Correction: The description of the letter to Sen. Joe Manchin signed by sports stars has been corrected to reflect the fact that it urged support for voting rights legislation.
Former national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign Briahna Joy Gray said the last-minute push to support voting rights legislation felt “performative.”
“These kind of symbolic gestures … feel like an 11th inning effort that is going to fall on deaf ears, and it feels almost performative,” Gray said on Hill.TV’s “Rising” Wednesday.
Gray’s comments come after pressure recently built on Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to back changes to the filibuster that would enable the passage of voting rights legislation, despite both repeatedly saying over the course of months that they would not support changes to the procedural rule.
Progressive organization EMILY’s List it would not endorse Sinema for reelection if she opposed changes to the filibuster.
Sports stars including Alabama football coach Nick Saban also sent a letter putting last-minute pressure on Manchin to support the voting rights legislation, though a footnote was included in a version of the letter sent to Manchin and other senators noting that Saban did not support changing the filibuster.
“At this point, it’s exhausting, because it feels like people are doing these small, little, performative new things that generate a news cycle but nothing fundamentally has changed since we started this,” Gray said.
Manchin and Sinema were the only two Democrats to vote with Republicans on Wednesday to block changes to the filibuster.
The failure of the reform attempt came after House Democrats last week passed voting rights legislation on a party-line vote.
— Updated at 10:40 p.m.
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