Last month, on the heels of U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-Tuscaloosa) announcement that he would not seek a seventh term in the U.S. Senate, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Birmingham) acknowledged she was considering a possible bid for that seat.
In a follow-up appearance on MSNBC to commemorate the 56th anniversary of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday,” Sewell once again discussed the possibility.
As one of Alabama’s most prominent elected Democrats, Sewell would have to give up the seventh congressional seat she has held since 2011. However, she explained she could not expect other black women to pursue politics if she was not willing to consider a bid for that U.S. Senate seat.
“It is an honor of a lifetime for me to have the opportunity to represent my home district,” she said. “I am doing my homework. I think it’s incumbent upon those of us who have walked the halls of Congress who know what this is about to consider running. I can’t very well ask other women to enter the race, let alone black women, to be more engaged in politics and electoral politics if I’m not willing to think about it myself. I have to tell you, though, there’s nothing more important to me than making sure that we provide an evidentiary hearing and we reintroduce H.R. 4 and that we pass it into law so that we can put preclearance and the enforceability arms back into the Voting Rights Act. So that has to be my priority.”
“You know, I interned for my member of Congress back in college. He was Richard Shelby. He was a Democrat back then. I’m now dating myself. Now he’s our United States Senator,” Sewell continued. “But I have to tell you that story because this is a full-circle moment for me — to have the opportunity as a young girl college student to intern for Richard Shelby, I had to know in my heart that I could be a member of Congress way before I decided to run. So I know it’s important that little black girls see in Kamala Harris and me and others what they can be. You have to see it, touch it to know that you can achieve it and be it.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
