Who, beyond the well-known and much-profiled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, and Jon Ossoff, are the young people most likely to rebuild the Democratic Party? The bright lights of the next generation don’t fit into easy classifications. They include a seminarian, a waitress, an oysterman, and a semiconductor heiress. There are Bernie-endorsed socialists and iconoclastic centrists. Some are eyeing a national stage, and others are staying adamantly local. Some already have a decade of experience; others are fresh upstarts proving themselves.
How do we know? We spent months talking with professionals who recruit and support young candidates to identify the party’s next generation, and we called dozens of political operatives, strategists and consultants—and granted them all anonymity so they could dish about the nominees candidly. The nominators didn’t all agree, and, of course, had their own perspectives and agendas, but through those conversations, we found the 25 most promising rising Democratic leaders who have yet to become household names.
Although they don’t run the country yet, the visions of these young Democratic politicians speak to the problems the party is grappling with: how to deliver on working-class issues, expand the party’s tent while still holding onto their values, and stand up to the current administration. They also give us a glimpse not just of the themes we will see in the coming elections but in the years ahead.
This fall, armed with our list of politicians mostly under 40, photographer Elinor Kry and her assistant Nadine Zhan hit the road in a minivan to meet and photograph a dozen or so of the next generation of Democrats. Kry shot her portfolio over the course of a month and brought along a weathered tufted armchair — hauling it onto boats, truck beds, football fields, and construction sites and into suburban cul-de-sacs — to give us a glimpse of these elected officials and candidates on their home turf. Not all of these hopefuls will win their elections this month or in the midterms next year, but all of them are worth watching.
One California Millionaire Is Being Mentored by Pelosi. Another Is Trying to Oust Her.
Sara Jacobs, 36
• Representative for California District 51• Heir to the Qualcomm semiconductor fortune• Foreign-policy adviser to the Clinton 2016 campaign• Pelosi protégée
Saikat Chakrabarti, 39
• Running for California District 11• Multimillionaire tech engineer• AOC’s first chief of staff• Co-author of the Green New Deal
Sounding the alarm about the death of democracy didn’t win Democrats the past election. So across the center-to-far-left spectrum, elected officials and candidates are trying to reach voters at their kitchen tables. Almost every ambitious Democrat is running, in part, on grocery and housing prices or championing more affordable transit or some other quality-of-life issue. Sara Jacobs, a third-term congresswoman from San Diego, has found her own affordability angle: egg freezing.
Jacobs underwent the increasingly common procedure this past summer and says it took an emotional and physical toll. It’s prohibitively expensive for many Americans (Jacobs says hers cost $30,000 out of pocket); she’s now pushing legislation that would expand health-care coverage of fertility treatments, including IVF, starting with members of the military. It’s smart politics; Jacobs is from a billionaire family and largely self-funded her first campaign. She can still push affordability while authentically owning a popular issue — family planning — that crosses the partisan aisle, even if it’s geared toward the professional set.
The issue allows her to critique Congress’s gerontocracy without insulting her mentor, Nancy Pelosi, who put Jacobs on a powerful steering committee in her first term. “This is the third-oldest Congress in history,” Jacobs says. “So there’s inherently a skepticism that the people in charge actually understand what the millennial-and-younger experience is — and that’s not totally wrong.” Though Jacobs is relatively normie — “It’s funny to imagine someone having a hot take on Sara Jacobs,” says one Democratic media strategist — she rates only eight spots behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in voting for progressive legislation, according to ProgressivePunch, which analyzes congressional records. One political consultant compares Jacobs’s wealthy background and lefty bent to that of Saikat Chakrabarti, a Silicon Valley millionaire primarying Pelosi from the left in the upcoming midterms: “They’re class traitors — in the best possible way.”
A founding engineer at Stripe in the 2010s, Chakrabarti quit to find more purposeful work and joined Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. He likes to point out that Pelosi has been representing San Francisco since he was just a year old — a fact that could support the case for new blood or prove just how hard it would be to take down the most powerful female legislator in American history. He has experience deposing top Dems as co-founder of Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, organizations that launched many Democratic stars including Ocasio-Cortez. Longtime Democratic strategists say they would be surprised if Chakrabarti can pull off the primary but are watching the race with curiosity. “Blood is in the water,” one progressive insider says. Chakrabarti is self-funding his campaign. “Look at the party right now,” he says. “It’s polling at 20 percent worse than Donald Trump. You can’t change that with the same people in there. It has to be completely new people that run the party.”
