This story was originally published by The 19th.
CHICAGO — Minyon Moore’s name has never been on a ballot. She’s not giving speeches to thousands of adoring voters chanting her name. She’s not running to be the nation’s commander in chief.
But she helped pave a path for Vice President Kamala Harris to do all those things — and accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination at next week’s convention. In her 40 years of working in Democratic politics, Moore has become one of the party’s most respected voices. She was part of a group that advised President Joe Biden on selecting Harris as his running mate and on nominating Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
Now, Moore is the chair of the Democratic National Convention, charged with managing more than 150 full-time staffers on the event’s production, from choosing the location to planning the programming.
The role comes during an unusual election year in which Biden, the party’s presumptive nominee, stepped aside four weeks before thousands of Democratic delegates and party leaders were set to gather in Chicago. After a rapid campaign launch, the convention will go forward with celebrating Harris as the first Black woman and first Asian American to secure a major party nomination for president.
Moore’s background, which includes roles both in and out of the White House, has prepared her to oversee the massive event. She’s a South Side Chicago native who wanted to ensure that local residents and businesses felt included in the convention process. Known as a “diplomat” among her friends, Moore has maintained relationships with both advocates and people in all levels of government who can shape the convention’s programming. Her time in the Clinton White House may be an asset as the party aims to solidify voter support by highlighting the Biden-Harris administration’s accomplishments and Harris’ vision for the future.
Barbara Kinney/The White House/Getty Images
Barbara Kinney/The White House/Getty Images
Moore had no way of predicting the switch up in this year’s nomination process. But Harris — a history-making woman and the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — represents the type of leader Moore has helped lay the foundation for throughout her career as a Black woman at the top echelon of American politics.
“I became very familiar with the politics of people of color, the politics of Black people, and then I was able to expand my base,” Moore told The 19th. “When I go into a room, if I don’t see Asian Americans, if I don’t see anyone in the LGBTQ community, if I don’t see Black women — and sometimes if I don’t see white men — I’m like, ‘OK, well, what’s wrong with this table?’ That’s how I was trained. I was trained to see who is not at the table, and that’s been an important benchmark for me in how I like to lead today.”
Moore cut her teeth as an organizer in Chicago and a member of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, which sought to build a coalition of people of color, the working class and LGBTQ+ people. Years later, she was part of “Hillaryland,” Hillary Clinton’s inner circle during her 2008 and 2016 bids to become the country’s first woman president.
For Moore, her work to push boundaries on diversity comes down to remaining optimistic about the American people’s values, she said.
“What I bet on is the American people and voters. I can be idealistic about what I want, but in the end, the voters have to make the decision,” Moore said. “What I do know is that America has come a long way. So the truth is, what I remain hopeful about and optimistic about is that America is smarter about inclusion.”
The Chicago political scene in the 1970s and ‘80s served as a training ground for Black women in national politics. Moore was in her early 20s when she met Rev. Willie Barrow, a Black woman who, alongside Jackson, co-founded the economic empowerment organization Operation PUSH.
At that time, Moore didn’t have a seat at the table. But she did have a seat in a corner of the room where Chicago’s Black political leaders made decisions about historic moments, including the campaign of Harold Washington, who went on to become the city’s first Black mayor in 1983. Barrow was tough, but in a loving way, Moore said. Barrow instructed her to never show up to work without a pen and paper, and to always build relationships with the people she meets.
“What it did for me, just going in those rooms with her, I got to listen,” Moore said. “It sharpened my antenna and I got to meet people from all walks of life that I would have never gotten to meet. It was because she gave me the opportunity.”
Working with Barrow, Moore developed the confidence to step into any room without focusing on the disadvantages she could face as a Black woman. She instead took it as an opportunity to demonstrate her preparation and work ethic. Barrow also taught Moore another career-defining lesson: “When you get to the table, make sure you’re not the only one.”
This is a core value for both Moore and the women she surrounds herself with. Her most well-known group of friends call themselves “The Colored Girls” and have been celebrated as Black women who rose to the highest levels of American politics during a time of limited representation for communities of color. They include Moore, former DNC chairs Donna Brazile and Rev. Leah Daughtry, and political consultant Yolanda Caraway.
