Donna Edwards Maryland Running Again for Office
Bill Clark/CQ Gyre Call
A lot has changed since Donna Edwards was last in Congress just over five years ago. After viii years representing the Washington, D.C., suburbs, the former Maryland congresswoman suffered multiple election defeats — in 2016, to Chris Van Hollen, in a U.Southward. Senate principal, and in 2018, to Angela Alsobrooks, in the race for Prince George'southward Canton executive.
In the years since, Edwards collection a used RV 12,000 miles beyond the country on a route trip, part beatnik soul-searching and part political quest to sympathise the sources of America'southward disunity.
And she's inverse too — or maybe it'southward the Democratic Party that's changed. She'southward all the same figuring that ane out.
"I recently had somebody describe me as a centrist, which was so bizarre," Edwards, 63, told Jewish Insider in a recent Zoom interview. "I'm even so a progressive. In some ways, I look at some of the younger members, and they take a lot of free energy and stuff almost them, and I think, 'Maybe that was me 30 years ago, just the me today is a little bit more pragmatic.'"
When Edwards walked the halls of Congress, from 2008 to 2017, "centrist" was not a word that would take been used to describe her. She ran on a left-wing platform to unseat Al Wynn, a formidable Democratic incumbent who she painted as out of affect issues such every bit the Iraq War, which he had voted to authorize. Always since that race, which she won with the support of groups including Emily's List and MoveOn.org, she has been a darling of national progressive organizations.
President Barack Obama speaks with Rep. Donna Edwards, (D-MD) and Firm Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as he makes a surprise visit to the Democrats' dugout during the 54th Almanac Roll Call Congressional Baseball Game at Nationals Park in Washington on Thursday, June xi, 2015. (Photo By Beak Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Edwards found herself itching to get in on the activity when her old seat opened upwardly after Rep. Anthony Brown (D-MD) announced a run for country attorney general. "I was, like everybody, really deeply troubled by what happened at the Capitol on January 6, and thought that now is not the time to run away from the fire, simply to step into information technology," Edwards explained.
She announced her candidacy more than ii months subsequently her competitors began their campaigns. Merely Edwards has been able to muster some progressive star power from her previous time in office. (The fact that she spent the last few years as a paid correspondent on MSNBC probably helped.)
In the less than two weeks after she entered the race in January, her entrada said information technology raised more than than $300,000. Neither of her competitors — Jazz Lewis, a member of the Maryland Business firm of Delegates, or Glenn Ivey, a lawyer and old land's attorney in Prince George's Canton — raised that much in their kickoff two months on the campaign trail.
Maryland's 4th Commune, which is mostly composed of the majority-Black Prince George's County, has a rather small Jewish population. But the district's location well-nigh both Montgomery County and Baltimore, the two hubs of Jewish life in the state, ways it has attracted potent involvement from local Jewish activists. And Israel is poised to be a major gene in the Democratic primary, at least for donors and activists in the country.
Edwards' tenure in Congress was colored by a strained relationship with the mainstream pro-Israel community in Maryland, dating back to her early on days in office.
"The relationship between the Jewish community and Donna Edwards got off to a rocky start," Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told Politico in 2009. "I would be lying if I told you at that place wasn't concern." That year, amid tensions between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Edwards voted "present" on a resolution "recognizing State of israel'south right to defend itself confronting attacks from Gaza" that passed 390-5.
Halber declined to comment when asked almost Edwards entering the race. But "the big event," one pro-Israel Democrat told JI when Edwards entered the race terminal month, "is whether to back up Jazz or Glenn."
When she ran for the seat in 2008, Edwards was one of the first candidates ever endorsed by J Street.
"The interesting matter for Donna is that she was ahead of her time," J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami told JI terminal week. "She'south been someone who really typifies what it means to be pro-Israel, and at the same time to have a very, very clear set of critiques virtually what the authorities and the policies of the [Israeli] government are."
J Street has not notwithstanding made an endorsement in the race, as the organisation is still talking to all the candidates. Simply Ben-Ami called Edwards'south positions on State of israel-related problems "stone solid."
AIPAC is inbound campaign politics for the outset time this year with a new political action group, just information technology has not still spent money on any races. "Nosotros have not yet made a conclusion on this race," AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann said regarding Maryland's 4th commune. AIPAC's PAC raised $714,000 in December 2021 alone.
In her conversation with JI, Edwards said that she would largely approach bug related to Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a like way to her previous fourth dimension in office. "I rarely change my mind most these things, because I thought nigh information technology a lot in accelerate," Edwards said, when asked whether she would have voted in favor of a bill providing supplemental funding for Israel'south Iron Dome missile-defense system that passed the House in September 420-9.
"I'm guessing that I probably would accept voted more recently in back up for that," she added of the Iron Dome vote, while noting that she was unfamiliar with the exact legislation. In 2014, she voted in favor of a like resolution that provided Israel with $225 1000000 in supplemental funding for the Atomic number 26 Dome. Earlier that year, she voted in favor of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act.
Edwards offered a similar respond when asked whether she supports the $3.iii billion in U.S. aid provided to Israel annually. "I think I voted for every Israel security appropriations bill that ever came in forepart of me. I mean, I'd have to go dorsum and cheque, but I'1000 pretty sure that's true. I don't actually encounter that irresolute," Edwards said.
Only she did not vote in favor of all the legislation backed past AIPAC-aligned advocates. She voted confronting a 2013 bill that would accept strengthened sanctions on Iran. She also did not sign onto several letters, supported by AIPAC and its allies, that sought to pressure the Obama assistants on Iran sanctions, Syria sanctions, Egypt policy and the peace procedure, according to The Washington Post.
