Everton Blair makes history as Georgia sends a new voice to Congress
Campaign photo: Everton Blair for Congress
Everton Blair heads to Congress | ABNN NewsbreakJamie Jackson, Correspondent
ATLANTA (ABNN) - Everton Blair is preparing to enter Congress with only months left in the term and a long list of fights already waiting for him.
Blair won the race to serve the remainder of the late Congressman David Scott's term in Georgia's 13th Congressional District. Scott died April 22 after more than two decades in Congress.
Blair, 34, is set to become one of the newest Black members of Congress when he is sworn in Monday.
He is an Atlanta-area educator and former math teacher who served in Atlanta public schools. He later served on the Gwinnett County School Board, where he became the youngest member ever elected and later served as board chair.
But Blair told The American Black News Network that his focus now is not simply making history.
It is what people are facing.
“We need to stand up against this administration's attempts to make our lives more miserable and less affordable,” Blair said.
“And that starts with these billions of dollars a day that we are wasting on an unnecessary war in Iran,” he said.
Blair said his to-do list is long because of where he believes the country is right now.
“Why is no one talking about the fact that we are in a recession? People are talking about affordability because the prices are too high. But we're also literally in a receding economy that needs economic stimulus for us to get out of it,” Blair said.
Campaign photo: Everton Blair for Congress
Blair is entering Congress after a Supreme Court decision this spring that voting rights advocates say weakened Black political power and representation, particularly in the South.
For Blair, that moment is personal and historic.
“People fought, bled, and died for the right for us to have the power of the vote. And the very act that was passed to ensure that we had equal access has been gutted repeatedly by this president and his appointees to the Supreme Court, who have reversed the important decisions that allowed for racially proportionate representation in our Congress,” Blair said.
“We are now living in a generation where my grandparents might have had more representation than I will,” he said.
Blair is the son of Jamaican immigrants. He holds degrees from Harvard and Stanford.
He will serve the remainder of Scott's term, stepping into the seat after the death of one of Georgia’s longest-serving Black members of Congress.
Scott represented Georgia in the U.S. House for more than two decades and became the first Black chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
Blair said he is ready to begin the work.
“We can do better and do more if we do so together. And I'm excited to strengthen the work and to get to it,” Blair said.
His time in the seat will be short.
But the issues waiting for him are not small.
They include affordability, war, voting rights and the question of what representation means when Black political power is being challenged across the country.
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