A PERFECT
STORM Black candidates navigate a dual pandemic on the campaign trail BY HUNTER ELLIS
ILLUSTRATION BY CHANNING SMITH
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN HUYNH
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hayna Griffin was barely three weeks into her new role as a member of the Kenosha Common Council when a police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back. “Initially, it was kind of like being in shock, not knowing what to do,” Griffin says. Black women in elected office and on the campaign trail in 2020 face what amounts to a dual pandemic — the ongoing COVID-19 crisis disproportionately hitting communities of color and the ongoing reckoning with racial injustice. For Griffin, Sen. Lena Taylor of Milwaukee, Rep. LaKeshia Myers
“I like to say we’re winning, because for the most part ... we’ve not stopped… ” of Milwaukee and Kimberly Smith of Oregon, the experience goes beyond the usual trauma and challenges of being a candidate or public official who is a woman — especially a Black woman — in Wisconsin. There was confusion and sorrow, along with new perspectives and experiences.
Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) Taylor was in arguably the most important race of her life April 7, the spring primary in Wisconsin, but she was also in the midst of one of the most controversial and problematic voting situations in state history. Like it did with everything else, the pandemic upended the normal routines of Election Day. Only five out of the usual 180 polling locations were open across the entire city. Something else was different about the primary: Taylor, 54, was running to become the first Black female mayor of Milwaukee. “The Republicans making us go out to vote, well, it’s horrible. But what the Democrats in Milwaukee did was even more horrific, and I’m disgusted by it. And I’m even more disgusted by the fact that people were silent,” Taylor says. The state’s Republican leaders decided to push through with an in-person election despite the rising number of coronavirus cases, but it was a local election commission in Milwaukee that limited the number of in-person voting sites to five, which the commission said was a decision based on a shortage of poll workers.
While Taylor lost her mayoral bid, she campaigned again in the fall, mostly virtually, to hold onto her Senate seat for four more years. And throughout the year Taylor fought hard to end voter suppression and create equity for Black people in Milwaukee and across Wisconsin. “We have gone from being the place that Black people came to for a better way of life. And now we are literally the worst place in the nation to raise a Black child and to be a Black American,” Taylor says. Even with some of the work being done in the state Legislature, like a task force on racial disparities, Taylor questions what potential outcomes and actions her colleagues might end up with. Taylor continues to be optimistic for Milwaukee’s future and the state as a whole. Her experience this year taught her not to take time for granted and to be more conscious of just how short life is. “You know, we’re winning. I like to say we’re winning because for the most part … we’ve not stopped what we’re doing, and I think that’s a good thing,” Taylor says.
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