A slate of union-backed working-class Democratic candidates is running on an economic-populist platform in swing districts. If the Blue Collar Brigade proves successful, their strategy could set a precedent for winning working-class votes.
When Brian Poindexter made his first fundraising calls in his campaign for Congress (OH-7), he phoned a fellow ironworker and asked for fifty dollars. His buddy said he couldn’t help, since he’d been laid off. It’s hard to imagine Poindexter’s opponent, Republican Congressman Max Miller, having a conversation like that — Miller, an heir to one of Cleveland’s wealthiest families, has millions at his disposal.
That contrast is the whole idea behind the Blue Collar Brigade, the joint fundraising alliance Poindexter launched this summer with four other working-class Democrats running for Congress. They pooled their money because none of them had access to the wealthy donor networks traditional candidates rely on. They are betting that a firefighter (Bob Brooks, PA-7), a flight attendant (Kaela Berg, MN-2), a smokejumper (Sam Forstag, MT-1), an ironworker (Brian Poindexter, OH-7), and a son of Central Valley California farmworkers (Randy Villegas, CA-22) are Democrats’ best shot at winning back critically important, working-class-heavy swing districts.
The Brigade’s gamble on working-class, economic-populist candidates is a smart one. Our research at the Center for Working-Class Politics has shown again and again that non-elite candidates are a genuine asset with working-class voters, and that an upper-class background is a serious liability. In turn, we’ve consistently found that running on a populist platform that puts working people at the center of America’s story and calling out economic elites and corrupt Washington politicians (ideally from both parties) is a winning formula.
The Brigade is typifying this approach. Poindexter, for instance, believes that “an economy that works can’t be built from the penthouse down. It has to be built from the foundation up, and workers are that foundation.” Meanwhile, firefighter and union leader Bob Brooks bluntly concludes that “Washington’s a dumpster fire, and working people are the ones getting burned.”
What’s more, all five of these candidates are union members. Our research has shown both that union candidates’ campaigns are more consistently aimed at winning working-class votes, and that union members in office are more effective tribunes of working-class interests than other candidates (even other progressives).
We at the CWCP have been exhorting candidates for years to focus like a laser on bread-and-butter economic issues. These candidates not only do that, but their economic platforms are genuinely ambitious. From raising taxes on billionaires and big corporations, to strengthening workers’ power on the job, to letting every American buy into the same trusted and high-quality coverage Medicare already provides, to creating millions of well-paid jobs to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure, the Brigade is running on economic programs big enough to convince working-class voters that someone is actually fighting for them.
Every one of these policies points to the same problem. “There was a time,” Brooks explains, “when a blue-collar job could make you a decent living. It doesn’t anymore.” The Blue Collar Brigade is refreshing in its single-minded obsession with fixing that problem. Their shared goal is to ensure, as Brian Poindexter puts it, that “if you work hard, you should be able to afford to live with dignity, support your family, and plan for the future. That’s not asking for special treatment — it’s asking for a fair deal.”
In recent research I conducted with Joan C. Williams, we found that effective working-class messaging also requires speaking to core working-class values. The Blue Collar Brigade largely excels on this score. Poindexter ties pride and loyalty to country directly to jobs, for example. “If we believe in America, we should build it here,” he has said. “I believe in ‘Made in America’ in real, practical ways: in the jobs we create, the products we buy, and the communities we invest in.”
Brooks’s campaign makes hard work the through line of his biography, describing a candidate who, “whether plowing driveways at 4 a.m. or mowing lawns after a firefighting shift. . . . has never stopped hustling to provide for his family.” Likewise, Brooks treats gun ownership as an inherited tradition, describing himself as “a firefighter who owns guns and grew up around guns” and respects the Second Amendment, only then making the case for universal background checks.
