Lucia “Lucy” McBath was a longtime flight attendant who became a powerful spokesperson for actions to stop gun violence after her 17-year-old son was murdered. Tuesday night, she won the Democratic nomination for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in a run-off. The 2016 VH1 Dear Mama “Mother of the Year” will face first-term Rep. Karen Handel, a Republican best known for her push to defund Planned Parenthood when she was an executive at the Susan G. Komen foundation, and who narrowly won a 2017 special election for the seat.
McBath became one of the “Mothers of The Movement” after her son Jordan Davis was killed in Florida in 2012 by a man who objected to the music he was playing in his car. The gunman initially avoided conviction after citing the state’s Stand Your Ground law. McBath became a national spokesperson for Everytown for Gun Safety and for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, urging legislative solutions to the problem.
Frustrated by Donald Trump’s empty, broken promise to take action on guns after the Parkland mass school shooting and inspired by the student survivors’ activism, she decided to run for Congress.
Her work on gun violence made her a top priority for the movement: The Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund invested more than $1.2 million in independent expenditures to support her candidacy.
McBath is one of a growing number of women first-time candidates — and women of color — who will be on the ballot in November. In the other Georgia Democratic runoff for a House seat on Tuesday, another woman — professor Carolyn Bourdeaux — won the nomination to take on Republican Rep. Rob Woodall.