Senate Candidate Lisa Blunt Rochester on Increasing Ballot Access and Working With John Lewis on Voting Rights
Serving as Delaware’s sole U.S. House member since 2017, Lisa Blunt Rochester is now aiming to represent the entire state as a U.S. senator.
She made history as the state’s first woman and person of color in Congress, and if she wins this upcoming election, she will also make history as a Black woman representing Delaware in the Senate. She would also be one of the only — if not the only — Black women serving in the Senate next year.
Before becoming a member of Congress in 2017, Blunt Rochester had never held public office before, though she had worked in the administrations of two Delaware governors. She also was the CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League — the Delaware chapter of the National Urban League — which has “a mission to empower people of color to achieve economic self-reliance, parity, power, and civil rights.”
Blunt Rochester is running against Republican candidate Eric Hansen, a former Walmart executive, who has centered his campaign around being a political outsider. Delaware hasn’t elected a Republican senator in 30 years.
In Democracy Docket’s latest candidate Q&A for the 2024 cycle, Blunt Rochester discusses how she seeks to increase ballot access, details the traumatic experience of being in the House Gallery on Jan. 6, explains how she worked with John Lewis on protecting voting rights and reveals her go-to McDonald’s order.
Responses have been edited for style and clarity.
Can you tell us why you’re running for Senate? How did you come to that decision?
This actually started back in 1988. I would say my journey into public service started when I was a grad student at the University of Delaware. I went to a town hall meeting [for then-Rep. Tom Carper (D-Del.)], and I had my two-year-old son on my hip. I was pregnant at the time and didn’t even know it. And afterward, I just went up and met the congressman and said,
“I want to be involved; I want to help save the world.” And he said, “you should apply for an internship in our office.”
That internship turned into a career of public service, from being an intern to a caseworker, and helping individuals with their problems with social security and disability [assistance] and [helping] people who were unhoused. [I said], can’t we do more to get people housing instead of putting them on waiting lists? I was then responsible for bringing federal dollars to Delaware.
[Carper] became governor, and then I served in his cabinet as deputy secretary of health and social services, as well as secretary of labor, where I got to see the importance of good jobs and allowing people to live their purpose. I got to see firsthand the challenges of substance abuse disorders. I had seen them from my own family, and now I was seeing it from a policy perspective, [as well as] health disparities. I was helping people to just be able to live their full lives.
Then, he left as governor and a new governor came in — our first woman governor in Delaware — Ruth Ann Minner, and she asked me to be a member of her cabinet, where I served as head of state personnel. It was hiring, firing and training — the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life. As secretary of labor, I was connecting people to jobs and the economy. This was during the year of Anthrax, and 9/11 happened during that time. I had to investigate the state police for racial and sexual discrimination during that time. And I turned 40.
Everything happened, and I was like I need to [go on] a pilgrimage. I need to go away. I ended up doing an assignment in the country of Jordan for King Abdullah’s Poverty Alleviation Strategy where I got a chance to work with the minister of labor there, raise the minimum wage and get women into the workforce.
I came back changed, and I ended up changing my job. I went to the nonprofit sector, the [Metropolitan Wilmington] Urban League, as the CEO. I changed my house, my car and my husband of 40 years. Everything changed. And I ended up, after a few years, falling in love with my soulmate. He was working in Shanghai, and I ended up moving to Shanghai for a few years and wrote a book with some other women.
But, my husband went on a business trip, and he ruptured his Achilles tendon before meetings, and blood clots went to his heart and lungs. And at age 52, the love of my life passed away. It shook me to the core. And I remember it like it was yesterday — that whole year just being on autopilot — and being in the supermarket with a dad in front of me and three kids putting back grapes because they were $9. And it just shook me out of my own pain, and it made me recognize that I’m still alive. I can do something. I can serve.
And in Delaware, my city [Wilmington] was being called Murder Town because of gun violence. I decided I have nothing to lose and everything to give, and I’m going to run for office, having never run for anything in my life. I was debating lawyers. People said I looked like a deer in the headlights. I was a deer in the headlights because I was scared, but every story propelled me to keep going. And in 2016, I won.
I became the first woman elected to Congress from Delaware and the first person of color. I got to work on issues like clean drinking water, democracy, healthcare, supply chains and jobs. And that sort of propelled me to this place. But the Senate is an opportunity to do it on a deeper level — to work on reproductive freedom and to also work for democracy. This moment is truly about our democracy.
As a congresswoman, what have you done to protect democracy? And as a senator, what would you continue to do to protect it?
I think it’s important to show up and participate. And so whether it’s me when I worked on campaigns or me running myself, I feel that’s a part of my democratic responsibility and duty. In Congress, I’ve been able to be at the table for some of the most consequential pieces of legislation and co-sponsor them and vote for them, like the For the People Act led by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) or the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
When [John Lewis’] bill was up in the Senate, I joined [House] members and walked across the Capitol to be in that chamber to show our presence as well, and I got to do that with John Lewis himself. I was really fortunate and blessed to not only be with him as he advocated for these bills but to even stand on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with him. And it’s one of the reasons why this is so important to me.