Sam Forstag, meanwhile, takes working-class Americans’ concerns about public safety seriously rather than dismissing them out of hand, promising a system that “keeps violent criminals and dangerous drugs off our streets” while also championing criminal justice reform and accountability for law enforcement overreach, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The common thread is that these candidates don’t map contested issues onto the usual red-blue divide and demand party loyalty. They speak the language of working-class values instead — a strategy with real potential to stem the Democratic Party’s exodus of working-class voters.
Differences in the Ranks
Beyond their points of unity, there are important differences in how the Blue Collar Brigade candidates speak and where they stand on social issues.
The first difference is one of register: how effectively each candidate connects to working-class values and how well they avoid activist and technocratic language that can alienate working-class voters. Brooks and Poindexter are the strongest in this regard, using plainspoken language that reads as unmistakably working class. By contrast, while Kaela Berg’s personal story is as compelling as anyone’s, her campaign statements read at a college level, and her packaged messaging sometimes drifts into the language of a policy memo rather than everyday speech.
There are also clear differences around how the candidates navigate social issues. Brooks presents himself as the most culturally moderate, a gun owner who supports universal background checks and pairs border security with a path to earned citizenship. Poindexter says almost nothing about culture at all and keeps his campaign focused relentlessly on class.
By contrast, though generally disciplined in how they discuss social issues to ensure the economic-populist core of their message remains front and center, Forstag and Villegas nonetheless come across as more culturally progressive than Brooks or Poindexter. Forstag was a paid lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood who describes that record as a fight to “keep government out of your business.” Villegas takes a different approach than Brooks and Poindexter on immigration, centering that discussion on the human cost of ICE raids in his heavily Latino Central Valley district. Berg, the only Brigade member who still needs to clear the primary stage, is the only one of the five candidates who openly holds full-throated left-wing positions on immigration, transgender issues, and Israel-Palestine.
Whether any of these differences will prove electorally meaningful is an open question, since Democratic candidates in swing districts blending working-class biography and economic-populist messaging is so rare that we have little precedent to judge by. But it is worth noting that Villegas’s positions on immigration are unlikely to be out of step with his overwhelmingly working-class Latino constituents, whose communities were among the first in the country to endure large-scale immigration raids in 2025. Likewise, Berg is running in a more Democratic-leaning district with a smaller share of working-class voters than any of the others, in Minnesota, a state that bore the brunt of some of ICE’s worst excesses earlier this year.
A Broader Brigade
While the Brigade has banded together under the same umbrella, they’re not the only candidates running the playbook. There’s Rebecca Cooke, a dairy farmer’s daughter who can be found waiting tables when not on the campaign trail. And Nate Powell, a Spokane firefighter and marine running as an independent in eastern Washington. There are also Senate hopefuls with similarly powerful working-class, economic-populist credentials, such as independent Dan Osborn in Nebraska and Democrat Troy Jackson in Maine.
And though they are imperfect parallels, since the Brigade generally brings more firsthand working-class experience and runs on bolder progressive economic platforms, a handful of sitting Democrats in tough districts offer important precedents. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-3), who owns a rural auto repair shop and campaigns in a mechanic’s jumpsuit, has twice held a Donald Trump–won district in southwest Washington, running on a small-business-focused version of economic populism. Marcy Kaptur has held her Toledo-anchored, Trump-won district (OH-9) for decades, and Sherrod Brown — a fiery opponent of deindustrialization and bad trade deals — won statewide in an increasingly Republican Ohio until his narrow 2024 loss.
Brown is now running for Ohio’s other Senate seat against incumbent Republican Jon Husted, and the race is a toss-up. And Gabe Vasquez (NM-2) — who comes, like Villegas, from a working-class immigrant family with deep roots in his district but who also built a professional career before running for office, has won repeatedly in a majority Latino, Trump-trending swing district in southern New Mexico by keeping his message plainspoken and focused squarely on kitchen-table economics.
For all their differences, the Blue Collar Brigade candidates share far more than divides them. Even one or two wins in November would set a significant precedent, proving that the Bernie Sanders coalition of 2016 can travel into the swing districts any lasting working-class realignment of American politics will require.