There’s a Millennial Smackdown in Michigan
Mallory McMorrow, 39 ↑
• Googled “how to run for office” after Trump’s first election• State senator since 2019• Industrial designer who once worked at Gawker
Abdul El-Sayed, 41
• Former Detroit Health Department director• Bernie endorsed• Came in second in 2018 gubernatorial primary to Gretchen Whitmer
Haley Stevens, 42
• Four-term congresswoman for Michigan District 11• Worked on Obama-era task force on auto-industry bailouts• First millennial from Michigan in Congress
Democrats are daring to dream that they could flip the Senate next year — a feat that would require winning at least four Republican-held seats and retaining all 13 seats they’re defending, including those in states that Trump won last year. It makes the stakes of the highly competitive open Senate race in Michigan that much higher — and more expensive. The three candidates duking it out in the primary each offer a different vision of the party’s future. Representative Haley Stevens is the Establishment pick, a pro-Israel centrist with ties to the all-important auto industry whose roll-up-her-sleeves approach has won her four terms as a congresswoman. She was first elected to the House in 2018 by flipping a suburban Detroit district where no Democrat had been elected to a full term since the ’60s. “I don’t believe you have to compromise a fresh perspective at the expense of delivering results,” she says. Stevens has served as the chair of a political-action fund for congressional Democrats’ biggest centrist, pro-business caucus and has the implicit backing of the old guard. But, tellingly, she is avoiding talking about the Democratic leadership altogether.
Gloved up for the progressive camp is Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders–endorsed doctor who started his career as an epidemiologist and public-health official, ran in the primary for governor of Michigan in 2018, and launched a podcast with Crooked Media, a company founded by Obama staffers. El-Sayed rails against a system that has been rigged by the richest players and argues that Democrats won’t be able to fix it if they’re actively benefiting from it. “So long as we continue to be bought off by big corporations or to accommodate what big corporations want, we will not be able to actually solve the problems that are bedeviling everyday people,” he says.
The “Goldilocks” candidate, as one Democratic pollster calls her, is State Senator Mallory McMorrow. After a colleague accused her of being a “groomer” in 2022, she gave an attention-grabbing, impassioned speech about, among other things, protecting trans kids and teaching the history of slavery. An anti-Establishment candidate like El-Sayed — McMorrow has said if elected, she won’t back Chuck Schumer as Senate leader — she is working with the sharp-elbowed Democratic operative Lis Smith, who helped engineer Pete Buttigieg’s presidential run.
There is palpable excitement around McMorrow (“incredibly talented,” “great legislative record”) and El-Sayed (“a thoughtful, principled leader”) that Stevens isn’t generating among Democratic election-watchers. But several insiders warn against counting her out. “Haley Stevens is a mainstream Democrat — ‘I can bring the fight, tested in Washington, I know how to do this, I’m ready to take the next step’ — and that’s appealing to a lot of people at this moment where it’s like, ‘Where do we find young leaders who also know how the game works?’” one campaign consultant says. “I think that’s more appealing to many voters than she gets credit for on, like, Twitter or whatever.”
The Red-State Long Shots
James Talarico, 36 ↑
• Running for Senate in Texas• State representative and Presbyterian seminarian• Joe Rogan approved
Zach Wahls, 34
• Running for Senate in Iowa• State senator since 2019• Former quarterback and Eagle Scout• Met his wife after she wrote a blog post called “Marry Me, Zach Wahls”
Democrats’ best path to taking back the Senate most likely runs through battleground states like Michigan and Georgia. But two young candidates in Texas and Iowa are attempting to pull off the extremely difficult, if not the impossible. State Representative James Talarico, a former public-school teacher and a Presbyterian pastor-in-training, shot to political fame earlier this year while protesting the Republican gerrymandering of Texas’s congressional map.
Talarico says God is his motivation for entering politics. “He told us to love our neighbors, and that’s an inherently public thing,” he says. His forceful opposition to a Republican bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools led to an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, during which Talarico explained why he, a devout Christian, is adamant about the separation of church and state: “I think there is no more dangerous form of government than theocracy — because the only thing worse than a tyrant is a tyrant who thinks they’re on a mission from God.” (Rogan liked his message: “You need to run for president.”)
