First published Wednesday, June 21, 2023 in the Washington Blade.
Walking slowly through the dramatically lit aisles of Philadelphia’s Bright Hope Baptist Church her family is well acquainted with, soft, jazzy piano music playing in the background, Delaware’s lone U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester announced that she is running for Senate, hoping to take over the seat her mentor Tom Carper is leaving.
Her guiding principle? Bright hope. Just like the church’s. Just like the country’s.
“Bright hope,” Blunt Rochester said, “keeps America forward and it kept me going through my own darkness.”
That darkness included her husband’s death because of a blood clot, which she said inspired her to run for Congress.
“You gotta get your mind right,” he told her.
“So I did,” Blunt Rochester said in the video. “I decided to run for Congress.”
Carper announced his retirement at a press conference on May 22 and all but endorsed Blunt Rochester for Senate.
“I spoke with her this morning, I said, ‘You’ve been patient, waiting for me to get out of the way, and I’m going to get out of the way, and I hope you run, and I hope you’ll let me support you in that mission,’” Carper said with a laugh. “And she said, ‘Yes I will let you support me.’ And so I’m going to.’”
Now that she officially announced her run, two days after Juneteenth, her former mentor endorsed her in a statement.
“She is just the kind of leader that we’ll need in the U.S. Senate in the days ahead, and she will make us proud,” Carper wrote, recalling the first time he met her. “Indeed, she already has!”
Rochester holds up a scarf with a copy of her great-great-great grandfather’s Georgia voter registration oath from 1867 in the video. On it is his signature, which allowed him, a freed slave, to vote in Georgia’s elections.
She holds it up to a diverse crowd of people, telling them that she not only carried it during her inauguration, but during the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“With the house under siege, I prayed for love over hate, and hope over fear,” she says over a video of her praying on the House floor as rioters swarmed the Capitol.
Accolades and support are pouring in not only from her mentor, but from progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood, which emphasized that it does not officially have a stance, but said the organization is lucky to have her in the congressional delegation. The Human Rights Campaign gives her perfect marks on support for LGBTQ issues.
The person that answered Bright Hope Baptist Church’s phone seemed unaware that Blunt Rochester had announced her run and said the people who could comment were out of the office.
Blunt Rochester ends the video ticking off her priorities and her accomplishments –protecting reproductive rights, helping small businesses, and protecting the environment – but cautioned, “We’ve got so much more to do.”
“A more perfect union is not a destination, it is a journey,” she continued. Looking straight into the camera, she said, “Let us go on it together.”
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