He is arguably entering the race of his political life.
He is running against Ayanna Pressley, a Boston City Councillor who believes it is her time and that Capuano’s seat should be her seat in Congress.
Last week, Capuano reported having $1.1 million in his campaign account.
Pressley announced she had raised $360,000 so far.
We all need to get ready for this fight.
At the luncheon get together held recently at Rino’s, Congressman Mike Capuano and a number of his friends, including several from Everett, discussed the political race that pits whites against blacks, rich against poor, women against men and old versus the young.
Sounds like a passion play from the 1960’s and 1970’s, when everything about American culture was put on the line and nearly immolated by the Vietnam War and the huge wave of national protest against it.
This is ancient history for candidates like Pressley, but not for Capuano.
“I lived through the 1960’s and 1970’s. I have been a firefighter for everything that is right for nearly all my life. And I remain a ghter,” he said during that lunch.
Against such a backdrop today, the race and gender issues are more prominent in this congressional district and the campaign than anything else.
This is being proven by the Boston Globe’s coverage of the contest – which the Globe describes as a race between two candidates who seem to agree on just about everything.
Both candidates are absolutely free of race and gender bias – and yet race and bias is all that is being talked about as the run to the September primary is now underway.
Bottom line, this is a race between too of the most liberal candidates in the United States who stand against virtually everything down the line the Republicans in Congress stand for – and even many Democrats.
So that this should be a race about race, gender, and even age – of the candidates – brings this campaign to the fore.
“I want to return to Congress. I am already in campaign mode. After 20 years, the voters know me and what I am made of,” Capuano said in Everett recently.
The Globe kind of says it all in an article published on April 7, it described the race this way: Pressley, a black woman wholives in Dorchester, in January announced her bid against Capuano, a white man who lives in Somerville. In a series of interviews around her campaign launch, she emphasized the new lens she would bring to Congress, rather than underscoring any policy disagreements with the incumbent.
If that doesn’t tell the story about this race I don’t know what does.
Black versus white. Man versus woman. Younger versus older.
There are many pressing matters facing the Seventh Congressional District, which includes Somerville, Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, half of Cambridge, one-third of Milton, and most of Boston.
Chief among them are race and color.
What a sad premise for so important a race.