Some Harris allies said Monday they saw sexism and desperation in the backlash from the former vice president’s camp. They were outraged after an ally of Biden suggested she had allowed her ambition to get the best of her when she challenged the former vice president’s long opposition to busing for school desegregation. And at least one black leader aligned with a rival campaign rose to Harris’ defense, too.

“Why couldn’t she be ambitious? She’s running for president of the United States,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls, said in an interview. Watson Coleman is backing Cory Booker but said she felt compelled to speak out. “That, however, does not diminish the significance of her speaking out [about] her experiences as a young black girl, and the significance of the civil rights movement and how it provided an opportunity for her.”…

“It’s disingenuous for people to say she doesn’t have a right to speak to those experiences,” added Watson Coleman. “And it’s very interesting that as a black woman, how she speaking out on these issues becomes a louder issue for response than if a white man or someone else had spoken about their particular experiences and what impassions and motivates them to run.”