This story was updated at 12:44 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Summer Lee announced Tuesday she will run for Congress in 2022.
The Democrat representing Pennsylvania’s 34th District is seeking U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle’s seat in the House of Representatives after he announced Monday he will not run for re-election.
At a news conference Tuesday morning, Ms. Lee said she would support the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and labor unions if voters send her to Washington.
“We have a lot at stake here,” she said to a crowd of supporters at Braddock Civic Plaza. “I’m running because I understand that we cannot afford to wait another election. We can’t afford to wait another moment. We can’t afford to hesitate. We have an urgency right now in the issues that we’re facing in communities just like this.”
My hometown was supposed to be the American dream.
— Summer Lee (@SummerForPA) October 19, 2021
Our labor made the steel that built America but when the mills left, we paid the price.
Now I’m bringing the fight I’ve been in my whole life to Washington - to win a Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and racial justice. #PA18 pic.twitter.com/5bXvLv6uik
Ms. Lee, a 33-year-old North Braddock native who has been a major progressive voice in the state house since 2018, initially announced her candidacy Tuesday morning on Twitter with a video focusing on the effects of the steel industry’s decline on the local economy and her personal rise as a political figure in southwestern Pennsylvania, where she became the first Black woman to represent the region in the state Legislature.
If elected, Ms. Lee would become the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress. She has been endorsed by Justice Democrats, a national progressive organization associated with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.
Also running in the Democratic primary is Jerry Dickinson, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and progressive who unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Doyle in the 2020 primary.
The broad contours of the race remain unclear at this time, particularly since the district could change after the state House and Senate draw new lines. Mr. Doyle said part of his decision to retire and pass the torch was that the district has remained blue during his 20-year tenure in Congress.
Pennsylvania is slated to lose one Congressional district according to the 2020 Census data.
There is “a lot of uncertainty in this race,” Ms. Lee said, adding that the redistricting process brought forth an opportunity to discuss the need for non-gerrymandered districts and the need “to preserve the power and representation of urban-centered folks, Black and brown voters and liberal voters” who may be left out of the process.
On Tuesday, Ms. Lee described Braddock as the place “where everything has begun for me,” using the formerly bustling industry town as an example of a community left behind in the wake of steel’s collapse.
“Too often, it is communities like ours that are not allowed to prepare or think about the economies of the future,” she said. “It is always Black and brown and poor and vulnerable people in communities that are left to pick up the pieces, but we’re rarely the folks leading the conversation.”
Those people, she said, are wrongly left out of policy discussions that could determine the future of their communities.
“We have to ensure that the people who are closest to the pain are closest to the power, are closest to the policy,” Ms. Lee said.
Standing behind Ms. Lee were a number of local elected officials, including Braddock Mayor Chardae Jones, Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam and state Rep. Ed Gainey, the Democrat candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh in the Nov. 2 election.
“Today is a phenomenal day,” Mr. Gainey said before introducing Ms. Lee. “It’s a day of new beginnings, and it’s a day of transition.
“The greatest transformation we have is when people that don’t have a voice learn to utilize their voice, and they change everything that they touch. That’s Summer Lee. Everything that she has touched, she has made better.”
Although Mr. Doyle’s announcement that he would not seek re-election came Monday afternoon — on the same day Ms. Lee’s filing with the Federal Election Commission was reported — she emphasized that the process has been in the works for some time.
“To be clear, I definitely did not decide to run yesterday after 1 p.m.,” she joked, adding that part of her story has included her willingness to challenge incumbents. Her 2018 victory was notable in part because she ran against longtime state Rep. Paul Costa in the Democrat primary.
“We all knew that we were going to be in a transition soon,” she said. “We maybe didn’t know the exact date that the congressman [Mr. Doyle] would retire, but we knew that we had to start preparing for our future.”
Brandi Fisher, a prominent local activist, opened the press conference by thanking Mr. Doyle for setting up the next generation in Congress. “I want to thank him for such a stellar example of how we should transition power within politics,” she said.
Wrapping up the conference, Ms. Lee emphasized the importance of having Black and brown women in positions of power, noting the “gravity and history” behind her run when Pennsylvania has never had such a person in Congress.
“We need to be in those places because of the diversity of perspective that we have, because of the experiences that we’ve had navigating society, navigating our communities, our system” she said. “Because that differs [from] other people.”
She said people have created an idea that a leader must fit a particular image without thinking that “a Black girl, who’s formerly poor, from Braddock could ever run for this.
“But those are the exact experiences that make us, that make all of us, qualified to be in those spaces, because who better ... to create solutions to the problems that we’ve experienced than those who have experienced it?”
Mick Stinelli: mstinelli@post-gazette.com; 412-263-1869; and on Twitter: @MickStinelli
First Published: October 19, 2021, 11:47 a.m.
Updated: October 19, 2021, 4:54 p.m.
