Gabe Amo, a former aide to US president Joe Biden, could soon become the first person of color to represent Rhode Island in Congress.
The Democrat, who is Black, won a crowded primary against 10 other candidates vying for the party nomination on Tuesday in a special election to replace former congressman David Cicilline, who resigned earlier this year to lead the Rhode Island Foundation, a large funder of non-profits.
In April, Amo left the White House, where he most recently served as a deputy director of the office of intergovernmental affairs, to launch his campaign for the open seat in Rhode Island’s first congressional district.
In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Amo, who was born in one of the district’s larger cities, Pawtucket, began with a nod to his parents and his Rhode Island roots.
“This primary election showed that Rhode Islanders believed in a state where one of their sons, the son of two west African immigrants from Ghana and Liberia, could receive the love and the investments of a community and go from serving the president of the United States and breathing in the Oval Office to being the Democratic nominee for Congress in the first congressional district,” Amo said.
Amo will face the Republican Gerry Leonard, a political newcomer and US Marine veteran, during the November election. Rhode Island has not elected a Republican since the 1990s.
Rhode Island has two seats in the US House. The freshman Democrat Seth Magaziner, the former Rhode Island treasurer, currently represents the state’s second congressional district.
Before the Biden administration, Amo, 35, worked for Barack Obama, including on his re-election bid. He also worked for Gina Raimondo, the former governor of Rhode Island and the current US commerce secretary, after serving as a senior adviser to her gubernatorial campaign.
“I’m going to use all of that experience that I’ve built in Washington and working here in Rhode Island to connect to the key priorities of so many people throughout the first district,” Amo told reporters on Tuesday.
Among those priorities are preventing gun violence and pushing for an assault rifle ban, protecting social security against Republicans’ efforts to slash its funding, and upholding abortion rights.
On Tuesday, Amo prevailed over a slate of well-known candidates, including the progressive runner-up Aaron Regunberg, a former state representative backed by Bernie Sanders, the independent US senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He also defeated Rhode Island’s lieutenant governor, Sabina Matos, an Afro-Latina woman who is originally from the Dominican Republic.
“It is not lost on me that I stand on the shoulders of giants,” Amo said during his victory speech Tuesday night. “Of so many who paved the road before me: Black, brown, women. So many people, who have had the opportunity to pave a pathway so I could stand here today. And I want to acknowledge that.”
Voters will decide between Amo and Leonard in the election on 7 November.
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