InsideSources

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., recently said Congress should “look at moving forward” on legislation to consider reparations for slavery.

Though hardly a firm commitment to compensatory payments for African-Americans, the remark was nonetheless a striking election-year pronouncement from the U.S. Senate candidate and top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Van Hollen made the little-noted comment Jan. 27 on WHUT-TV, the public television station at historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C. His remarks came as a response to host Rock Newman, who lamented federal lawmakers’ refusal to vote on a longstanding bill from Rep. John Conyers, D-MI, establishing a commission to study slavery’s enduring effects and “make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies.”

Noting that Conyers first introduced his bill in 1989, Newman asked, “What does it say about Congress as an institution that it won’t at least examine that issue?”

“Well, first of all,” Van Hollen said, “we can never totally erase the original sin, the evil of slavery, but we should do everything in our power to address the challenges that have come about because of that. I applaud Congressman Conyers for that legislation. I think we need to look at moving forward on that.”

Van Hollen argued that America must take more immediate action to reduce inequality, but that doesn’t preclude pursuit of reparations in the future. “It seems to me we can pursue both paths,” the congressman said.

InsideSources asked Van Hollen’s Democratic rival for the Senate, Rep. Donna Edwards, whether she supported the Conyers bill in specific and reparations in general. In an emailed statement, Edwards said, “Congressman Conyer’s effort to study the impact of slavery on black families living today would be an important addition to the conversation on how to achieve equality in this country.”

Like Van Hollen, she went on to stress the “need to focus on the problems facing communities of color today, and that means making targeted investments by census tract in all our communities, ending the militarization of our local police forces, fixing a broken criminal justice system, and giving people a second chance to rebuild their lives.”

Conyers has introduced his legislation, H.R. 40, at the start of every Congress for more than a quarter century, with the number 40 evoking the “40 acres and a mule” promised to freed slaves after the Civil War. It’s never gotten any traction, but Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates thrust the issue back into national discourse in 2014 with his celebrated article “The Case for Reparations.”

“A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy solution in Conyers’s bill,” Coates wrote. “We would support this bill, submit the question to study, and then assess the possible solutions. But we are not interested.”

But two years later, the issue of reparations has popped up in the contest to choose the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, with Bernie Sanders facing tough questioning, led by Coates, after the Vermont senator dismissed the idea earlier this year. The senator has continued to catch flak for it, including in a well-publicized appearance at a Minnesota forum on black America. One panelist accused Sanders, who has struggled to win black voters in his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, of being afraid even to use the terms “black” and “reparations.”

“I’ve said ‘black’ 50 times,” Sanders said later in the event, shouting into his microphone. “That’s the 51st time.”

Like Sanders, Van Hollen is a white candidate who needs strong black support to prevail, especially up against Edwards, a black woman running explicitly on her race and gender.

Wednesday was the congresswoman’s turn on Rock Newman’s show, and she talked at length about her lived experiences as black woman, even recalling the Afro she sported earlier in life. Asked about racism and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, she said the business mogul’s “very frustrated, very angry” supporters are legitimately upset about being left out of the economy. However, she also criticized Trump’s racial rhetoric.

“He’s pointing a finger,” Edwards said, “and unfortunately he’s pointing that finger to immigrants, communities of color, women who’ve moved into the economy, black folk, and really he should be pointing the finger at himself — the one percent that has ripped off working people, that traded jobs outside of the United States.”

Edwards specifically condemned Trump for the now infamous CNN interview where he declined to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and its former leader, David Duke, who endorsed his White House bid.

“Donald Trump went to some of the finest universities in the country,” the congresswoman said. “He knows exactly who the KKK is. He knows who David Duke is.”

When it comes to Trump’s racial politics, she added, “It’s not a dog whistle anymore. It’s like a bullhorn.”

For his part, Van Hollen also addressed Trump with Newman, calling the mogul “such a reckless choice for president that I think any of the Democratic nominees … could win that race.” He agreed with the host that Trump is tapping into racism, and called his style of politics “un-American.”

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BALTIMORE — Before introducing Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., at a campaign stop Saturday, one of the Senate candidate’s supporters warmed up the crowd with a surprising political weapon — Disney Channel nostalgia.

