Lucy McBath

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Lucy McBath (2019)

Lucia Kay "Lucy" McBath (born June 1, 1960 in Joliet , Illinois ) is an American politician with the Democratic Party . It represents the sixth since 2019 congressional district of the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives . After her son was shot dead for no reason in 2012, she became involved in the gun control movement .

Family, education and work

Lucy McBath grew up as Lucia Holman with a sister in Joliet in the southwest of the Chicago metropolitan area . Her mother, Wilma, was a nurse, her father, Lucien Holman, was a doctor, and in the 1960s chaired the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Illinois. He also owned the African American magazine The Black Voice . As a child, she traveled with her parents to political demonstrations across the state.

She studied from 1978 at Virginia State University and graduated in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in political science and English. During her studies she was an intern in the Washington office of the NAACP and worked for the then State Representative Virginia Douglas Wilder . From 1984 to 2014 she was a flight attendant for Delta Airlines and has lived in Georgia ever since.

With her husband Ron Davis, who also worked for Delta Airlines, McBath had their son Jordan Russell Davis, who was born in February 1995, after several miscarriages and the death of their first son in 1993. After their divorce, they shared custody, and because McBath had to focus on breast cancer treatment, the son lived with his father in Jacksonville , Florida from 2011 . There Jordan Davis was shot dead in November 2012 when he and three friends stopped at a gas station and listened to loud music. The then 45-year-old software developer Michael Dunn felt so disturbed by the music and the unfriendly reaction that he shot ten times with his handgun in the car and fatally injured 17-year-old Jordan Davis. Dunn was sentenced to life imprisonment in the first instance for multiple attempted homicides, but the jury could not reach a unanimous vote on the question of whether he was also to be found guilty of the murder of Jordan Davis. Dunn invoked Florida stand-your-ground law , but his claim that he was threatened by Jordan Davis could not be substantiated. In the October 2014 appeal hearing, Dunn was also convicted of murder.

McBath lives in Marietta and is involved in her parish , the Trinity Chapel . In 2016 she was named Mother of the Year by the TV channel VH1 . In 2016/17 she briefly relocated to her current husband Curtis McBath in Tennessee , which was held against her during the 2018 election campaign.

Political career

activism

McBath turned her grief over the loss of her son into activism, reaching out to politicians and church officials, appearing in demonstrations and on television, and meeting other relatives of gun victims. From 2013 she was the spokesperson for the Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety initiative and worked for the Everytown for Gun Safety initiative . At the same time, she founded the Champion in the Making Legacy Foundation .

McBath campaigned for 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for a year , then retired to her hometown of Marietta for hip replacement and rehabilitation.

Congressman

The state deputy Renitta Shannon campaigned McBath 2017 as a candidate for the Democrats. After McBath originally ran for the 36th constituency in the Georgia House of Representatives in the Democratic primary and raised $ 100,000 for her challenge to Republican nominee Sam Teasley, she changed her mind following the Parkland School Massacre in February 2018. She turned to the victims' families and survivors, and two days later, faced with the reluctance of politicians in Washington, decided to run for the US House of Representatives in the 6th Congressional constituency . Her motivation has been compared to that of Carolyn McCarthy , who was elected to Congress in 1992 after the loss of her family to gun violence. In 2017, nine women from the Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety group were elected to political positions.

In the Democratic primary for the 6th congressional electoral district of Georgia, she was the only person of color and only woman to receive the most votes with 36.3 percent on May 22, 2018, but did not achieve an absolute majority , so a second ballot was held on July 24 has been. She won this with 53.9 percent of the votes against the high-tech entrepreneur Kevin Abel. Hillary Clinton had just won this congressional constituency in the 2016 presidential election by 1.5 percentage points.

The main election in November 2018 was considered open, but the Republican mandate holder Karen Handel , who came to Congress through a by-election in 2017 , was considered an easy favorite. The by-election, won by Handel by four percentage points, had received worldwide media attention and was the most expensive congressional election campaign of all time. McBath was supported by several gun control initiatives and by EMILY's List . It narrowly prevailed against Handel with a lead of around 50.5 to 49.5 percent and almost 3000 votes, which was in line with the nationwide trend that well-educated voters in particular were switching to the Democrats in affluent suburbs. McBath's life story helped her resonate with voters while linking trade to the Trump administration's unpopular measures on health and immigration policies. The organization of the Democrats since the 2017 by-election, the activism since the Parkland school massacre, and the efforts of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to attract previously abstainers as new voters have all contributed to her victory. Abrams, Deval Patrick and Barack Obama had campaigned for McBath, Everytown for Gun Safety had supported their campaign with a good $ 4.5 million, and Michael Bloomberg also donated.

McBath took office on January 3, 2019 for Georgia's 6th Congressional constituency, which includes the northern suburbs of Atlanta . Most recently, a Democrat represented this area, represented by Newt Gingrich and later Tom Price , until early 1993.

Positions

McBath sees gun control as her life's work and made the fight for a stricter gun law , especially against the stand-your-ground laws , her core issue. In the congressional election campaign, she also addressed her own suffering from breast cancer in order to guarantee health insurance for the chronically ill. Obamacare health care reform had given many of these people insurance coverage, but Republicans in Congress tried to repeal it in 2017. She advocates giving citizenship to illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children ( Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ) and criticizes the separation of families at the border.

Web links

Commons : Lucy McBath  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Madhu Mayer: Former Joliet resident morns loss of son, lack of justice. In: The Times Weekly , February 19, 2014
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Marissa Calhoun, Lacey Russell: Lucy McBath refused to be quiet after her son's murder. Now she's running for Congress. In: CNN.com , May 20, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c Lucy McBath's Biography. In: Vote Smart.
  4. ↑ Gracie Bonds Staples: 'God has told me I will be OK'. In: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution , March 29, 2014.
  5. ^ Susan Cooper Eastman: Parents of dead teen vow to fight Florida's self-defense law. In: Reuters , February 25, 2014
  6. ↑ Tamar Hallerman: Do you really live here? Handel recycles Ossoff attack to ding Dem opponent. In: Politically Georgian , October 8, 2018.
  7. ↑ a b Michael Jacobs: 6th District: McBath Finds a Mission. In: Atlanta Jewish Times , May 10, 2018.
  8. ^ Greg Bluestein: High-profile gun control advocate enters Georgia's 6th District race. In: Politically Georgia , March 6, 2018.
  9. ↑ a b McBath, Lucy. In: Our Campaigns
  10. ↑ Lucy McBath wins Georgia's 6th Congressional District seat. In: The Washington Post , November 14, 2018.
  11. ↑ 2018 Midterm Election Forecast: Georgia 6th. In: FiveThirtyEight .
  12. ↑ Jeff Martin, Rebecca Santana: Gun Control Advocate Whose Son Was Fatally Shot Flips Long-Red House Seat in Georgia. In: Time , November 8, 2018
  13. ^ Tamar Hallerman: A lot came together to help McBath score big win for Georgia Democrats. In: Politically Georgia , November 9, 2018.
  14. ↑ Tia Mitchell: Being 'Jordan's mom' defines Lucy McBath's run for Congress. In: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution , November 8, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME McBath, Lucy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McBath, Lucia K. (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Democratic Party politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Joliet , Illinois