Talarico’s jump into the Senate primary against Democrat Colin Allred — the 42-year-old retired NFL player and former congressman who got 5 million votes in his failed 2024 bid to unseat Ted Cruz — has riled up Democratic operatives, who are divided on Talarico’s electability. (Texas Democrats haven’t won a statewide election since Talarico was 5 years old.) “He’s a bit of a Beto 2.0, which is not necessarily a compliment,” says one elections analyst. Another calls the hype over Talarico “a little bit of fool’s gold.” Those who know Talarico talk about the authenticity of his “righteous anger.” Says one campaign specialist, “It seems incredibly underrated by the Democratic political class just how closely linked many Americans’ political values are to their religious values.”
Zach Wahls, another candidate for Senate, first gained notice in 2011 when, as a 19-year-old university student, he spoke at an Iowa house forum on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state. Wahls, who was raised by his two moms, made a passionate and eloquent argument in defense of his family. “It turned my life totally upside down,” Wahls said. He has been in the state senate since he was 27 and is now running in the Democratic primary, hoping to replace veteran Republican senator Joni Ernst. Though his core values remain lefty, he’s focused on issues he’s hoping will appeal to his state’s voters, who elected Trump by 13 percentage points. He’s framed his support for term limits as “cleaning up government corruption.” He quips, “In Iowa, we know that rotating the crops is good for our soil, and you better believe it’s good for our politicians.” One political strategist refers to Wahls as a “unicorn,” calling him the “only Democrat who can win statewide” in Iowa.
These Former DSA Candidates Are Forming a New Establishment
Summer Lee, 37
• Representative for Pennsylvania District 12• First Black congresswoman for Pennsylvania• Survived AIPAC’s attempts to oust pro-Palestine legislators
Greg Casar, 36
• Representative for Texas District 35• Former Austin councilman who helped YIMBY-ify the city’s housing stock• Former labor organizer• Congressional Progressive Caucus leader
Despite this being the third-oldest Congress in history, some Democratic newcomers have started to put down roots and are coming into internal leadership positions to prove it. Greg Casar, a former construction-worker organizer who was elected to Congress in 2022, last year became chair of the Progressive Caucus, in charge of organizing nearly 100 colleagues. He worked closely with the DSA while serving on the Austin city council. In Congress, he is pushing economic populism over cultural fights that embroil Democrats in so-called identity politics. “We don’t have to throw vulnerable people under the bus to be able to unite the country and win,” Casar says. “People in this country know that they’re being screwed over. Donald Trump says that you’re being screwed over by an asylum seeker or you’re being screwed over by a woke college. Democrats need a response: ‘No, you’re being screwed over by a Wall Street hedge fund.’”
Insiders say Casar’s secret weapon is his congeniality. “He’s a genuine guy. His staff really like him. His colleagues love him,” one insider says. If there is any knock against him, it’s that he “wants to be an AOC but is actually more like a Pramila Jayapal,” says another, referring to the previous leader of the Progressive Caucus. “He’ll probably have a lot of influence in the House but not in pop culture.”
Pittsburgh’s Summer Lee is another organizer elected to Congress in 2022 who has DSA roots. A champion for the city and its diverse working-class suburbs, Lee has become known for her outspoken, often clippable monologues and scathing cross-examinations in hearings. She was one of the first members to call for a cease-fire in Gaza and one of few Squad-adjacent progressives elected after Black Lives Matter who have not been primaried out of her seat. (She tweeted before her 2024 victory that “opposing genocide is good politics and good policy.”) “People right now are demanding that Democrats pick a side,” she says. “I have never strayed far from my roots.”
Though she has plenty of detractors among centrists — she’s a “liability, not an asset,” says one — others praise her “uncompromising” style and “moral courage.” “You have this charismatic populist Black woman raised in Braddock with this incredible story to tell whose constituents love her. Let’s bring her in, not push her out,” says one communications strategist. “It’s like they’re problematic ’cause you guys have decided they’re problematic.”
