Democrats have targeted him for years without success, but Turner’s margin of victory was cut by more than half between 2016 and 2018, from 31 points to 14. Tims in the Oregon District in Dayton, Ohio, one block from the mass shooting site.

They were a family of workers. “The fact that she would bring a Georgetown Law degree back to West Dayton and offer herself for service, that’s a pretty big deal. The experiences of Desiree Tims — this little Black girl from West Dayton, as she internalized it for all those years — form the core of every argument she makes to be the next representative for West Dayton. Tims with her grandfather at her graduation from Xavier.

Turner, the Republican incumbent, has won high National Rifle Association ratings, thanks to his staunch opposition to gun control.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit hard, with a recent spike in COVID-19 cases prompting the mayor, and days later the governor, to require masks in public places. They don’t understand what it’s like to ration out gas, because you can’t take all of your trips, because you need to make sure this full tank lasts two weeks.”.

“Obviously I was full of dismay, but I had to remind her that heroes live with courage out loud,” he said. Black turnout in the district dropped from 73% to 59% between the two previous presidential elections and was 43% in 2018, according to data provided by Tims’ polling team. For college she chose Xavier, a Jesuit school in Cincinnati — close enough to family, but far enough to have her own life. Black. “It’s a challenge, because she didn’t come to it the way some do,” Brown said in a telephone interview. As a Black candidate, protests over systemic racism and police brutality bring an expectation to lead. Her work included a rotation through the Office of Presidential Correspondence, where she “read all of Obama’s hate mail,” and through the Office of Public Engagement, which Jarrett ran. Turner, 60, has waffled a bit in the Trump era. She was 31 years old. “It’s certainly inspiring to see people in my generation, millennials — to see Black people, to see gay people, to see people whose great-great-grandfather wasn’t a state senator go run for Congress and win,” Tims said. “What I found was most of those people are from privileged backgrounds, regardless of race or sexual orientation,” Tims said.

She would cut through the backyards of the cul-de-sac to go play with friends at the Y or walk to visit her dad, who lived nearby with his parents.

“That’s what stuck with me — it’s not a nail,” she said. I could have worked at the mall in high school, which I did. The book became highly politicized — Vance used it to promote a conservative point of view. Eventually she was elected president of the Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus, but she could not shake the same feelings she had at Xavier: that her life experiences, not just her skin color, placed her squarely in the minority.