One of the leading candidates in the race for U.S. Senate is anti-war icon Congresswoman Barbara Lee. She is the highest-ranking African American woman appointed to Democratic congressional leadership and the co-chair of the Policy and Steering Committee. Lee also serves on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which oversees all federal government spending. To understand her fight to reach those positions, she suggests you look back to the day she was born. "Well, my mother needed a C-section when she was about to deliver me, and she went to the hospital and they wouldn't let her in because she was Black," Lee explained. That was in El Paso, Texas, in 1946, and her mother almost died in childbirth. While hospitals are no longer segregated, Lee points out that today, Black maternal mortality rates are three times that of white women, and Black infant mortality rates are three times that of white babies. "So I have no option except to fight for women's health and healthcare, and against systemic racism," Lee said. Lee had her first victory against racism when she was still in high school after her family moved to California. Her school's selection process kept Black students from becoming part of the cheerleading team. With the help of the NAACP, she changed that selection process and made the squad, but she said it was a tough challenge for a 15-year-old girl. "It was bad in terms of the pushback I got from students and the administration, but I finally did it," Lee recalled. That experience provides some insight into her ability to stand alone about 40 years later, as a member of Congress, right after the 9/11 attack. She was the lone vote against the authorization used to carry out the war in Afghanistan and many other military actions. The House vote was 420 to one. Once again, Lee became a target. "I received many, many death threats," said Lee. "I'd hear the gunshots in my voicemail. It was terrible. What I learned too, is that a lot of people don't understand that central to our democracy is the right and the responsibility to say no, or dissent." Lee was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and more recently she's been a leading voice calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. She's also been criticized for the violence in her own backyard, as Oakland's crime rate has surged.Lee answers that criticism by pointing to her long record fighting for gun control measures, and she says part of her campaign for Senate includes her plan to continue pushing for an assault weapon ban. She says she's also brought millions of dollars in federal funding to pay for violence prevention programs in her East Bay district. As she's campaigning, she also talks about her fight for abortion rights. It's deeply personal. She only recently publicly revealed that she had an illegal abortion when she was a teen. "I decided that once the Texas restrictive laws were passed, it was time that people knew that there was a member of Congress who saw them, who understood it, and who will continue to fight for reproductive freedom. And I've done this all my life," said Lee. Long before her political career, Lee was briefly homeless, a single parent of two boys and a survivor of domestic violence. She's become a voice for those living in poverty, including calling for a $50 an hour minimum wage. In her role as the chairwoman of the Democratic Whip Task Force on Poverty and Opportunity, she leads more than 100 U.S. representatives in legislation that focuses on helping millions of American families move from poverty into the middle class. Her fight for Medicare for All dates back to the beginning of her political career. Lee was first elected in 1990, serving in California's State Assembly and then the State Senate. She authored a bill to examine a framework for a single-payer health care system in the state. "I said, let me see what I can do to work on health care issues in the context of health care as a human right, and to get the profit motive and the industry framework out of health care," Lee explained. Overall, she had 67 state bills signed into law by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. In 1998 she took many of those same battles to Capitol Hill as a congresswoman. Her work has included bills addressing HIV/AIDS, voting access, gun control, abortion access, health care and domestic violence. She's taking another fight to the courts. She's the lead plaintiff in a civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, and this is another case where her personal experience motivated her to act. "I was sitting on the floor of the House on January 6th. We barely got out of there. This was an attempted coup," Lee said of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. She is aiming for Trump to be convicted, showing Americans that he is not above the law or immune from consequences. After more than three decades in Congress, Lee says she still has a lot to fight for and she hopes to continue that work as California's next senator. "Here in California, 20 million people are one paycheck away from poverty. So why wouldn't I try to fight, to lift people out of poverty, and to grow the middle class? I mean, I know that I've experienced this," she said. "I know how important it is to help others and to try to fix some of these problems. So it's using what I know about living on the edge so that I can help make life better for others so they don't have to live on the edge."As for the other leading candidates, here is where you can find our interviews with them: KCRA 3 sits down with U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Katie PorterKCRA sites down with U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Adam Schiff KCRA 3 sits down with U.S. Senate candidate Steve GarveyHere is your 2024 California voter guide for races, measures (Correction March 1, 2024: An earlier version of this article mistook when Lee became a congresswoman. It was in 1998.)