Current Position: U.S. Representative (since 1998)
Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Why She Matters
Lee represents the 9th Congressional District of California, which includes the liberal strongholds of Oakland and Berkeley and she fits right in. A member, and former co-chair, of the Progressive Caucus, Lee is one of the most liberal members of the U.S. House. Following the 2008 elections, she was chosen to lead the Congressional Black Caucus.
Lee is among the most outspoken critics of the “War on Terror.” She was the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization of force in Afghanistan just days after Sept. 11, 2001. Though Lee has long been an advocate for reduced military spending, she said that vote was different. She said it was difficult for her to do, but she didn’t want the country to overreact following the attacks. “I believe that the fervor and the pain of the moment have caused people, understandably, to react emotionally,” she said. “And all I’m saying is that Congress should step back. Congress has got to be the body of government that does that.”
After the vote, Lee was heralded by anti-war activists but also received death threats and increased police protection. Lee is a champion of a variety of liberal causes, including welfare reform. She is at the forefront of the fight for increased funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and research, not just in the United States, but around the world.
At a Glance
Current Position: Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (since Jan. 2009)
Career History: U.S. Representative (since April 1998); California State Senate (1996 to 1998); California State Assembly (1990 to 1996)
Birthday: July 16, 1946
Hometown: Born in El Paso, Tex. and lives in Oakland, Calif.
Alma Mater: Mills College, B.A., 1973; University of California at Berkeley, M.A., 1975
Spouse: Single
Religion: N/A
DC Office: 2444 Rayburn House Office Building, 202-225-2661
District Office: Oakland, 510-763-0370
Email
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Path to Power
Lee grew up in the Southwest during the height of the civil rights movement and experienced racism first-hand — even before she was born. Her pregnant mother was denied treatment at a hospital in El Paso, Tex., because she was black. She was supposed to have a C-section, but, after hours of waiting in the hospital, Lee was delivered with forceps. “This is how I came into the world, fighting to live, to survive,” Lee said.
Lee’s father was active in civil rights groups in El Paso, and she remembers him being denied service at restaurants and theaters, despite the fact that he was an Army lieutenant colonel. When her family moved to Pasadena, Calif., Lee had a more personal experience with racism. She wanted to become a cheerleader, but her high school had never had a black cheerleader. The system set up to elect the cheerleaders made it very difficult for black students to win. She solicited help from the NAACP, talked with other students, and became San Fernando High School’s first black cheerleader.
Lee also faced more serious challenges. In her autobiography, “Renegade for Peace and Justice,” she writes about her experience as a teenage mother. She was repeatedly beaten by her husband whenever she tried to leave him, and she was forced to get welfare to feed her children while she was earning her college degree from Mills College in Oakland.
Lee hadn’t even registered to vote when she got a college class assignment to work for a presidential campaign. She joined the campaign of Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.), the first notable black candidate for president. By the end of the campaign, she was running Chisholm’s office in Northern California.
While at Mills, Lee also volunteered at the Black Panthers’ community learning center and worked on the mayoral campaign of Panthers founder Bobby Seale. She earned a master’s in social work from the University of California at Berkeley and started a community health center in Berkeley before getting an internship with former Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Calif.). She worked in the congressman’s office — first in California and then in Washington — for 12 years. She made a brief move into the private sector as the owner of a small business before running for the California Assembly in 1990. She served in the Assembly until 1996 and spent two years in the state Senate before Dellums retired from Congress and endorsed Lee to succeed him. She won the special election with 67 percent of the vote and has won more than 80 percent of the vote ever since.
A longtime member of the Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, Lee moved into leadership roles in the 110th Congress. She thought about challenging Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) to be chair of the CBC in 2006, but decided to avoid the fight. Instead, she became co-chair of the Progressive Caucus and vice-chair of the CBC. She also was assigned a seat on the House Appropriations Committee. After the 2008 elections, Lee took over for Kilpatrick as chair of the CBC. “This is quite a moment for me,” she said. “Now we have an opportunity to really continue to lead and to really continue to be the conscience of the Congress.”
The Issues
Lee’s district includes the liberal areas of Berkeley and Oakland, and she is one of Congress’ most liberal members. She has been a member of the Progressive Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus, two of the most liberal congressional groups, and she voted with the Democratic Party 96 percent of the time during the 110th Congress.
Her experiences growing up shaped her liberal outlook and had a big influence on her policy decisions in Congress. When she was a teenager, her boyfriend beat her whenever she tried to leave him. Lee drew on this experience to become an advocate for legal protections for battered women.
Once a single, teenage mother who relied on food stamps to get by, Lee has fought to expand food stamp coverage. She introduced a bill in April 2008 that would reverse a provision in the 1996 Welfare Reform bill that barred ex-convicts from receiving food stamps. “It is in the country’s best interest to provide services to help ex-offenders who have successfully served their sentence transition back into society and properly care for their children,” she said.
Welfare
When she was in the California state Assembly, then-Gov. Pete Wilson (R) wanted to cut welfare benefits, saying people who received the benefits would just “have less for a six-pack of beer.” Lee spoke out. She called the welfare reform bills “the worst legislation to make it out of the Assembly,” and called on her personal experience. “I remembered those days sitting at the welfare office at 401 Broadway, trying to get MediCal and food stamps to feed my kids and keep them healthy,” she wrote. “This disdain and disrespect with which I was treated was demoralizing.”
Afghanistan and Iraq
When Lee has broken with her party, she has often outflanked it on the left. One of her most famous votes came in September 2001, when she was the lone member of Congress to vote against the authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan following the September 11 terrorist attacks. During her speech on the House floor just days after the attacks, she quoted Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), one of two congressmen who voted against authorizing the Vietnam War calling it “a mistake.” “We are not dealing with a conventional war,” she said in the same House floor speech. “We cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control.”
That wasn’t the first time Lee voted against granting the president the use of force. She came to Congress promising to cut defense spending, and, in 1999, she was the only House member to vote against a bill authorizing President Clinton to bomb Serbia. She also followed in Dellums’ footsteps in urging the conversion of military bases into civilian-use facilities.But the vote after Sept. 11, 2001, drew considerable criticism and even death threats, and Lee was given police bodyguards.
The vote made Lee a hero of the anti-war movement and didn’t derail her re-election. She easily won the 2002 primary against a candidate who criticized that vote, and then won in the general election with 86 percent of the vote against a candidate who said Lee “speaks for Osama bin Laden, not for me.”
In October 2002, Lee opposed the use of force in Iraq and offered an alternative bill calling for diplomatic action. She has continued to call for a decrease of troops and funding in Iraq. In 2007, Lee opposed the House Democrats’ war funding bill because she said it made too many concessions to Republicans, and she called for a “fully funded withdrawal.”
HIV and AIDS
Lee has been at the forefront in the fight against HIV and AIDS in the United States and around the world. She authored a bill that created the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS and regularly pushed for increased funding, winning $15 billion for the prevention and treatment for patients with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. She fought against provisions that require abstinence-only teaching in exchange for school funding, and sponsored legislation to protect AIDS orphans.
In the U.S., she introduced legislation to provide “comprehensive sex education” in public schools and advocated increased funding for basic prevention and treatment.
The Network
Lee was an early supporter of President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential Democratic nomination fight. In December 2007, when many of her colleagues in Congress and in the Congressional Black Caucus refused to take sides, Lee came out in favor of Obama, in part because of his opposition to the war in Iraq.
Lee’s district is just across the bay from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, and the two liberal members of the House are close allies.