So, it is passing legislation, and it is stepping up myself. Even in this present moment, as I think about the Senate, some people might not know on Jan. 6 I was one of the people trapped in the gallery. I saw how close we were to losing it. I mean, I could hear the gunshots on one side. I could see down on the other side — Capitol Police barricading that door, and we could hear the banging, and all I could do in that moment was pray.
But, I also will tell you at that moment and the year after, I recommitted to our democracy because I just know how important it is. And so in the Senate, I will fight for voting rights. I will fight for our reproductive freedoms.
In February, a Delaware Superior Court struck down laws allowing at least 10 days of early voting and allowing certain eligible voters to apply for permanent absentee status. How do you think that this ruling will affect voters in November? And what is the true effect of this? (After this interview, the Delaware Supreme Court reinstated these laws.)
First of all, there’s the effect in Delaware, and there’s the effect nationally. Nationally, people need to see this as an alarm. Many people don’t think of Delaware as a state where extreme Republicans are trying to take away rights. But even in Delaware, where we were able to get early voting as well as permanent absentee voting passed here, [Republicans] have sued to be able to take that right away. And so our attorney general, as well as members of our legislature, are fighting to make sure that we restore it.
The impact is on working people who don’t have flexibility and individuals with disabilities. The fact that every time they want an absentee ballot, they’ve got to go back and redo [the application]. It’s crazy. Part of this effort I think is to diminish and really depress voter turnout. And what we’re saying is that we need to be more open and [have] more possibilities for people to vote, not less.
We’re only one of four states now where you’ve got to go [vote] on Election Day. It’s us, New Hampshire, Mississippi and Alabama. I was on the phone recently with our attorney general on her efforts to appeal this decision, but also our legislators are working [on this] as well.
As a campaign, we’re going to ramp up [these efforts] even more. We’re going to make sure that everybody knows how you can vote, how we can get you to vote and make sure that we spread the word. We’re going to continue to fight for more access and not less.
A lawsuit was filed in December against the governor and other state officials arguing that people incarcerated in the state — who are detained awaiting trial or have been convicted of a non-disqualifying misdemeanor — are eligible voters, but the state is disenfranchising them. What are your thoughts on this? And what kind of effect do you think this will have on voters?
Our goal should be: if you are eligible to vote, we need to make sure that you have access to the ballot. If we take away the ability for you to do it, that’s a problem.
You get one vote, whether you’re a gazillionaire or whether you don’t have means. And so for us, we want people to see their connection to the vote, the connection from clean water to the vote, the connection from your reproductive freedoms to your vote. And so our goal is to encourage people and to motivate them and to give them the actual opportunities to vote.
Your Republican opponent, Eric Hansen, has a section on his website titled Defending Democracy, and it only focuses on protecting democracy abroad and foreign threats. If you had a section on your website called Defending Democracy, what would be included?
[Voting] is such a precious right, and we want to help people to exercise it. I support the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Advancement Rights Act because one deals with historic discrimination and the other deals with things like same-day registration, access, early voting and voter protection from intimidation. We’ve got a former president that has made people afraid to work at the polls. As we look at democracy, we want to make the tent bigger, not smaller.
On the day that I was sworn into Congress, I knew it was going to be a special day. We were making Delaware history, and I wanted to wear something special or carry something special. And my sister found a document that allowed our great, great, great grandfather, who had been enslaved, to have the right to vote. We turned it into a scarf that I carried on the day that I was sworn in. It’s the Returns of Qualified Voters and Reconstruction Oath from 1867. On the bottom is an X. He couldn’t even read or write, but he marked his X to have this precious freedom.
I also had this scarf with me on the day of the insurrection. And people ask, what’s the best day I’ve had in Congress, and what’s the worst? It’s the same day. It was the worst day because we saw people with Confederate flags storming our Capitol and trying to take away this incredible democracy we have. But, it was the best day because we went back at two or three in the morning, and we certified the election of [President] Joe Biden and [Vice President] Kamala Harris. And so for me, what is on that page is the vision of all of us coming together in a democratic way to exercise our right to vote and to participate. To me, protecting those freedoms and protecting those rights is really what this moment is about.
Your first job was at a McDonald’s in Wilmington, Delaware, so I wanted to ask you, what is your go-to McDonald’s order?
My team will tell you: I literally have to have a little bit of everything. So I’ll go small. I’ll start with a happy meal of the cheeseburger and fries, but then I have to add some nuggets to it. And then on the cheeseburger, I might ask for some Big Mac sauce and some lettuce because I used to work there, and I would make Little Macs instead of Big Macs.
It’s funny; we were just in an airport recently and I said, I’m gonna have to go to McDonald’s. I can’t figure out [what to get] from these other restaurants here. And [my team] was like, you feel so bad about that, don’t you? I can even do the old jingle for those who are old enough to know the Big Mac jingle. I still know it in my heart. So, thanks for that question.