Evoking her 4-year-old granddaughter’s favorite show, Women for Donna Chairwoman Karren Pope-Onwukwe compared the congresswoman to Kim Possible, the crime-fighting animated superhero who first splashed across television screens between 2002 and 2007.

Possible isn’t a perfect avatar for Edwards — she’s a red-haired white girl as the congresswoman is centering black identity in her pitch to voters — but the character certainly captures the kind of kick-butt femininity she hopes will set her apart from Rep. Chris Van Hollen, her male rival in the April 26 Democratic primary.

“I think it’s a strong factor that I’m a woman,” Edwards told InsideSources after her event. “I think it’s a strong factor that I’m a black woman. I think it’s a strong factor that I bring the intellectual capacity and progressive voice to the United States Senate that Maryland’s working families deserve.”

As that quote suggests, Edwards and Van Hollen are battling over liberal bona fides in one of the country’s most competitive campaigns — she’s a hardliner, he’s a deal-maker who says he gets more done. But race and gender are also obvious contours of their race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski, as a January survey from Gonzales Research & Marketing Strategies makes clear.

Likely black voters backed Edwards by 50 points. Likely white voters chose Van Hollen, who is white, by 40. It’s closer among likely women voters, but Edwards is ahead by seven. Van Hollen is winning men by 14.

What’s unusual about this race is that how neither candidate has a built-in following in Baltimore County, the battleground expected to decide their contest. With Edwards predicted to thrive in her Prince George’s County constituency and Van Hollen dominating with his Montgomery County base, the campaign will almost certainly turn on Charm City and its surrounding area. Gonzales had Edwards with twice Van Hollen’s support in the city, but Van Hollen leads by 16 points in the suburbs. The congressman isn’t standing still either. He launched $1 million in Baltimore television ads, made possible by a staggering 10-to-one fundraising advantage over Edwards.

For the congresswoman, this is where identity politics come in. She’s bolstered by her own $1 million in ads for the pro-choice Democratic women’s group Emily’s List. And on Saturday, she used gender, race and class to campaign against Van Hollen without ever mentioning him by name.

Edwards told the story of raising her son as a struggling single mother, leaving unspoken that her opponent was a child of privilege who now represents one of the most affluent counties in the nation.

Edwards, surrounded by family members at Saturday’s campaign event.

“It matters what experience and perspective you bring to the table, because that’s what helps you make decisions about what’s a priority and what’s not,” she said.

In a more explicit riff, Edwards concluded a speaking program comprised entirely of black women by warning against “elected leaders who are willing to substitute their voice and their judgment for yours.”

“After almost 240 years of our history, with one black woman elected to the United States Senate on her own, 20 women serving currently … my goodness, we don’t need a substitute for our voice,” she said.

There are a few factors complicating Edwards’ pitch. The political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus declined to endorse her, though her campaign brushed it off as the work of the group’s board member whom Edwards defeated in her 2008 congressional race.

Then there are the politics of Edwards’ presidential endorsement. She backed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton before Bernie Sanders declared, but some of her supporters think she should be with the socialist Vermont senator, arguably more of her ideological soulmate.

This position has led Edwards to highly nuanced statements about the White House race, including what she told InsideSources: “I feel strongly about Bernie Sanders’ campaign and about the issues that he’s raising. I think it’s healthy for the Democratic Party to have a strong — and progressive — debate about our future, and I look forward to whomever our nominee is. I hope it’s Hillary Clinton.”

Detractors might hear some mixed messages in those words, but they make perfect sense through the prism of identity politics. Clinton will be strong with women and the black voters in Maryland, just as she was in her crushing victory over Sanders in South Carolina Saturday night. Joining her bid played to Edwards’ brand, aligned her with target voters and demonstrated commitment to female representation in government.

Come late April, the congresswoman hopes the choice squares with the picture she’s painted of herself. It’s a portrait that could come straight from Kim Possible’s theme song, crooned by Afro-Latina pop star Christina Milian: “I’m your basic average girl, and I’m here to save the world.”

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