Midterm Winners' Life Stories Show Opportunity Can Outlast Ancestral Exclusion, Columnist Argues

On the Wednesday after the US midterms, Abdul El-Sayed, newly elected to the Senate from Michigan, spoke directly to the two most powerful men in his country's government. He told Vice President JD Vance, using the Arabic endearment habibi, that there was a delicious irony in Vance being constitutionally obliged to swear him in come January. Then he addressed President Donald Trump: since Trump struggles with his name, he could simply call him Senator once Vance had done the swearing.

A Nigerian columnist at Tribune Online used those remarks as a starting point for a column about what the midterm results mean. The piece is opinion, and its argument is stated early in a Yoruba proverb: as long as we live, our accomplishments are not over. In the columnist's reading, the winners show that descendants of slaves and servants can hold the authority their ancestors were denied, and that people who built roads and felled trees can raise children who end up making laws.

The column then sets out a series of biographies. Georgia chose Keisha Lance Bottoms as governor; her great-great-grandfather was listed in a slaveholder's will and valued at $1,400. Maryland re-elected Wes Moore, whose grandfather's family fled Ku Klux Klan threats in South Carolina for Jamaica. The columnist asks readers to consider the contrast: one family priced as property, the other driven out by racial terror, and their descendants now governors.

The poverty stories come next. Ohio elected Amy Acton, who survived childhood abuse, hunger and homelessness, including a winter in a tent. Wisconsin chose David Crowley, whose family endured three evictions before he finished secondary school, while his parents struggled with addiction. New Mexico's Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo woman, once relied on food assistance while raising her child alone. Nevada's Aaron Ford, a struggling single father, needed public help to house himself and buy formula for his baby.

Minnesota sent Peggy Flanagan to the Senate and returned Ilhan Omar to the House. Flanagan was raised by a single mother who depended on housing and food assistance; Omar fled Somalia's civil war and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp. Colorado elected Ethiopian-born Melat Kiros, whose family's American journey began when her father won the diversity visa lottery. El-Sayed is the son of an Egyptian immigrant, raised by a Muslim father and a Christian stepmother. Xavier Becerra of California, a construction worker's son, was the first in his family to graduate from a four-year university. Maine sent Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger, to the Senate. The columnist notes the list is longer.

The second half of the column turns to Nigeria, and here the writing is rhetorical rather than reported. The columnist imagines El-Sayed's insults to a president ending in a Federal High Court annulling his election, and imagines victorious opposition governors and legislators surrendering their mandates to the president. He says America is lucky that its democracy can be redeemed, and tells ruling APC politicians who chant about renewed hope that the midterms are where truly renewed hopes were found. These are the author's characterizations, not findings.

For the biographical claims, the columnist points readers to sources: Bottoms's memoir, The Rough Side of the Mountain; Time's profile of Moore; the Associated Press on Acton and Jackson; David Crowley's interview with The Tap; campaign biographies for Haaland, Kiros, El-Sayed and Becerra; The Nevada Independent on Ford; Minnesota Public Radio on Flanagan; and Omar's congressional biography. He closes by observing that no season lasts forever, and that people have seen a prince become a slave and a pawn become wealthy.