Warren's leading surrogate is working to persuade African Americans who are broadly suspicious of government to embrace her policy-heavy candidacy.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Debora Lloyd, 64, was sitting with other black women in the basement of The Joint jazz bar listening to Ayanna Pressley try to make the case for Elizabeth Warren. But Lloyd wasn’t sold.
Enter Pressley, who rocketed to political fame as a member of "the squad” of first-term Democratic congresswomen. The 45-year-old, who goes back more than a decade with Warren, worked to persuade black voters in South Carolina to trust that Warren’s expansive view of government action can make a tangible difference in their lives.
Pressley has taken the image of Warren as a wonkish Harvard Law professor and tried to turn it on its head. Often surrogates put their candidate on a pedestal: Joe Biden as the only candidate equipped to be president “on Day One,” or Sanders as the leader of a political revolution.“I’m not interested in a savior, I want a partner,” Pressley said to a packed auditorium at the historically black Benedict College. “And that is who Elizabeth is.
Some people at the campaign events seemed drawn in as much by their curiosity about Pressley as to learn about the candidate herself. Pressley is bald now, a result of the autoimmune disease alopecia which she revealed a little more than two weeks ago in aspeaking directly to the camera. Her Senegalese twists used to be part of her personal and political identity — now her baldness is, too.
Over Pressley’s three days in South Carolina, dozens of black female voters who spoke to POLITICO said they would take a closer look at Warren after hearing Pressley. Renee Jye, 55, switched from Biden to Warren on the spot, and said she’d volunteer for the senator.
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