Summer Lee plans to keep breaking down barriers in Congress

Summer Lee made history last week, but it wasn’t easy. The Braddock native’s rise to become the first Black woman from Pennsylvania to sit in Congress has been met with regular pushback from forces trying to counter her progressive policies and bombastic attitude.

At one point that pushback came from the local Democratic Party itself.

But Lee powered through, and won her race for Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, defeating Republican Mike Doyle of Plum. (No relation to retiring incumbent Mike Doyle, a Democrat from Forest Hills.)

“It is one thing to break the glass ceiling, and another thing to navigate these spaces in a place that a person like me has never been,” Lee told the Tribune-Review. “It is a very serious job and I don’t take it lightly.”

This isn’t the first time Lee, who lives in Swissvale and grew up in Braddock, has broken down barriers. In 2018, she became the first Black woman from Western Pennsylvania to hold a seat in Pennsylvania’s state legislature.

Lee, a Woodland Hills High School graduate, said she is humbled to blaze these trails, but understands that the job isn’t finished.

Her path to this moment traces from growing up in the Mon Valley to college at Penn State to law school at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She returned home after law school and, in 2016, she worked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. The next year, she became a community organizer to get Black members onto the Woodland Hills School District board.

Stacey Federoff works at a Pittsburgh public relations firm, and she was Lee’s roommate at Penn State in 2007. She said Lee was fun and very straightforward in college.

“I’m proud to have known her back then, because if anyone can represent and stick to her values, it’s Summer,” said Federoff. “And it’s clear from the decision of voters that they know she can represent them too.”

She also became a progressive firebrand in 2018 when she joined a wave of legislators across the country to defeat more moderate Democrats on the way to holding public office. Lee defeated 10-term incumbent Democrat Paul Costa in 2018, and her time in office has come with open criticisms of some of local Democratic Party stalwarts, like Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. She has earned the support of national progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Lee has faced opponents within the party on multiple occasions. The Allegheny County Democratic Committee voted to endorse her primary opponent in 2020, breaking with an unwritten rule that incumbents get endorsements, and in 2022, the local party again backed her primary opponent during her congressional run.

Morgan Overton is the recently elected vice chair of the Allegheny County Democratic Committee. She said Lee’s victory shows how organizing around progressive and Democratic causes can lead to historic victories.

“Every voter who showed up for this moment of history, also showed up for every working family, for reproductive justice, for our environment, for union rights, and for every community across intersections,” said Overton. “Summer’s win marks the next chapter of what collective impact looks like in our region — the future of the Democratic Party is now.”

The local Democratic committee’s open embrace of Lee might also signify a turning point in its relationship with her. Overton, along with chair Sam Hens-Greco, took over party control this summer, replacing leadership that was more contentious toward Lee and other progressives.

But opposition to Lee wasn’t just local. Outside political groups, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent millions of dollars in opposition to Lee. The pro-Israel group attempted to label Lee as a radical, at one point running ads saying she wasn’t supportive enough of Democrats, and then later seemingly boosting Republicans during the General Election by saying she was too extreme.

Lee said her victory showed her just how prevalent outside spending can be. She intends to attack the issue head-on when she takes office.

“What this race confirmed for me is how pervasive dark money is in politics,” she said. “We can’t win for progressive values — like environmental racism, housing justice, etc. — while this is going on. All of those things are being held hostage by dark money.”

According to unofficial vote tallies, Lee received about 56% of the vote to Doyle’s 44%. She lauded her campaign message for an ability to break through the attacks, and said her victory showed that there are shared values that connect Pittsburghers more than divide them.

She said that attacks against her tend to take advantage of “racially coded messages” around crime and extremism, but said that voters can be swayed by maintaining focus on issues that affect them, like “a living wage, safe communities, a quality education that doesn’t break people’s bank account, and environmental health.”

“I think our race has the power that we can break down those walls,” said Lee.

She is also hopeful that the typical attacks that usually hit Democrats and Black candidates won’t have as much power moving forward, as a younger generation moves into the primary voting bloc, and one that has stronger concerns over issues like student debt relief and climate change policies, than crime or perceived radicalism.

Lee said high turnout among young voters — Gen Z and millennials — helped propel her and other Democratic candidates to victory. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won the governorship, flipped a senate seat, and are poised to flip the state House for the first time in 12 years.

“I think we are going to see a shift, and even against the pushback that will come, that there will be a recognition of the growing power in the younger voting bloc,” she said.

Lee said she hopes the energy will continue, and said there is another big election happening locally in just a few months, as Allegheny County will hold elections for county executive and district attorney next year.

“At the end of the day, I am encouraged that Western Pennsylvanians, against all of the ads and messages, came and showed our true values — democracy, women’s reproductive health, and more — and I hope that this is a turning point,” she said.