"State of israel is the merely existing democracy in the region," she pointed out. "So with the threat to democracy [and] democracies effectually the world, nosotros don't want to see one fail."
In a 2019 tweet, Edwards quoted a Huffington Post article that said, "[O]ne fellow member of Congress has stood upward to the American Israel Public Affairs Commission." Edwards referred to that fellow member "my friend" Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), using the commodity's headline "The Minnesota Congresswoman Who Tin can Criticize Israel."
Ben-Ami argued that Edwards' positions are reflective of where the Democratic Party at present stands on foreign policy. "The majority of the party is where Donna is at, and the majority of American Jews are where Donna is at — and that is supportive of Israel, but very, very concerned and critical of what's happening vis-a-vis the Palestinians," he noted. "Now you run across races where people who concur the positions that Donna Edwards holds are facing a real stiff assail from the traditional establishment of the Jewish community, but they're fighting the tide."
I political activist in Prince George's County told JI that Jewish supporters could play a large function in the Autonomous chief. "If the back up from the Jewish customs is split, I think that makes information technology most impossible" for Lewis or Ivey to win, the activist said. "I'm proverb she's gonna win."
Some members of the Maryland Jewish community say Edwards was unwilling to hear them out during her time in Congress. "Her perspective was very one-sided when it came to issues dealing with Israel," Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, rabbi at the Conservative Congregation B'nai Tzedek in Potomac and an AIPAC member, told JI in Oct. "I spoke with her on a number of occasions. I met with her and members of her staff, and it was clear that we weren't going anywhere."
"I practise think that 1 of the things that I've come up to recognize," Edwards explained, "and part of it is through travel to Israel, is the vulnerability that Israel understandably feels in an area where information technology's surrounded by nations that either don't respect Israel'south sovereignty or where at that place have been tensions. So information technology's important to take the power for the United States to provide that kind of strategic assist."
Edwards' father was in the Air Forcefulness, and her family moved often when she was growing up — she attended xiv schools betwixt kindergarten and loftier school graduation. "I first became fascinated, actually, with the Heart East because my dad was stationed in Saudi Arabia," Edwards explained. "He did joint trainings with the IDF, then I began to retrieve about the globe as a much bigger place."
As she developed an interest in strange policy, "my focus was ever on man rights, democracy, stability in the world, and I remember that'due south the lens through which I look at strange policy."
Edwards says her delivery to democracy colors her views on Israel. "Israel is the merely existing democracy in the region," she pointed out. "So with the threat to democracy [and] democracies around the globe, we don't want to see 1 fail."
Edwards wants to run into a ii-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I just always leaned toward what is going to provide State of israel security, but as well engage State of israel with its neighbors so that the region can exist in peace and stability," said Edwards. But such an outcome at present "feels so much more afar for a whole host of reasons," she explained.
Among those reasons, Edwards connected, is the impact of the Trump administration'due south withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. "The wars in Syria, Yemen, have escalated, without any checks not simply on [Iran'south] nuclear plan, but without any checks on the other ways in which information technology engages in the most nefarious means, increasing supplies to Hamas and Gaza."
America lost some of its negotiating power in the Israeli-Palestinian disharmonize when Trump left the Iran bargain, Edwards argued. She also criticized the former president's approach to solving the conflict.
At that place were "Trump administration policies that actually put the question of negotiating really in a much more precarious position, non the to the lowest degree of which was the Islamic republic of iran nuclear deal, only besides thinking that yous could sort of pressure and pound the Palestinians to the negotiating tabular array," Edwards said.
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) nourish a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing in the Capitol Visitor Centre titled "The Failure of Trickle Down Economics in the War on Poverty," April 14, 2016. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Returning to the 2015 nuclear understanding is a priority for Edwards. "I promise that the Biden administration, equally information technology seems to be doing, is engaging again to try to construct a new deal," said Edwards. "When I came out of Congress, we were in an agreement, the JCPOA, the Islamic republic of iran nuclear deal. So not long after that, Trump pulls that away. And I recollect information technology actually has made Israel more than vulnerable, considering we don't take any real oversight into what Iran is doing or non doing in its nuclear programme."
Edwards does not support the Cold-shoulder, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. "I have not supported information technology, either when it beginning emerged, and non at present," said Edwards. "I know, that sets me apart from some other members of Congress where people might say, 'Oh, she might be aligned with them.' And really, I hateful, my history tells me that I accept not."
However, she questions whether Congress should weigh in on the upshot. "Congress has a office whenever it wants to take a role. I think for that kind of [anti-BDS] legislation to be successful, it would have to pass the House and the Senate and be signed into police by the president. I just don't see that happening," she said. "I don't really know that it is something that Congress necessarily even has to weigh in on."
Edwards, calling herself a "pragmatic progressive," said, "I bargain in political reality.".
"I remember our chore is to push as hard as possible, only to recognize when we take to negotiate, and when yous have to cut a deal — and so move on to the next thing," said Edwards. She cited her support for Medicare for All, noting that when the Affordable Care Act was existence negotiated, she wanted a public option for healthcare.
"Just and so when we realized that that was just not going to happen," she recalled, "I negotiated, and concluded upwardly getting some important provisions in the Affordable Care Act that actually has saved consumers billions of dollars. But I wasn't willing to fall on my sword and to kill the legislation because I didn't get what I wanted."
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