On November 8, 2022, Erin Maye Quade, Zaynab Mohamed, and Clare Oumou Verbeten became the first Black women in the Minnesota Senate. Quade is focused on families, specifically childhood hunger. She is committed to working across the aisle and representing the diversity of the constituents in the communities she serves.
Her interest in politics began when she was a freshman in high school. At 14, she was fascinated with the 2000 “Bush v Gore” election recount when Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. This hadn’t happened since 1888 when Benjamin Harrison lost to Grover Cleveland.
Most of her early work has been in community organizing. She was organizing for then-congressman Keith Ellison when she expressed concerns about childhood hunger. He asked when she would run for office.
“I was a little bit taken aback,” she says. From her organizing background, she thought, “I don’t run for office; I work for people who run for office.”
The connections she built through organizing and a passion for community issues made her a good candidate for elected office. “What are you waiting for?” Ellison asked regarding running for office.
“I didn’t have a good answer for that,” she says. “And when you don’t have a good answer for Keith Ellison, you end up running for office.”
In 2015, she ran for and won a House seat in District 57A. In 2018, she ran and lost as the DFL primary candidate for lieutenant governor with Erin Murphy as the gubernatorial candidate against now-Governor Tim Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flannigan.
She took a break after the loss, then ran for the Senate. In 2023 she became one of three senators who were the first Black female senators in the state. Her focus was and continues to be childhood hunger.
“Part of the solution for me is universal school meals to make sure that children have access to meals at school,” she says. Though wages are rising, food costs are rising faster. Avian flu is causing a shortage of eggs and driving up prices.
As families struggle to keep up with the cost, food shelves are working hard to fill the gap. They experienced an increase in visits by 7% in 2020 related to Covid and supply chain challenges. Once these issues subsided, the demand for food shelf services did not decline.
“One of my bills was an emergency $5 million emergency funding to food shelves last year,” says Maye Quade. Yet while consumers are dealing with rising grocery prices, corporations are experiencing record profits.
Maye Quade is interested in regulations for large corporations including tech industries. This includes AI, consumer data usage, and data manipulation.
Dynamic pricing is one way that technology can influence food prices. Digital labels make it easier to change prices on demand. “If it’s hot outside, they could say the price of ice cream is $1.50 more,” Maye Quade explains. “I’m hoping we can prevent those types of essentially surge pricing for food.”
Regulation can decrease the impact tech companies can have on average citizens. “I think it’s important for lawmakers to be applying the regulatory framework that we already have in place,” says Maye Quade.
“Whether it’s price fixing, data selling, or manipulation of citizens, we somehow never applied [those regulations] to the digital world.”
With the current administration attacking DEI programs, cultural issues are at the forefront of politics. During her run for office in 2015, Maye Quade says racism was coded. After Trump’s first term in office, that changed.
“The public push to resegregate society has taken such a hold that the way in which people feel comfortable being openly racist has changed,” she says. “It’s not new racism; it’s just more overtly expressed racism.”
Maye Quade sees the importance of diversity when she comes in contact with little girls. “They say, you look like me, or your hair looks like my hair. That representation matters to them,” she says. “You can’t be what you can’t see. And up until 2023, no Black girls saw themselves in the Minnesota Legislature or the Minnesota Senate.”
Maye Quade describes herself as “very openly gay.” But unlike race, sexual orientation isn’t something someone sees at first glance. What she sees is the attack on the LGBT community, specifically those who identify as transgender.
“I worry about being safe, or being able to parent my daughter, or being able to stay married,” she says. “I know that there are lots of constituents who are worrying about the same things.”
Maye Quade was elected vice chair to the people of color and indigenous legislature caucus, or POCI. She also represents a diverse community, so the increase in attacks based on identity is something they experience in their everyday lives.
“I get to bring those experiences into the Legislature,” she says, “and make Minnesota a place where who you are, what you look like, and where you were born doesn’t determine your outcome.”
Will a divided government prevent her from working across the aisle with her Republican counterparts? “I do think that we will have some good bipartisan legislation to pass whether it comes to building families, or literacy, or tech and AI.
“I pride myself with being able to work across the aisle to get things done for Minnesotans,” she continues. “And I think that will continue no matter who is in power.”
What can constituents do to make sure legislation works for them? “I think people assume that legislators know…the ways in which they experience the policies and laws of this state,” she says. “But without them sharing their stories with us, we don’t know.
“So, I always encourage folks to reach out and share their stories, because sometimes all it takes is one story to get something changed.”
Vickie Evans-Nash welcomes reader responses to vnash@spokesman-recorder.com.