WASHINGTON — Barbara Lee was in her early 20s, a single mother of two young boys, attending Mills College in Oakland, California. The future California congresswoman needed public assistance and food stamps. She couldn’t afford child care, so often her children would attend classes with her.
Lee had no time for politicians who did not look like her or talk about issues that were most important to a young Black mother trying to make a better future for her sons.
So when professors assigned field work on presidential campaigns in her government class, she initially said, “No.”
“I said, ‘Politics doesn’t make a difference in my life,’” Lee recalled in a March interview, “‘so forget it.’”
The field of political leaders has changed a lot since the 1970s. But there have only been two Black women elected to the U.S. Senate: former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and now-Vice President Kamala Harris of California, both Democrats.
There is not a Black woman there now. Without representation, Lee said, the Senate misses a voice on important topics that she faced throughout her life — issues from poverty to disparities in democracy, health care, housing, nutrition and education.
Lee, 76, is one of three House Democrats who aim to succeed retiring California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Experts warn that Lee faces formidable election foes in her colleagues, Southern California Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter.
If it hadn’t been for Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman and the first Black woman to seek a major-party nomination for president, Lee might not be in this race. Lee might not even have registered to vote.
As president of the Black Student Union, she invited Chisholm to speak at Mills College. That speech would inspire Lee to fulfill her government professors’ assignment to work for a presidential campaign. And it planted in her an even larger ambition — the idea that she could run for office one day.
First, Chisholm insisted that Lee register to vote. Lee, throughout her time working for the campaign and as a delegate, learned what it meant to legislate for Black women.
“You have to fight, yes for women and for Black women,” Lee said, “but that means you’re fighting for everybody, because we are marginalized.”
She felt ‘morally compelled’ to speak up
Lee was an early progressive leader on many issues, from war authorizations to abortion rights.
Her work for people from all backgrounds, such as fighting abortion restrictions like the Hyde Amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds for most procedures, drew the admiration of 22-year constituent Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, which works to elevate women of color.
“She was doing that when even most Democrats were not supporting it,” Allison said. “She’s a really remarkable leader who has been deeply tied to movements and has always represented what California was trying to become.”
Standing up for others, having tough conversations, is part of her genetic code.
In 2021, when Texas passed a law restricting abortions and the Supreme Court was on the precipice of overturning Roe v. Wade, Lee felt “morally compelled” to talk about a back-alley abortion she had at age 15 in Mexico in the 1960s.
“My mother and I decided never to talk about it, because that was my own decision,” Lee said, “like it should be now.”
Her fight for progress has made her revered among many of her Democratic colleagues and constituents in her Oakland-centered district since she was elected in 1998. Lee is the highest-ranking Black woman in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for four years beginning in 2005 and led the powerful Black Congressional Caucus for the following four years, starting in 2009.
Lee was elected to Congress in a special election to replace her predecessor, the late Rep. Ron Dellums, who retired midterm. An outspoken liberal, Dellums was one of the founders of the Black Congressional Caucus and a role model for Lee’s work.
Lee started in the Oakland Democrat’s office as an intern after she graduated with a master’s degree in social work from the University of California, Berkeley. She went on to become his chief of staff.
Between working for Dellums and her election to Congress, Lee founded a facilities management company and became the first Black woman to represent Northern California in the Legislature. During her eight years across the Assembly and State Senate, Lee supported LGBTQ rights and wrote measures to reduce hate crimes in schools and violence against women.
And she proved she was not afraid to stand alone for what she believed in, such as when she was one of a few legislators who fought California’s “three strikes” law, which instituted a 25-years-to-life sentence for three felony convictions, that voters approved through a 1994 ballot initiative. It has since been diluted.
For that vote, Lee said, she got death threats: “People came down hard on me.”
Fighting for inclusion and standing alone
Standing alone and organizing to open the door for others goes back to the Barbara Jean Tutt who integrated her high school cheerleading team.
Born in El Paso, Texas, Lee moved to San Fernando, California, as a teenager with her mother and father, a lieutenant colonel in the military who served in World War II and the Korean War. She wanted to be a cheerleader at San Fernando High School.
But the squad had never included a Black cheerleader before.
Working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Lee organized with other students who fought for an open-tryout system before the student body.
“So I tried out in front of the student body, I did my cheer, my cartwheels — everything,” she said. “And I won.” Better than becoming the school’s first Black cheerleader was the feeling of opening the door for other students of color, she said.