The Waitress, the Oysterman, and the Nonpolitician Gambit
Rebecca Cooke, 37
• Running for Wisconsin District Three• Waitress at a farm-to-table restaurant• Former campaign-finance director for Democratic representative Raul Ruiz
Graham Platner, 41
• Running for Senate in Maine• Oysterman and veteran• Profiled in The New Yorker, the New York Times, and GQ• Fighting for his political life as past transgressions emerge
Many insiders have written off Graham Platner following a series of personal scandals involving old Reddit posts and a Nazi tattoo Platner says he got before he knew what it was. “He’s a shape-shifting caricature of what liberals think normal people are like,” says one. But others see his run as the ultimate “litmus test” for the party, which has been embroiled in self-recriminations over creating a bigger tent. “Is there a better exemplar of the fact that politics has changed as much as it has — that no one knows what matters anymore — than Graham Platner?” says a polling analyst. Another insider notes that while voters haven’t weighed in on the “Platner experiment” yet, there is a benefit to having more true outsiders run for office “because, at the very least, people don’t hear them as the teacher in Charlie Brown just going, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’”
Platner was completely untested before jumping into his race. Rebecca Cooke has taken the opposite tack in running for Wisconsin’s flippable Third District. Raised on a dairy farm and now working as a waitress in Eau Claire, Cooke has already challenged the “Stop the Steal”–attending Republican incumbent Derrick Van Orden once before, amassing name recognition and a constituency. Electoral experts say this could be her year. Cooke receives high praise from centrists and far-leftists alike for her ability to blend economic populism with issues specific to her community. You’ll often hear her warning that Republican handouts to “Big Ag” and “hyperconsolidation in the meatpacking industry” are hurting working farmers and pressing her opponent on issues like his failure to pass the farm bill to help family operations in the state. “He has coined himself the Cheese King of Congress but hasn’t gotten the bill passed,” Cooke says. “She’s a real person,” one political operative says. “We need people who earn and live off a weekly paycheck in Congress because we need people to write legislation based off that experience.”
The Art of the Flip
Lauren Underwood, 39
• Representative for Illinois District 14• First Black woman voted into House Democratic leadership since Shirley Chisholm• Registered nurse
Cait Conley, 40
• Running for New York District 17• Combat vet and cybersecurity expert• Opposed congestion pricing• Does CrossFit tire-flips in a campaign ad
After Trump’s first election, Lauren Underwood, a nurse who went into policywork, won a plus-five Republican, majority white district in the western suburbs of Chicago. Her focus on expanding Obamacare has helped her hold it ever since. “There’s been a lot of discussion about kitchen-table issues, how Dems can run on an economic agenda,” she says. “Well, health care is the encapsulation of both.”
As co-chair of recruitment for the DCCC, Underwood is tasked with shepherding promising candidates through their first campaigns. She has tough, honest conversations with them so they are “grounded in the reality of what it is to run and win a competitive district,” she says. “Nancy Pelosi would always tell us like, ‘Power’s never given; you gotta go take it,’” she says. “We’re talking about power at the highest levels of our country, and in order to get it, you have to run and you have to win. Winning is a decision. And once you decide to win, then you make every subsequent decision in support of that victory. That’s what I tell the candidates.” Cait Conley — a combat veteran who seeks to unseat centrist-ish Republican Mike Lawler from his upstate New York seat — is following that playbook.
Though she is running on her military bona fides and record of public service, the focus of Conley’s campaign is the affordability crisis in the lower Hudson Valley. She’s championing renewable energy as a way to boost construction jobs and decrease utility bills. “My mom bought a home and raised three daughters working for the U.S. Postal Service in the Hudson Valley. That is not possible today, and that is a sign of us failing,” says Conley, whose family has deep blue-collar roots in the area. “Let’s get some adults in the room who are about action,” she says. She’s also trying to appeal to more macho voters. Her campaign ad shows her pumping iron, while phrases including “special operations,” “terrorist hunter,” and “definitely not a politician” flash on the screen. One Democratic operative notes that her run is an “interesting test scenario to see if the branding of the national security Democratic woman candidate is still effective.”
The Rise of the Millennial Mayor
Michelle Wu, 40 ↑
• Mayor of Boston• First Asian American woman on Boston’s city council• Elizabeth Warren protégée• Has enacted a municipal Green New Deal
Anna Eskamani, 35
• State representative running for mayor of Orlando• First Iranian American in Florida state legislature• Passed a statewide permanent tax exemption on diapers
With Trump in office, mayors of liberal cities are dealing with the added stressors of fending off a White House administration intent on attacking America’s “woke” urban centers. Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, has fought back against ICE agents on the city’s streets, been hauled in front of a congressional hearing on sanctuary cities seven weeks after giving birth, and been berated by the commander-in-chief.
