PA Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta running for U.S. Senate 'because the status quo will not save us'
After his parents split up, a young Malcolm Kenyatta walked into his home one day and complained to his mother about the trash littering their block in the new neighborhood where they had moved.
With his mother leaning over the stove to light a Newport cigarette, Kenyatta recalled her replying, “Boy, if you care so much why don’t you go do something about it?”
And so he did, running to become a junior block captain. From there, Kenyatta, the grandson of civil rights activist Muhammad Kenyatta, dove into community activism and politics, a journey that saw him become a featured speaker during the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Now, years after that challenge from his mother, Kenyatta is a two-term Democratic state representative serving his Philadelphia district and is a U.S. Senate candidate in the Democratic primary. He’s also become a firebrand, progressive critic of legislative Republicans, taking to the House floor to verbally shred bills he finds particularly offensive.
“Literally everything I’ve done since has been with the whisper of that advice in my head,” Kenyatta, 31, said of his mother’s words. “You know, nobody is coming to save us.”
Instead, Kenyatta said that tough-love encouragement has spurred his commitment to poor and working families in Pennsylvania because he can identify with the struggle to pay the rent or mortgage, plan for a “dignified retirement,” or find affordable healthcare and childcare.
Those struggles, Kenyatta said, cross racial and geographical barriers, which is why he has taken his campaign to rural majority-Republican counties not used to having an openly gay, black Philadelphia Democrat working for primary votes there.
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“I’m not running to be the first black senator, the first gay senator,” Kenyatta said. “My campaign has been about how do we restore the basic bargain to every single family, but I will be those things.”
The conventional wisdom that urban voters will automatically vote for him while rural voters won’t no longer applies, Kenyatta said. “We have to reject that, and I reject it,” he said.
“Working families, whether we all look alike, whether we all worship the same or choose not to, we’re all struggling with these same basic issues and challenges, and we’re all fighting for a government that actually will deliver for working people and for our families, and that’s why I’m in this,” he said. “Because the status quo will not save us.”
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Caught in the crowd
Kenyatta is battling Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, both of Allegheny County, for the Democratic nomination, while Dr. Kevin Baumlin of Philadelphia and Jenkintown Councilwoman Alex Khalil round out the field.
A Franklin & Marshall College poll released in early March had Fetterman at 28% among Democrats and Lamb at 15% with Kenyatta a distant third at just 2%. There was still, however, a considerable portion of Democrats ― 44% — who remained undecided.
More recently, a poll by WETM/Emerson College Polling/The Hill in late March, found that Fetterman was leading with 33% followed by Lamb at 10%, making them the only two candidates to reach double-digit support. That survey put Kenyatta at 7.5%, behind Baumlin at 9% and ahead of Khalil at under 3%.
There was still a big portion of Democrats, 37%, who said they were undecided.
At the turn of the year, Kenyatta was far behind Fetterman and Lamb in fundraising. Fetterman raised nearly $12 million last year and had $5.3 million in available cash at the end of December, while Lamb raised $4 million and had $3 million in cash.
Kenyatta reported raising $1.5 million in 2021 and having just $285,000 in cash.
But Kenyatta insisted that he has built a strong coalition of unions, elected officials from across the state and voters who find similarities in his family’s hardships to their own, such as trying to figure out how to pay for insulin or buy a first home.
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“None of those things are unique, and that is the heartbreaking part of all this,” he said, “but what is unique is having a candidate who has had that life.”
A progressive platform
Kenyatta vowed to “take on” the pharmaceutical companies and fight for lower prices, work to counter a lack of investment in affordable housing and “unequivocally” oppose tax breaks for the wealthy that come at the expense of working families.
Ultimately, if he is elected in November, Kenyatta said the highest priority is to pass voting rights legislation.
“If people don’t have the right to engage in their democracy, everything else I’m talking about doesn’t really matter,” he said. “It really doesn’t.”
Job and small business growth will have a domino effect on issues such as education and crime, he said.
Kenyatta said he also wants to expand the Small Business Administration’s work as well as challenge banks’ lending practices in minority communities. He also wants to abolish the filibuster that stifles legislation in the Senate and pass a $15 per hour federal minimum wage.
President Joe Biden has done “a great job in a tough circumstance” when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said Kenyatta. Pennsylvania has the nation’s second largest population of Ukrainian-Americans by population.
Not besties with Mitch
Kenyatta has frequently taken to the House floor to criticize Republican bills he opposes, often in emotional speeches bordering on firebrand sermons. He said that approach won’t change if he’s elected to the Senate.
“I will not be someone that (Senate Republican Leader) Mitch McConnell likes, and that’s OK,” he said with a laugh.
That passion will always be fueled by the life experiences that drive his career every day, Kenyatta said.
“Why is it always that when working people want something and need something and we ask for it, and we demand it, that we’re somehow stopping progress? No, we’re not the barrier to progress. Working people being asked to survive in the wealthiest nation in the world are not the problem,” he said. “Corporate greed and the fact that for so long and so often our government is completely focused on the well-off and well-connected, that is the damn problem."
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