The organizing bug followed Lee throughout her career. In college, she was a community worker with the Black Panther Party, a militant organization designed to bolster Black power. Founded in Oakland in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party sought to address and protest issues, such as police brutality, that continued during and long after the civil rights movement.
Oakland itself has a strong history of political organizing. It helped give rise to She the People, said Allison, and to Lee.
“This tradition that comes out of Oakland, which is a unique combination of organizing political power alongside being a multiracial community that works for justice, really gave rise to a leader like Barbara Lee,” said Allison.
Allison recalled the support from a wide array of people Lee had in Oakland from an event the congresswoman held after she was the only representative to vote against a war authorization in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Lee feared that the authorization gave the president a blank check.
The authorization allowed the president to use any “necessary and appropriate force” against people determined to have been involved in the deadly terrorist attacks. Congress, per the Constitution, normally holds the power to declare war.
Two other war authorizations, passed in 2002 and 1991, might be repealed soon thanks to Lee’s work. Lee again voted against the 2002 measure that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq — but that time, she was not alone.
The Senate voted to repeal those two authorizations on March 29. The repeal’s future is unclear in the House despite bipartisan support.
The 2001 act that Lee opposed remains, with every president since it passed having cited it as justification for military actions. “You always have to have hope that you can influence the correct decision sooner or later,” Lee said, celebrating the progress on repealing other authorizations.
Lee’s consistent opposition to empowering the president to wage war has earned her the respect of some lawmakers.
“We need a strong anti-war senator, and she will play that role,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said to CNN.
Khanna, 46, who was expected to also run for Feinstein’s seat, announced on CNN he would instead co-chair Lee’s Senate campaign.
How’s the Senate race shaping up?
Christian Grose, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Southern California, said that Lee being able to stand for Black people and women sets her apart from her opponents.
“There’s something there about the historic nature of her campaign,” said Grose, author of the book “Congress in Black and White: Race and Representation in Washington and at Home.” “California has had two women senators for 30 years. If it’s not Katie Porter or Barbara Lee, we might have two men.”
And Northern Californians have fared well in recent Senate elections: Harris, Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, was the first Southern Californian there since 1992. Republican John Seymour — appointed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, who had left the seat himself — had served for less than two years before losing the special election to Feinstein.
Lee being the main Northern Californian, said Grose, “could help her a lot.”
The contest for who will fill Feinstein’s shoes has drawn national attention, especially with so many recognizable names in the race. But Californians are less familiar with who they are, according to a February poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley.
Eric Schickler, one of the directors of the institute, said that many voters are unfamiliar with the candidates at this time, making this a “relatively wide-open race.”
Schiff, D-Burbank, who became nationally recognized through the impeachment proceedings of former President Donald Trump, led in that Berkeley poll, followed closely by Porter, D-Irvine. Lee trailed by a distance. The California poll queried more than 7,500 registered Democrats and those without a party preference.
“Lee and Porter both have significant progressive bona fides, but Lee’s has been rooted in anti-war activism while Porter’s is in a new populist, anti-corporate vein,” wrote editor Jessica Taylor of the election-tracking Cook Political Report in February. “That could split progressives in the state, and Schiff could end up with significant traditional and institutional support.”
Clearer in the Berkeley poll was the opinion that Feinstein should retire. Feinstein, 89, who will leave the Senate when her term ends, has had her mental fitness to hold office questioned, highlighting the average age of elected senators.
Murmurs have put a spotlight on the age difference between Lee, 76; Schiff, 62; and Porter, 49.
Lee contended that the Senate needs someone with her experience, that Gen Z voters stand behind her policies. “They know I’m looking out for their future,” Lee said. “And this is not about me, it’s about them.”
More problematic than her age, Grose cautioned, is that Lee has been in the House for 25 years — far longer than her opponents. “The longer you serve in the House, the less likely you are to win the U.S. Senate,” he said.
Another challenge: Lee faces fundraising machines in Porter and Schiff. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, endorsed Schiff early, which could spell trouble, Grose said: “When she tries to raise money from Democratic donors, they might ask her well, ‘Why is Pelosi supporting Schiff?’”
Lee said plenty of campaigns in California have been successful as the fundraising underdogs, and noted the prevailing blockades Black women face economically.
Criticism over age? Money? That’s nothing. All her life, Lee has fought for her spot in spaces where Black women were unrepresented — and in the process she made space for others.
“I just take it on,” she said. “Being a Black woman, you have to take that on.”
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