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A new crop of candidates has turned away from the aspirational “American dream” message of campaigns past and is leaning into how difficult life can be for working people — including them.
(Clockwise from top) Dan Osborn poses for a portrait at his home in Omaha, Nebraska on Sunday, July 6, 2025. Osborn is expected to announce that he will run for U.S. Senate as an Independent. Rebecca Cooke, Democratic candidate for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, attends a candidate’s forum, May 1, 2024 in La Crosse, Wis. Graham Platner shucks oysters on site of the farm he co-runs in Waukeag Neck Oyster Co. in the Frenchman Bay. Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Nathan Sage speaks with UnityPoint nurses after a rally calling for union representation on Aug. 20, 2025, in Des Moines.(Clockwise) KC McGinnis for The New York Times, Saskia Hatvany/La Crosse Tribune, via Associated Press; Cody Scanlan/The Register/ USA Today Network; Greta Rybus for The New York Times,
Sept. 7, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET
When Rebecca Cooke introduces herself to voters in western Wisconsin, she notes how rough she and her working-class family had it when she was growing up.
“In high school, we had to sell our cows because of the price of milk and competition with other dairies,” Ms. Cooke, who is challenging Representative Derrick Van Orden, a hard-right Republican, said at a recent town hall.
Bob Brooks, a retired Bethlehem firefighter who is running against Representative Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican, in a Pennsylvania district that is one of the most competitive in the country, makes a similar pitch, describing how he was raised by a single mother who worked as a bartender.
“Pizza delivery, dishwasher, bartender, drove a beer truck, landscaper, coached baseball and yeah, I was a firefighter,” is how Mr. Brooks laid out his biography in his campaign launch video.
Even that sounds coddled and comfortable compared to the life story of Nathan Sage, a car mechanic who was raised in a trailer park in Mason City and is now running an outsider’s campaign for Senate in Iowa.
In a populist moment when voters are angry at a government that many believe has failed them at every turn, a slew of working-class Democratic candidates are entering competitive congressional races across the country with an appeal that appears aimed at being relatable, if not particularly uplifting: Our lives are just as difficult and infuriating as yours.
