MI-13: Race Takes Center Stage as Rashida Tlaib Faces Primary Challenge
Despite — or perhaps because of — millions of dollars in her campaign account and a national profile, Ms. Tlaib, 43, is likely the most endangered member of the so-called squad, the diverse group of progressive Democratic women who were elected to the House in 2018 and have come to embody the vanguard of the party’s majority.
Catapulted to national prominence by a profane call to impeach the president uttered on the day she was sworn in, and insulted with racist tropes by Mr. Trump, Ms. Tlaib has drawn plenty of headlines during her first term. Now her primary contest — a bitter rematch against a prominent Black leader — is testing Ms. Tlaib’s ability to ensure that her work outshines her celebrity.
It has also pitted two overlapping and often allied Democratic constituencies — Black Americans and the progressive left — against each other, making Ms. Tlaib, a symbol of the party’s growing diversity, into a target.
For more than a half century, Ms. Tlaib’s district was represented by John Conyers Jr., a co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus who died last year. Brenda Jones, the Black president of the Detroit City Council who is challenging her, has positioned herself as a more fitting successor.
Ms. Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, made history in 2018 as one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
Ms. Jones and her supporters argue that Ms. Tlaib has become too preoccupied with national issues to tend to her district, which snakes through portions of Detroit and a mishmash of suburbs in Wayne County. They say her outspokenness against Mr. Trump and centrist Democrats like Hillary Clinton, whom Ms. Tlaib booed at a rally in Iowa last year, has hampered her work in Congress.
“You can be vocal, but the things that were being done — like calling the president a ‘MF’ or booing Hillary — every time something like that happened, I was getting calls from people saying ‘You’re more professional than this,’” Ms. Jones said. “I’m not interested in being a rock star. I’m just interested in bringing home the money, working for the people of the 13th district and uniting the community.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/rashida-tlaib-brenda-jones-primary.html
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