PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley said it would be “very” important to have progressive representation in Joe Biden’s Cabinet as she stumped for the Democratic nominee in New Hampshire just five days before Election Day.
“What this pandemic has laid bare — inequities and disparities and racial injustices that have existed for a long time — is going to require of us bold, progressive policies” to change, Pressley said. “Many of those progressive policies that previously might have been marginalized are now a part of the everyday discourse, and they need to be on the table. And so we need progressives around the table to bring those issues there.”
But before the “squad” member and her allies can truly push for their progressive brethren to be appointed at the highest levels of government, Biden first has to win the presidency.
“I’ve been encouraged in the turnout in early voting locations as I’ve moved throughout my district, and certainly the numbers that we’re seeing throughout the country,” Pressley told the Herald of the more than 2 million Bay Staters and an estimated more than 80 million Americans who have already voted.
“But we’re not there yet,” Pressley said. “We need to keep getting the word out and we need to make clear the stakes of this election and exactly what is on the ballot. I’m telling everyone to vote as if our democracy and our livelihoods depend on it — because they do.”
One person Pressley would back in a Biden Cabinet is fellow Bay Stater U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who Politico reported Thursday wants to be treasury secretary, and who Pressley called an “extraordinary talent.”
But the congresswoman, who is already considered a top contender in a special Senate election should Warren vacate her seat for the White House, wouldn’t bite on whether she’d run.
“All I’ve ever done is follow the work and that’s what I’m going to continue to do,” she said.
Pressley spoke to Biden supporters in outdoor, socially distanced gatherings in Durham and Portsmouth on Thursday, just hours before Donald Trump Jr. campaigned indoors in Manchester.
“It is reckless and irresponsible,” Pressley said of the Trump campaign’s lax adherence to masking and social distancing at their events.
As Biden’s campaign paints the election as a referendum on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, so, too, did his supporters in New Hampshire, including Ronelle Tshiela, who said her parents contracted the coronavirus in late spring.
“There’s so much at stake in this election and we cannot afford to wake up on Nov. 4 with regrets, wondering what we could have done better,” Tshiela said.
Biden consistently leads Trump in New Hampshire polls. A new Granite State Poll out Thursday showed the former vice president up eight points — though that’s lower than the 12-point lead he had in the University of New Hampshire’s poll earlier in October.
While Trump “definitely has supporters” in the state he lost by just 3,000 votes in 2016, “they’re not a majority,” said Rockingham County Democrats chairman Larry Drake. “I expect that Biden will win by a comfortable margin in New Hampshire.”
Drake’s wife, Joan Jacobs, a Portsmouth Democratic activist, said, “I think we’re going to be very, very happy when the vote tallies come out.”
