In 2008 Donna F. Edwards won a special election to become
the first African-American woman elected to Congress from
Maryland. In her nine years in the House, Edwards earned
a reputation as a leading progressive who worked to raise
the minimum wage, invest in scientific research, and protect
women from domestic violence. “People do want change,”
she said during her primary campaign in 2008. “And the
question is whether they have enough confidence and
courage. Change is liberating, but it’s hard.”1
Donna F. Edwards was born in Yanceyville, North
Carolina, on June 28, 1958, the second of six children.
Her father, John Edwards, served in the United States Air
Force, and her mother, Mary, was a homemaker. The family
moved frequently with each new duty assignment. Edwards
attended high school in New Mexico and graduated from
North Carolina’s Wake Forest University in 1980 with
an English degree. After college, Edwards worked as an
assistant director for the United Nations Development
Program before moving into the private sector. She later
worked as a project engineer at the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight
Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland. She then went to law
school, earning a JD from Franklin Pierce Law Center in
Concord, New Hampshire, in 1989. Edwards married
and had one son, Jared, before she divorced her husband.
During the separation, Edwards and her son briefly
experienced homelessness, relying on a food pantry for
meals, before moving in with her mother.2
Edwards began her public career with a series of
nonprofit advocacy groups. “I have a passion for working
in the nonprofit sector,” she recalled, “and I wasn’t willing
to give it up.”3
In 1992 she joined Public Citizen and
Congress Watch to advocate on consumer issues. Two years
later, she moved to the Center for a New Democracy where
she worked on campaign finance reform and rose to the
position of executive director. In 1996 she helped found and
lead the National Network to End Domestic Violence—an
issue she confronted in her own marriage. In 2000 Edwards
became the executive director of the Arca Foundation, a
social equity and justice advocacy group.4
In 2006 Edwards challenged seven-term incumbent
Representative Albert Russell Wynn in the Democratic
primary for a seat in the United States House of
Representatives from Maryland’s Fourth Congressional
District. The district straddled Prince George’s County,
Anne Arundel County, and Montgomery County in Maryland, and bordered the District of Columbia. Prince
George’s County is predominantly African-American, and,
together with Montgomery County, the district had a
large population of federal workers; the district primarily
voted Democratic. Edwards had started her campaign late
in 2006, but it was well-funded, and she ran to the left of
Wynn, who was known as a centrist. Edwards challenged
Wynn’s support for the Iraq War and his ties with the
business community. Her campaign caught fire through
Internet bloggers who publicized her candidacy, drawing
funds and celebrity endorsements from Barbra Streisand,
Danny Glover, and Gloria Steinem.5
Wynn narrowly staved
off Edwards’s challenge that year, winning by 50 percent to
her 46 percent. Edwards began her 2008 campaign the day
after her 2006 defeat.6
By the 2008 Democratic primary, Edwards had won the
endorsement of MoveOn.org, the National Organization for
Women, and EMILY’s List. Refusing to accept contributions
from political action committees, she criticized Wynn
for accepting campaign donations from special interests.7
Edwards won the 2008 primary, taking 59 percent of the
vote to Wynn’s 37 percent.8
When Wynn resigned at the
end of May, Maryland officials set a special election for
June 17. Edwards won the special election over Republican
challenger Peter James, a technology developer, 86 percent
to 13 percent.9
She went on to win the full term later that
fall and easily won re-election in all her subsequent races.10
Edwards’s committee assignments in the House reflected
the interests and concerns of her constituents. Not only
was she a former NASA employee, but her district sat
adjacent to world-renowned Goddard Space Flight Center.
Her district was also home to thousands of federal workers
who commuted daily to the nation’s capital, often through
heavy traffic. As such, Democratic leaders appointed her
to the Science and Technology Committee (which was
renamed Science, Space, and Technology in 2011) where
she served on two subcommittees: Space (where she later
became ranking member) and Environment. Edwards
also had a seat on the Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee and served on three subcommittees: Highways
and Transit; Water Resources and Environment; and
Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency
Management. During the 112th Congress (2011–2013) she
also served on the Ethics Committee.11
Edwards used her seat on the Science, Space, and
Technology Committee to support funding for NASA and
to give a boost to measures encouraging minority education
in science and mathematics.12 On Transportation and
Infrastructure, Edwards took an interest in mass transit
legislation, specifically on projects to improve rail traffic
in the Washington metropolitan area. She used her seat on
the committee to question federal agencies about the lack
of funding for projects in her district, “making them answer
questions about why there was this kind of disparity and
pushing them to open up the doors of opportunity for this
majority African-American county,” she later said.13 She
promoted the addition of rail service to connect the two
northern ends of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit
Authority system (commonly called Metro) with a new
purple line and to investigate the possibility of rail service
on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge connecting Maryland to
Virginia south of the District.14
On national issues, Edwards supported a resolution
to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan and remained
critical of the pace of the troop withdrawal from Iraq.15 In
2008 she only voted for the financial-services bailout after
a direct appeal by Democratic presidential nominee Barack
Obama.16 Two of her recurring pieces of legislation included
the WAGES Act—introduced in 2009, 2011, and 2013—which sought to raise the national minimum wage, and her
21st Century Investment Act—introduced in four straight
Congresses (111th though the 114th [2009–2017])—which
would have improved the tax incentives for conducting
research in the United States.17
Alongside her legislative interests, she assisted in
candidate recruitment for the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee (DCCC) in 2012 before being
tapped by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California
to lead the effort in 2014.18 Edwards later said she enjoyed
“talking to prospective candidates to recruit them, but
also identifying candidates that hadn’t come through the
traditional sources by calling my friends in organized labor
and my friends in the nonprofit sector across the country
saying, ‘Who do you know?’”19 Alongside her campaign
work, Edwards served as co-chair of the Democratic
Steering and Policy Committee, which helped drive the
party’s agenda in the House.20 “She’s already achieved a
status in the caucus, title or not, as a go-to person, a leader,”
Pelosi said of Edwards in 2014.21
When Barbara A. Mikulski announced her retirement
from the U.S. Senate, Edwards declared her candidacy
for the open seat in March 2015, pledging to champion “the middle-class American dream.” She quickly won the
endorsement of EMILY’s List and other progressive groups,
but the Congressional Black Caucus refused to endorse
either her or her Democratic challenger, fellow Maryland
Representative Christopher Van Hollen. Edwards ended
up losing to Van Hollen in the primary, 53 to 39 percent.22
In her concession speech, Edwards voiced a number of
concerns about the future of her party, including issues
she had faced in the House during her career on the Hill.
“What I want to know from my Democratic Party is, when
will the voices of people of color, when will the voices
of women, when will the voices of labor, when will the
voices of black women, when will our voices be effective,
legitimate equal leaders in a big-tent party?”23
After finishing her term in the 114th Congress
(2015–2017), Edwards got behind the wheel of an RV she
christened “Lucille” and drove around the country, visiting
national parks and spending time at historic sites, including
the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. She used the
trip to connect to people and places “who are not centered
around Washington,” she said in an interview midway
through her travels. Improving access and opportunities for
underrepresented communities remained forefront during
her cross-country trip. “There are 104 women who serve in
the United States Congress, a very small percentage of them
are Black and Brown women,” she said. “We need many
more women in every step of our elected office.”24
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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