Wu has earned a reputation as a tough defender of her city. “I have the honor of stewarding the city where, for 400 years, people have made very clear that we will not back down,” she says. She is often called a “practical progressive” because of her ability to juggle progressive policy — divesting municipal funds from fossil fuels, pushing free public transit — and corporate trade-offs that benefit Boston. She has the endorsement of the city’s largest police union. A female strategist says, “Young women of color who are able to win an executive seat? That’s preternaturally good political instincts. That’s a very difficult thing to do.”
There have been setbacks. Wu’s efforts to combat the housing crisis by increasing affordable-housing requirements on new builds have led to a strained relationship with developers and haven’t been able to stave off a dip in housing production. Her plan to shift tax burdens from residents to businesses has been held up by the state legislature. And a homelessness and drug-use crisis continues in the city’s South End. Yet she remains popular and is running for reelection this year unopposed. “She’s shown that it is possible for a Democrat to run a major city and actually be pretty well liked,” one party strategist says. Zohran Mamdani cites her as an inspiration.
“Mayors and city executives are going to be the only ones who can get shit done for a while,” says one campaign operative. Here Democrats can build their bench. This is the case in Orlando, where Anna Eskamani, a state representative, is running to be mayor in 2027. The task of city governance becomes much more complicated in a red state like Florida — and in a city that requires careful relationship management with lots of corporations, most notably Disney. Eskamani recalls a snafu that occurred a month after winning her current seat: She turned down an invitation to a gala hosted by Associated Industries, a powerful lobby group for Florida’s business community. “You would think that I created some kind of major controversy. I was called into the Democratic leader’s office and told I was making it harder for them to fundraise,” she says. The storm passed, and Eskamani learned she could develop “mutual respect” with state industry while putting her constituents first. Same goes for working with her Republican colleagues. “You may have some disagreement with our rainbow crosswalks, but please remember Orlando and Orange County pay your bills,” Eskamani says.
There’s No Simple Way to Be a Centrist Right Now
Richie Torres, 37 ↑
• Representative for New York District 15• Helped secure $1 billion to revive NYC hospitals after the pandemic• Spars with the left on X
Jake Auchincloss, 37
• Representative for Massachusetts District Four• Scion of an old Boston family with multiple Wikipedia pages• Maybe the Dems’ No. 1 TikTok-hater
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, 37
• Representative for Washington District Three• One of two House Democrats to vote against Biden’s student-debt-relief program• Wants federal funding to kill invasive sea lions in the Columbia River
Young moderate Democrats are all doing it their own way. Jake Auchincloss, a center-left Democratic representative from Massachusetts, is embracing wonky, Abundance-style affordability solutions, like creating a “YIMBY caucus” to find ways to build more housing. “Unlocking production is the best way to lower costs for the middle class,” he says, wonkily. At times, Auchincloss — who represents Newton — can seem a bit anachronistic. A member of an old Boston family, he has a Harvard degree, a military background, and experience working for a Republican gubernatorial candidate. “In 2004, he would be the kind of guy that everyone would be saying should run for president,” says one insider. “I think the party needs a few people who are just, like, super-policy-wonky nerds, you know? If you could take off Ezra Klein’s pundit hat and make him a member of Congress, that’s what you get here.”
Bronx representative Ritchie Torres, a former city councilmember, is one of the first gay Black men elected to Congress. He frustrates the progressive flank of the party to no end by picking vicious fights on X, where he has ridiculed protesting college students and regularly lambastes the left, and because of his in-your-face pro-Israel advocacy and embrace of cryptocurrency. But plenty of old-guard Democrats see him as a firm hand on the wheel of a party that has swerved too far to the left. “He’s one of my favorite politicians in the United States,” says a seasoned campaign strategist. “I can’t say enough nice things about Ritchie. I think he’s very effective, he makes sense, and he goes against type.” (Another veteran campaign operative called him “really talented” but says he “picks the worst issues to weigh in on.”)
Torres’s position within the Democratic caucus may depend on the extent to which support of Israel remains at the heart of the party. “There obviously has been a shift in attitudes toward Israel against the backdrop of the war,” Torres says. “Whether that shift is situational or structural only time will tell.”
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto-repair owner representing Washington’s conservative Third District, eked out a surprise win in 2022 by running against the party brand, building her political strategy on “local, local, local, keep it local,” says one political consultant. “Marie is trying to defy political gravity.”
