Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester announces Senate bid in Delaware

By Shawna Mizelle

(CNN) — Democratic Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester is running for Delaware’s open Senate seat to succeed Sen. Tom Carper, who’s not seeking reelection next year.

“It’s been the greatest honor of my life to represent Delaware, to protect our seniors, our environment, our small businesses and women’s reproductive rights. But we’ve got so much more to do,” the four-term congresswoman says in an announcement video released Wednesday.

Blunt Rochester is widely viewed as a front-runner for her party’s nomination for the safe Democratic seat. She enters the race with the backing of Carper, her former boss, who announced in May that he would retire after his term ends in early 2025.

If elected, Blunt Rochester would be the first Black senator to represent Delaware. She became the first woman and first Black person to represent Delaware in Congress when she won the state’s at-large US House district in 2016.

Her candidacy underscores the lack of diversity in the Senate, which has had no Black female members since Kamala Harris left the chamber to serve as vice president. Blunt Rochester is among several Black Democratic women running for Senate in 2024, including Rep. Barbara Lee in California and Angela Alsobrooks in Maryland, both of whom are running in competitive Democratic primaries for open seats.

In her announcement video, the Delaware congresswoman recounts the loss of her husband, who died suddenly after tearing his Achilles tendon when blood clots traveled to his heart and lungs. “He was gone,” Blunt Rochester says, “and for a while, I was gone too.” She invokes the theme of “bright hope” – the name of a Philadelphia Baptist church she used to attend with her grandmother – to explain her next move: a run for Congress in 2016. “That’s the thing about bright hope. It can make you do crazy things.”

She also recalls the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. “People ask me if January 6 was my worst day. It was,” Blunt Rochester says. “But it was also one of my proudest moments. Because we walked back in that House chamber and we completed our work. The forces of fear did not win and democracy prevailed.”

Blunt Rochester has previously spoken to CNN about her experience that day – and how she took off her congressional pin and held it in her hand when the Capitol was under siege. “As a Black woman, I had to think twice about – do I take it off or do I keep it on? If I take it off, will the people who are trying to protect me not recognize it? And if I keep it on, will I be attacked?” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the first anniversary of the attack.

Her announcement video features the scarf she carried with her that day, which is imprinted with an image of the voting card of her great-great-great grandfather, whom she says was a freed slave.

Blunt Rochester is a national co-chair of the 2024 reelection campaign of President Joe Biden, a fellow Delawarean. In the House, she serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee and is a member of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the pro-business New Democrat Coalition. Prior to entering Congress, she served an array of roles in state government, including as secretary of labor under Carper’s gubernatorial administration.

Her political career began as an intern for Carper when he was in the US House, and she has already garnered the support of the politician she hopes to succeed. Carper said after announcing his retirement that he’d back her if she ran.

“We love Lisa, and I spoke with her this morning and I said you’ve been patiently waiting for me to get out the way, and I’m gonna get out of the way, and I hope you run, and I hope you will let me support you and support you in that mission, and she said, ‘Yes, I will let you support me,’” the senator told reporters in May.

The Democratic primary is likely to be the key election in this race. Biden carried Delaware by nearly 20 points in 2020, and Republicans haven’t won a Senate race in the First State since 1994.

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