Excerpted from THE INSTIGATORS: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy. Copyright 2026 by Atima Omara, published on May 5, 2026, by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
Although I didn’t win (which by that point I was prepared for, given everything that had happened), this experience illuminated personally what it was like to run for public office and why so many women, especially Black women, struggle to win elections, especially in primaries.
What I had experienced during that run wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me. The year before, in 2013, I had run for president of the Young Democrats of America (YDA), a national political party office role, against a popular opponent. The opponent was a Black man, so race wasn’t a factor in the election; however, gender was. But I was prepared for that, as I had worked enough for women candidates (and PACs that support women candidates) to know what to expect. But what I experienced running for a public office as a Black woman the following year was noticeably different.
When I ran for YDA president, the commentary about why I wasn’t qualified was more gendered. Before my campaign, I was vice president of YDA and had heard only good things about my service: my fundraising efforts, the partnerships I had engineered with progressive organizations, and programming coordination for the membership. However, when I decided to run for president, I instantly became “difficult to work with” and “mean.”
… Voters don’t need to *like* men to elect them.
I won support from one state delegation leader because a supporter of my opponent called me a bitch to his face. My only response was to dispel the concern that I was not “likable” by attending and speaking at YDA conventions and hanging out with members after events at dinners and happy hours.
Research on women candidates confirms that voters are less likely to vote for a woman if they don’t like her; by comparison, voters don’t need to like men to elect them. But when I was running as the Black woman candidate in a seven-candidate primary for public office, with two other women in the race, I noticed almost nothing about my being “difficult” and more about my ability and work ethic. I definitely read this as tapping into a well-worn stereotype about Black people being lazy, but I was confused as to why this stereotype was emphasized when it obviously didn’t line up with the facts. I learned later through research that besides wanting women candidates to be likable and qualified, voters want them to be women who “get results.”
In hindsight, saying I wasn’t a hard worker minimized any threat I could be in the race, while conveniently playing into tropes people believe about Black women. My experience running for public office reflected the systemic bias and double standards not just for women candidates, but Black women candidates who dare to aspire to any sort of political leadership—and that needed to change.
To be clear, all Black women do not have to run for office the way I did. However, in the fight for and rebuilding of an inclusive democracy that reflects the diversity, values and needs of most of the people of this country, we do need Instigators serving at all levels in our communities—federal, state and local. We need leaders who are passionate about serving and uniquely positioned to serve all constituents effectively because of their professional and lived experience.
Instigators are essential in leadership roles for Parent Teacher Associations, within local and state political parties, and inside civic organizations. And they make a difference.
In a study conducted by the Scholars Strategy Network on legislation submitted across 15 state legislatures in 1997 and 2005, researchers found that Black women are more likely to address the needs of multiple marginalized groups with their legislative work; second to them were Latina women. The study also found that Black women do the lion’s share of the work in proposing legislation that addresses issues of poverty and social welfare and are uniquely attuned to the ways poverty intersects with marginalization.
In short, the more progressively leaning Black women you have in public office, the more everyone benefits from their leadership.
My experience running for public office reflected the systemic bias for … Black women candidates who dare to aspire to political leadership.
We need more progressive Black women in public office for a myriad reasons, but we also specifically need the younger generation of Instigators in office, candidates who understand the times in which we live currently. In the current political system, the younger that candidates run for office, the more time they have to gain experience and seniority, which in turn provides the necessary credibility to run for higher office and do more for their communities.
Kamala Harris was a viable candidate for vice president of the United States in her mid-50s because she had served at the local, state and federal levels since she was 30 years old.
Former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams was a viable candidate for governor because she was first elected to the Georgia Legislature when she was 34 and moved up its ranks to eventually lead the Democratic caucus.
Ayanna Pressley was able to become the first Black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts at age 42 because she had been elected to Boston’s City Council years before. She had also worked behind the scenes in city and state Democratic politics for years.
Electing more Black women will take real investment in changing the biases and attitudes (conscious and unconscious) of mostly white donors, media, campaign staff, consultants and institutional leaders to help shift the culture and systems.
Data certainly shows that voters are more likely to elect Black women political leaders now than they have ever been in history. But this support needs to be substantively increased so that we can rebuild an inclusive, multiracial democracy with the leaders we want and need.
