Nabilah for Congress
Nabilah Islam is backed by a growing number of progressive organizations in her bid to represent Georgia’s Seventh District.
Two days before we spoke on May 31, Nabilah Islam had joined with protesters in Atlanta who were calling for an end to police violence and racist policing. Islam is running for Congress in Georgia’s Seventh District, which includes Gwinnett County near Atlanta. It’s an open seat, and the Democratic primary is June 9.
Islam, 30, said that she didn’t see any elected officials or candidates at the protest she attended. “I think it’s very important that we’re present with people on the ground,” she said. “I think the status quo isn’t working when a leading cause of death for young black men are police encounters in this country.”
If she were elected to Congress, Islam said that she would address criminal justice reform at the federal level, including keeping a registration of decertified police officers and demilitarizing the police. “We don’t need tanks. We don’t need tear gas,” she said, noting that tear gas is considered chemical warfare internationally. The U.S. has signed treaties banning its use in war, but still uses the chemical against its own people, she noted.
Georgia’s Seventh District is a majority-minority district that has never had a person of color representing it.
Georgia’s Seventh District is diverse and growing more so. It’s a majority-minority district that has never had a person of color representing it. The seat is being vacated by Republican Rob Woodall, a six-term incumbent who entered Congress as part of the Tea Party wave of 2010. In 2018, amid demographic and ideological shifts in the district, he defeated his Democratic opponent, Carolyn Bourdeaux, by just 433 votes.
Bourdeaux, a professor at Georgia State University who previously worked as an aide to Ron Wyden when he was in the House and Senate, is leading the six-way Democratic primary this year, aided by name recognition garnered by the closest 2018 congressional race in the country. But Islam positions herself to Bourdeaux’s left, supporting Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. She says that the district was ready for a progressive even in 2018. “I truly believe that this district was left behind in the 2018 blue wave,” she said. “I really believe that her loss is indicative of her candidacy.” Stacey Abrams won the district in her gubernatorial race in 2018, Islam noted.
“We need a candidate that energizes the base and expands the electorate and gets people from the community to get out and vote,” Islam said. “I think a lot of people don’t vote because people think they don’t see themselves in their candidate.”
The Democratic primary is June 9 after being postponed from its originally scheduled March 24 date. The state has sent primary ballots to 1.6 million voters who requested them, so much of Islam’s campaigning in the final days has involved making sure that voters have their ballots and that they mail them in. But according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, thousands of voters haven’t yet received their absentee ballots. With more precincts closed on Election Day, and officials worried that many precinct workers may quit, safely voting could become a chore. Absentee ballots will only be counted if received by 7 p.m. on June 9.
Islam, who attended local public schools, says her working-class roots and the experience of her immigrant Bangladeshi parents inform her policy positions. “One of the reasons I’m running for office is I’m really inspired by my mother,” she said. “She doesn’t have a high school degree. She busted her butt.”
Islam recalled that her mother frequently worked overtime at a warehouse, picking up boxes and putting them on trucks. Eventually, her mother herniated two discs and her insurance company tried to deny her benefits. Islam said she was on every phone call, translating and pushing for the company to cover her mother. “Had we not won, we could have been like two-thirds of families that go bankrupt because of medical debt,” she said.
In Gwinnett and Forsyth Counties, which comprise the Seventh District, one in four residents are foreign-born. Gwinnett County is one of the most diverse in the Southeast, Islam said. The county also has the highest rate of deportations in Georgia. “We’re seeing a real hunger for reflective representation,” Islam said. She said that a “huge portion” of the district are first-generation immigrants like her and her little brother, raised by immigrant parents.
IN AN ECHO of the grassroots victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Islam has spent the last year wearing out the soles of her shoes going door-to-door campaigning. But with the arrival of the coronavirus, she had to quickly transition to an all-virtual campaign.
“We haven’t knocked on a door since March, which is pretty wild since the election is in ten days,” she said. Instead, the candidate has put on virtual town halls, worked the phones, and spent a lot of time on Facebook Live and Instagram Live. As of May 20, Islam had raised over $600,000 for the primary.
Murshed Zaheed, a Democratic strategist with Megaphone Strategies, said that Islam is set up well to emerge victorious if this were a normal election cycle. “She’s scrappy, she fights, she works hard, she’s tenacious. The challenge right now for her is that we’re in this pandemic,” he said. “We need her to rise up and emerge as part of the next generation of Democrats that the party desperately needs.”
Zaheed also works closely with Matriarch, a new PAC founded roughly six months ago to support working-class women running for office. The model is similar to Justice Democrats. Nomiki Konst, who is on Matriarch’s board, explained that Matriarch offers candidates the kind of support that more conventional and wealthy candidates might already have. “I’m obsessed with structures and how organizations are structured and it was very clear that there weren’t enough working-class women who were running,” Konst said. Among the group’s endorsed candidates are Samelys López (NY-15), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Morgan Harper, who ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH).
Matriarch helps candidates navigate FEC deadlines, campaign and media strategies, and even field training—help that they might not otherwise be able to find. Konst also said that Matriarch might provide briefings or seminars on certain legislation, like the recent HEROES Act pandemic response, and what candidates might need to know about it.
It’s much harder for women of working-class backgrounds to prove that their candidacy is legitimate, Konst explained. And that snowballs when they also can’t get early endorsements that might help “legitimize” their candidacy early in the race.
Just last month, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Courage to Change PAC endorsed Islam, and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) endorsed Islam in February. Other endorsements include Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and André Carson (D-IN), 350 Climate Action, and Our Revolution Georgia.
WHEN ISLAM DECLARED her candidacy, she was taking on a risk—an expensive one. After deciding to run full-time, she lost her health insurance and petitioned the FEC to use campaign funds to pay for coverage. The petition was inspired by Liuba Grechen Shirley, who ran for office in 2018 and got the FEC to approve her use of campaign funds for child care.
Now, Islam is weathering a pandemic without health insurance, and the FEC, which didn’t even have a quorum for nine months until May, has yet to make a decision on her petition. Her mother is out of work, and she’s put her student loans into forbearance, which, she explained, only means she has to pay them later and with more interest.
Nabilah Islam: “I think a lot of people don’t vote because people think they don’t see themselves in their candidate.”
“These are the barriers that prevent so many of us from running and being in the halls of Congress,” she said. “It’s been very frustrating not being able to see a doctor. It was frustrating before the pandemic and it’s scarier now during a pandemic. I work where 20 percent of people don’t have health insurance … and that is one of the reasons that I’m running for office. I believe that health care is a human right.” She hopes the FEC will rule in her favor, helping to create a more representative Congress and a more equitable playing field.
“When you look at Nabilah’s race, not only has she done everything that naysayers said she couldn’t do, she’s doing it with extraordinary challenges,” Konst said. “There’s a tremendous amount of personal pressure attached to it.”
Islam said she believes that the moment is right for someone like her to win. “We’re a country that’s starving for representation,” she said. “You can’t be what you can’t see. Women like Rashida Tlaib were pioneers and made me believe in myself.”
“My name is Nabilah Islam. It’s an American name.”
