Bay State Dems looking to make marks
Pressley, Kennedy, Moulton lead charge, experts say
A new class of House Democrats is driving forward with a younger, more progressive leadership and is leaving the party’s establishment in the dust, experts and politicians say.
In Massachusetts, U.S. Rep.-Elect Ayanna Pressley, 44, and Democratic U.S. Reps. Joe Kennedy III, 38, and Seth Moulton, 40, have emerged as frontrunners to spearhead the party, which seeks to change the status quo and oppose President Trump’s policies at all costs.
“Politics is like dog years, and I’m pretty sure I am like 60,” said Pressley. “But I really haven’t thought of my age at all. I think each of us bring our own unique lived experiences to the table.”
The House’s new delegation isn’t looking to stand idly on issues that other members of its party stay away from.
Pressley, who is often clumped into the same sentence as Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has called on defunding ICE. Kennedy III, a big advocate for immigration, has protested the “zero tolerance” policy and called a fear of immigration “un-American.”
While Moulton, a former Marine, started a “Serve America” campaign in which he supported over 70 candidates across the country, many of them veterans, including 20 vets that ran for seats in the House, in hopes to eliminate establishment politicians. Moulton also made headlines as the first to call for new leadership of the party, choosing not to back Nancy Pelosi.
“I think that there’s a lot of people who are out there hearing the call from voters for a new generation of leadership in our party,” Moulton said. “And if we go to Washington, the first vote we take is to re-install the same leadership that we’ve had for a decade. That’s not answering to the will of the people.”
Mike Dennehy, a Republican strategist from New Hampshire, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the party’s younger members were already working behindthe-scenes to stranglehold that power.
“Democrats are going to want to show they are putting forth change,” he said. “I expect you will see some of the newer, progressive members given leadership roles.”
Some of those roles have already been placed upon younger House Democrats. Last January, Kennedy III was chosen to give his party’s rebuttal to Trump’s State of the Union Address. In the rebuttal, Kennedy slammed the president’s administration and accused it of choosing the “worthiness” of Americans.
“It would be easy to dismiss the past year as chaos. Partisanship. Politics,” he said in the rebuttal. “But it’s far bigger than that. This administration isn’t just targeting the laws that protect us — they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection.”