She is bullish on seemingly small-ball issues, including right to repair, getting fruit in classrooms, and reducing the absurd brightness of modern car headlights. “There’s some people who shrug and think that’s like a Seinfeld politics, like the politics of nothing,” says one campaign analyst. “But I do think that’s an interesting approach here. And Democrats could benefit from some of these non-ideological problems that she has focused on.” Gluesenkamp Perez says this is how to chip away at the partisan divide. “People get upset, and they’re like, ‘Why is she talking about headlights when the country’s on fire?’” she says. “You don’t depolarize the country just by talking about how polarized it is. You do it by having more of a shared agenda with more of the country.”
The Two Youngest Democrats in Congress Are Impatient
Maxwell Frost, 28 ↑
• Representative for Florida District Ten• Affordable-housing advocate who had a hard time getting approved for an apartment in D.C. at the beginning of his first term• Joins Twitch livestreams to talk about the government
Yassamin Anasari, 33
• Representative for Arizona District Three• Democratic freshman-class president• Former policy adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
The whole concept of young people as the leaders of tomorrow — I kind of hate that,” says Maxwell Frost. “It sounds empowering, but you know what I really care about? I care about today.” At 28, Frost is the youngest member of Congress. A leading organizer for March for Our Lives, he was elected in 2022 after the Black Lives Matter protests and was initially dismissed as an activist type who wouldn’t last long in a governing body. Instead, “he has managed to be a voice for his generation while at the same time, in important ways, like during the shutdown, being a good soldier,” says one insider. Some political analysts say they see Frost as one of the more pragmatic progressives in the House. “He’s dialed in his radar of when to stick his neck out and when to work within the mechanisms of Washington. It suggests to me that he has some staying power in a way that not every young progressive who gets elected does,” says one.
A true digital native, Frost is constantly using social media, joining Twitch livestreams to explain how Congress works and talk about conditions in ICE detention centers. In an Instagram Reel from this summer, he spun off a jokey take on the Coldplay kiss-cam couple (“Why’s my guy going prone like there’s a sniper?”) to an update about a specific ICE abuse — “Now that I got your attention: They were holding a 15-year-old in the Everglades internment camp” — explaining why he was pushing legislation to publish the names of the people held in detention centers so at the very least teens aren’t swept into these adult facilities.
“It’s not about chasing a viral moment that will get you a million followers in a day or whatever,” he says. “It’s about consistency, about telling the story of the work that you do and showing people that government can work for them. And that consistency will build you a following that’ll help you get your message across.”
Frost was part of a contingent with Yassamin Ansari, the youngest woman in Congress and freshman-class president, that took an unofficial trip to El Salvador to pressure the administration to bring home Kilmar Ábrego García. “The Trump regime is so corrupt and so authoritarian in their way of operating that just saying, ‘Oh, we’re in the minority and we can’t pass a bill,’ just isn’t going to be enough,” says Ansari, who was elected in 2024 to represent a district that encompasses parts of Phoenix. “We have to do unusual things that maybe wouldn’t have been necessary in prior Republican administrations.” Ansari got her start in politics on the Phoenix city council, where she pushed climate-change initiatives like establishing the first Office of Heat Response and Mitigation in the country. “My generation just doesn’t have patience for performative politics,” she says. At a time when so many aren’t focused on it, a Democratic operative says, “it’s awesome that we have somebody who’s so clearly dedicated to climate in Congress.”
The Media-to-Politician Pipeline
Kat Abughazaleh, 26 ↑
• Running for Illinois District Nine• Registered to vote in her district a month before announcing her candidacy• Former high-school Young Republican• Journalist and right-wing-media expert
Analise Ortiz, 32
• State senator for Arizona District 24• Former local-TV reporter and ACLU campaign strategist• Uses social media to alert constituents to ICE raids
After Analise Ortiz, an Arizona state senator who represents part of Phoenix and Glendale, reposted an Instagram warning that an ICE raid was going down at a local elementary school, conservative influencer LibsofTikTok claimed Ortiz was trying to dox federal agents. Now her colleagues in the state GOP are trying to expel her from the legislature. “It’s very clear that they are threatened by an elected official like me,” says Ortiz, who faced so much harassment she temporarily deleted her X account. “They don’t like seeing powerful young brown leaders. It’s all just ridiculous politics, but I think it’s also pretty terrifying that they really want these police operations to be happening in secret.”
