Senate Candidate Donna Edwards Fights the Establishment for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By Steven Rosenfeld

Imagine, for a minute, if the next U.S. senator from Maryland was Democratic congresswoman Donna Edwards—a charismatic, principled, black single mother whose work as a national leader against domestic violence and grassroots activism has been a role model for women.

Imagine if she faced Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans and told them—as she told Fox News in 2013 after a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman for Trayvon Martin’s murder—that the struggle for racial justice doesn’t stop at one courthouse door. Or that America needs an economic agenda for women, as one in six women are stuck below the poverty line. Or how it is “wretched” when a Farm Bill passes without a penny for Meals on Wheels, food stamps for the poor, or public school lunch programs.