Black women have been champions of voting rights, labor rights and other political movements for decades, but The Colored Girls’ ascent represented a new wave of influence from inside the halls of the country’s most powerful institutions. In 1988, 30-year-old Moore was working on presidential campaigns, and by 1999 she had become the White House director of political affairs.
People in these behind-the-scenes positions are “campaign whisperers” who are often unknown to the public, which also means their contributions can be easily overlooked, said Wendy Smooth, a professor of political science at Ohio State University.
Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP
Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP
That can be a double-edged sword. Black women’s loyalty to the party — as voters, community organizers and inside strategists — can also come with being designated as “saviors” burdened with fixing the party’s problems with little support in return, said Nadia Brown, a professor of government and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University.
For the most part, Brown said, her research finds that Black women are happy to commit to that work. “These women have a really clear understanding that they are fighting for their lives and their livelihood, and whether they get the credit or not, the work has to be done anyway,” Brown said.
The Colored Girls had a range of personal goals and approaches to their work, but they never compromised on their shared values of inclusivity and diversity, said Brazile.
Moore is the glue of the group who keeps an open-door policy. After Brazile completed a Harvard fellowship in 2001, she returned to Washington, D.C., and asked if she could intern for Moore, then the chief executive of the Democratic National Committee.
“On my first day as an intern, Minyon said, ‘Now listen, Donna, I have an open door. People want to come and talk to me. They want to come and sit in my office. You don’t have to bully them about how much time they have,’” Brazile said.
“Minyon has always had that same spirit of congeniality,” she added. “I’m not a closed-door person, but I do like to secure my downtime in the office to think and be creative. But Minyon could do that while seeing four or five people at a time.”
The Colored Girls’ efforts to expand opportunities for women of color can be found around the country: a powerful network of Black women who mobilize behind political issues and candidates.
“I feel like these women who have been behind the scenes have been beating on tables saying, ‘Listen to Black women,’” Smooth said.”I think some of the strategies that they’ve adopted have focused on showing what Black women can do.”
Within hours of Harris’ announcement that she would seek the Democratic presidential nomination, 44,000 Black women gathered on a Zoom call and raised more than $1.6 million for her campaign. It was part of a weekly Sunday night meeting organized by the collective Win With Black Women, whose founder, Jotaka Eaddy, has been inspired by The Colored Girls after learning about them as a political science student at South Carolina University.
“I remember reading about The Colored Girls and just being so struck by everything that they stood for, everything that they were about,” Eaddy said. “I thought to myself, ‘My goodness, I want to be more like them.’ And I started studying The Colored Girls with no expectation that I would ever meet them.”
Eaddy went on to work for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and as a senior adviser with the NAACP. Through that work, Eaddy met Moore, who has since become her mentor and friend. They talk several times a week, Eaddy said, and she regularly seeks personal and professional advice from Moore.
In recent years, groups like Win With Black Women, She the People and The Collective PAC have shifted conversations about Black women’s organizing around elections. Moore sensed the tides turning after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
“It was devastating for Black women and women of color in particular, because we put our heart and soul behind it, and we didn’t understand why white women didn’t want to vote for her,” Moore said. “So, what we determined after that was: we have enough power to really start electing and making different changes in the political landscape.”
The Win With Black Women’s call for the Harris campaign inspired a series of others, organized by Latina women, South Asian women, white women and white “dudes.”
That excitement is part of what Moore aims to capture with the convention.
In the days following Biden’s decision to exit the race, DNC and convention staff grappled with the uncertainty of how their work and the election would be affected, said Emily Soong, a press secretary for the convention. But Moore never wavered, she added.
“Her steadiness and assurance in that moment was a lighthouse for our team, and it was a testament to how she has led through the ups and downs of the last several months,” Soong said.
Much of the convention team’s responsibility remains the same: tell the story of the Democratic Party and rally enthusiasm for the nominee. Moore said Harris has been baked into the convention agenda from the beginning, so they did not need to start from scratch. But there’s a new lifeline of party enthusiasm about Harris to harness.
When it comes to her role as the convention chair and her years of work for the party, Moore said she remains focused on the positives and the power Black women have to shape the future.
“If you want to be in the game, you’ve got to put your full self in the game, because a lot of people look to us as leaders in this,” she said. “I love this party. I love challenging this party. I love seeing the change of this party. But I also know that this work is very difficult, and change is very hard. It’s probably the hardest thing we’ll ever do in our lives.”
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