Consultant John Lewis, an iconic civil rights chief and one of many nation’s most outstanding black lawmakers, on Tuesday endorsed Joseph R. Biden
Consultant John Lewis, an iconic civil rights chief and one of many nation’s most outstanding black lawmakers, on Tuesday endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. within the 2020 presidential contest, within the newest illustration of Mr. Biden’s power with many African-American voters.
Mr. Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, referred to as the previous vp “a pal, a person of braveness, a person of conscience” and promised to “journey round America to help him.” He additionally expressed enthusiasm on the prospect of a girl of coloration on the Democratic ticket.
The congressman, a veteran of a number of the most important moments within the historical past of the civil rights motion, together with the Bloody Sunday march in Alabama and the 1963 March on Washington, introduced in December that he had superior pancreatic most cancers. However in a name with reporters on Monday night, he stated that he wished to marketing campaign aggressively for Mr. Biden — although the coronavirus outbreak has shuttered the normal marketing campaign path for now.
Since then, Mr. Biden has typically struggled to interrupt via, overshadowed by President Trump and the bully pulpit of the presidency, in addition to by governors on the entrance strains of the disaster.
“I do know what it’s to marketing campaign laborious and to work laborious,” Mr. Lewis stated, acknowledging that he confronted some “issues now, however they won’t be with me ceaselessly.” “And I can be on the market working and campaigning for Joe Biden as president of america of America.”
Mr. Biden has not but clinched the Democratic nomination; Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont continues to marketing campaign too. However with Mr. Biden holding an nearly insurmountable lead in delegates, his marketing campaign has started the process of looking for a running mate. He has said he will pick a woman.
Older black voters, in particular, revived Mr. Biden’s once-floundering candidacy and played a decisive role in propelling him to the cusp of the Democratic nomination. Some Democrats — including Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress and a top Biden ally — have expressed a preference for a black woman on the ticket with Mr. Biden.
“I think Vice President Biden should look around,” Mr. Lewis said, when asked if he believed Mr. Biden should select a woman of color. “It would be good to have a woman of color. It would be good to have a woman. It would be good to have a woman who looks like the rest of America.”
Mr. Lewis noted that there are “plenty of able women. Black, white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American.” The time has “long passed,” he said, for making “the White House look like the whole of America. ”
Should Mr. Biden win the Democratic nomination, one of his biggest challenges will be energizing younger, more progressive voters, many of whom remain skeptical of him. Asked how Mr. Biden should engage younger black voters who are less enthusiastic about turning out for Mr. Biden, Mr. Lewis, who is 80, said simply that they faced a choice in elections, and, noting the sacrifices others had made for the right to vote, urged them to turn out.
“If we fail to vote, we don’t count,” he said.
But he also expressed concern about voting against the backdrop of a pandemic, in a nation that has struggled with voter suppression, saying that he worried about whether the country would have a “free” election.
“I just hope that, in spite of whatever is going on now, that people will not be afraid to come out and vote,” he said. “We have to vote.”