BOSTON — She stood before Democratic activists Wednesday morning and minced no words.
“This is a tribal and parochial place, and this hasn’t always been my home,” Ayanna Pressley said, explaining some of the hurdles she faced in Tuesday’s historic victory, which positioned her to become the first African-American woman whom Massachusetts will send to Congress.
In her first public remarks on Wednesday, she attributed her win to the love and dedication of her mother, Sandra, a woman who had been “marginalized, rendered invisible” but who made sure her daughter was “never cynical about humanity” and knew the power of voting.
Of course, Ms. Pressley’s win was about a lot more than that, but her comments revealed the underpinnings of a determined campaign she was predicted to lose against a 20-year incumbent. It ended with a surprisingly lopsided vote of 59 to 41 percent in Ms. Pressley’s favor.
[Read more about Ayanna Pressley’s campaign.]
Hers was the jewel in the crown of a transformative day in Massachusetts politics, where hidebound traditions don’t easily fade. Lawrence DiCara, a former city council president and unofficial Boston historian, remembered the days when Bostonians “could vote an all-Irish ticket.” In 1960, he said, when John F. Kennedy was running for president, other Irishmen were running in all the other races.
But women and people of color triumphed up and down the ballot Tuesday, knocking out two entrenched state legislators and winning two important primaries for district attorney as voters demanded an end to politics as usual.
Ms. Pressley spoke at a gathering at Senator Elizabeth Warren’s headquarters in Boston, where most of the Democratic winners and a few of the losers met to declare their unity. Ms. Pressley’s defeated opponent, Representative Michael Capuano, was absent.
An exhausted Ms. Pressley confessed that she had not had her regular fix of Red Bull and cold brew and that her feet hurt. She had worn yellow pumps on Tuesday for good luck and wore them again on Wednesday — and they were killing her feet. She stood at the podium with one foot up on a pedestal, a very commanding position.
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