Ortiz, a former local-TV reporter, has always used social media to communicate to her district; in one video series, she traveled only by bus or bike for a week in the car-centric region to encourage more ecofriendly commutes. Her TikTok page is filled with front-facing videos explaining topics like the city’s policies on homelessness or state redistricting in clear language. But these days, she’s largely focused on immigration. “I’m getting calls into my office from community members whose loved ones have been kidnapped by ICE and they don’t know where to go or where to find them,” she says. “These are issues of life and death. So those are taking top priority for me.” One political operative notes, “She tries to position herself between the attack and her constituents. And that’s what really makes her different.”
Kat Abughazaleh, who is running for Congress in Illinois’s deep-blue Ninth District, has been protesting outside of Chicago ICE detention centers and filming her efforts. She was indicted in late October on federal charges for conspiracy to impede or injure an ICE officer, and assaulting or impeding that officer while he was engaged in his official duties. A former researcher for the left-leaning watchdog Media Matters for America, Abughazaleh built a gigantic following breaking down the oft-bewildering world of right-wing disinformation in social videos, explaining the talking points of pundits like Tucker Carlson. This armed her with both digital prowess and a thick skin for a competitive primary. “My experience covering the right makes me uniquely positioned to understand the threat we’re facing in a way that our leaders have either been unable or unwilling to do themselves,” she says.
Abughazaleh is being dismissed by many political operatives as a “social-media influencer” — not sufficiently serious for the role. One strategist became heated talking about it: “She has clearly fucking put her own health and safety on the line to stand up to ICE in a way that 99 percent of members of Congress have not. Female candidates, especially younger ones that have an online presence, are too often just written off as being influencers.”
The Power of the State
Zooey Zephyr, 37 ↑
• Montana state house representative• First openly trans woman elected in Montana• Former competitive Super Smash Bros. player• A documentary about her was shortlisted for the 2025 Oscars
Anderson Clayton, 27
• Youngest state-party chair in the country• Grew up in a North Carolina town of 8,000• Swears like a sailor• Field organizer for Elizabeth Warren after college
Amanda Gonzalez, 41
• Candidate for secretary of state in Colorado• Elections expert• The first member of her family to go to college• Ran an ad that featured her squaring off with her Trump-voter father
When Anderson Clayton was elected chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party in 2023 at age 25, the party was in what she calls “a shitty position.” Democrats had lost the race for an open Senate seat, as well as two seats on the state supreme court, giving the GOP a 5-2 advantage. Republicans in the state have been openly gerrymandering for years, and the state party was operating on a deficit. But Clayton says she had decided to run in the first place because she was pissed off that Democrats didn’t see rural voters or southern voters, like the ones in the small town where she grew up, as worth spending time and money on. That anger fueled her all the way through an election that saw her beat the incumbent chair, a 73-year-old former state representative who had the support of the governor. It also fueled her through a much more successful election cycle, in which Democrats managed to hang on to the governor’s mansion, break up Republican’s supermajority in the state legislature, and defend a seat on the state supreme court. She’s a “fireball,” one political consultant says. “Exploding with energy, radiating warmth, impossible to ignore.” Another: “We need 49 other party chairs like Anderson.”
Similarly, the role of secretary of state, at the state level, is an unsexy job by definition. But ensuring the security and accessibility of elections has to be a focus for Democrats as Trump’s party continues to tilt the playing field in its favor. “In the past, we had a set of rules that I think did value fairness,” says Amanda Gonzalez, a Democratic candidate for secretary of state running in Colorado. “At the national level, I feel like I am watching the erosion of that.” Gonzalez is the clerk and recorder for Jefferson County in the western parts of Denver’s metro area leading into the Rockies, where she oversees elections for about 440,000 voters. Prior to her current role, she worked for the pro-democracy group Common Cause and helped to enact automatic voter registration at the DMV, and she cites the state’s same-day registration as a model for the country.
Another local politician modeling what community advocacy can look like through elected office is Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr. She and her Democratic colleagues are slowly gaining seats in the state and recently banded together to change the tax code to shift some of the property-tax burden from homeowners to corporations. In her first term, while speaking against a bill banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, Zephyr, who is the first openly transgender person elected to office in Montana, said she hoped colleagues who voted “yes” would “see the blood on [their] hands.” She was censured shortly thereafter. But the experience didn’t scare Zephyr off from speaking her mind and actually helped her forge relationships with her moderate Republican colleagues. In 2024, she was reelected. “If we put our foot down right in the middle there, in between where Republicans and MAGA are,” she says, “we actually can work to break them apart.”
Additional reporting by Nathaniel Rakich, Paula Aceves, and Natalie Shutler.
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