In today’s edition … The congressional race in Northern Nevada is getting some outside money … You tell us about the Supreme Court and religious liberty … but first …
Speaking for the ‘average worker’
Brian Poindexter viscerally remembers being asked to quit his job.
The union ironworker worked full-time as an apprentice instructor throughout his primary in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, which stretches from the Cleveland suburbs down to Holmes County. After he won the primary on May 5, he says a “party insider” in leadership asked him to quit his job and commit himself full time to running against Republican Rep. Max Miller. He recalled that a few weeks remained in the school year, so he said no, disappointing the person he declined to name.
“I was working eight hours a day or longer and then campaigning in the evenings. I didn’t have the hours in the day to call and raise money and hit all the events,” said Poindexter, who also sat on the Brook Park City Council. “Even people in my own party don’t understand what the average worker is going through. And they certainly don’t understand a worker trying to take on a task this monumental.”
Poindexter’s race has become one of the nation’s most competitive, in part because of allegations that Miller engaged in domestic violence and illegal drug use after Miller’s ex-wife accused him of physically abusing her and their daughter. Miller denies those allegations. While the race was widely considered a safe Republican seat over the summer, most nonpartisan prognosticators now rate it a toss-up, making it one of the most closely watched nationwide.
Poindexter did eventually quit his job — “My bank account is a lot like my truck: running on fumes,” he quipped. And he makes his time as a union iron worker central to his pitch to voters. His background appears everywhere, from his website to his campaign literature to his paid ads. “I don’t have to be pro labor. I am labor,” he often tells voters.
But his story of running for Congress as a blue-collar worker highlights just how challenging it is for people without money and political pedigree to run for office in the first place — validating the findings of researchers Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu, the duo I spoke to earlier this year who observed that everything from fundraising to lack of notoriety to personal economic issues contributes to the lack of blue-collar workers in politics.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Poindexter recalled that when he first started running, people urged him to call his “network” to ask for donations.
“My very first call was to a fellow iron worker. And I called him and said, ‘Hey, man, I’m running for Congress. Can I count on you for $50?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, man. I heard about that, and I support you, but I’m laid off right now, and I don’t have the money.’ When I hung up the phone, I was like, ‘Oh man, this is what I’m up against.’”
He said working people often have other working people as friends and family, making it unlikely they can raise the kind of money national organizations need to take interest in a campaign.
“It’s always been difficult, and it’s still difficult,” he said of fundraising. “I’ve had to learn how to ask for money, and I’m still not comfortable with it.”
(He added that the guy he first called to ask for money eventually found a job and sent him $50, a donation he said meant even more than it would have if it had come at the first ask.)
Miller has not had these issues. While the controversy around him has impacted his fundraising, the Republican said he would loan his campaign $1 million in August. And Miller is still outspending Poindexter on air, according to AdImpact, with the Republican campaign set to spend $2.2 million on ads this campaign compared with the Democrat’s $1.3 million.
“It took me a long time, a lot of hard work to get that million, and my opponent did it with the snap of his fingers,” Poindexter said of Miller’s fundraising.
Then there is the background of someone who hasn’t been charting a course towards politics since they were a teenager. Poindexter has been hit during the campaign for public intoxication, speeding and assault, with Republicans using the record as a way to counteract attacks on Miller.
Poindexter addressed his background in one of his most-aired ads.
“Guess I should have expected this when I decided to run for office. And I’ll own it: I got some speeding tickets going to work. I drank a little more than I should. I was 25 after all. In my twenties, I got into a scrap with a Steelers fan. I mostly regret that one. I was young and dumb, but I turned my life around,” he says in a straight-to-camera ad before going after Miller.
Poindexter admits he never thought he’d run for city council, let alone Congress, when he was younger. But he says the last few months of the campaign, and the response he gets from fellow blue-collar workers when he asks for their support, have validated his decision.
“Every policy is driving up costs on the everyday average worker,” he said. “The benefit never trickles down, but the cost does. And it’s because you don’t have people with the working-class perspective in there arguing on behalf of the workers.”
Want this in your inbox?
Start your day with The Washington Post’s flagship political newsletter. Sign up here.
From across the newsroom
- Social Security emerges as a key issue in midterm battleground districts, from Steve Thompson and Lydia Sidhom.
- Reflecting pool liner failed in 85 places due to flawed renovation, inspection found, from Meg Kelly, Klara Auerbach and Amy Brittain.
- Does a video store privacy law apply online? The Supreme Court will decide, from Julian Mark.
- Pope Leo’s surgery removed cancerous lung nodule, Vatican says, from Anthony Faiola and Stefano Pitrelli.
- White House scrambles over questions on new press secretary’s background, from Michael Birnbaum.
- Kimberly Guilfoyle is out as U.S. ambassador to Greece, from Michael Birnbaum.
- U.K. intelligence chief warns Iran is shifting plots to ‘harder targets’, from Greg Miller.
What I’m watching
It’s time to check back in on Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District, which covers almost all of Northern Nevada.
I broke the news last month that the Republican in the open race, David Flippo, inflated his military record multiple times in recent years by falsely claiming he received a Bronze Star “for valor” during his two-decade Air Force career.
Since then, Flippo’s record has drawn considerable coverage — from reporting on his valor claim to his personal finances to questions about his residency in Northern Nevada. Political prognosticators recently moved the race from solidly Republican to likely Republican, a notable shift for a district that has never elected a Democrat since it was created after the 1980 census.
Money has followed that attention, and I’m told a new attack ad against Flippo will begin airing later this month.
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, an outside political organization focused on clean energy investment, tells me it plans to spend $1.5 million on an ad campaign against Flippo that casts him as a “fraud,” pulling the language retiring Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei (R) used to describe his possible successor to me.
The ad plays on the healthy rivalry between Northern and Southern Nevada by tying Flippo to Las Vegas, where he ran for office and lived until shifting his political focus to the Northern Nevada district.
“Straight from Las Vegas, Flippo the Fraud,” the ad says, noting he lost races in Las Vegas in 2022 and 2024. “His greatest trick? Flippo the fraud lied about his military service. … Even Mark Amodei knows Flippo is a fraud.”
The Flippo campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition’s investment is striking. According to AdImpact, this spending will be the biggest commitment to the race to date, more than either Flippo or his Democratic rival Teresa Benitez-Thompson plan to spend on air.
In your local paper
Iowa Capital Dispatch: Backlash against data centers has become a major issue in Iowa, home to a series of top-flight federal races.
Minnesota Reformer: Democrat Jake Johnson hopes to tap into anger over rising prices by literally collecting people’s receipts to document how prices have risen in the last two years. He hopes it could help him pull off an upset in Southern Minnesota.
NJ.com: With issues across the battleground map, Republicans are starting to triage House races and have decided to pull money from a key Iowa race and from New Jersey Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s competitive bid for reelection, a sign they are losing faith in both contests.
From you
Your views on a religious institution’s right to deny access to a certain group of people varied. Some of you said it should be allowed. Others said it should be outright illegal.
This comes after my colleagues Julian Mark and Justin Jouvenal wrote that religious rights are on a winning streak at the Supreme Court and a forthcoming case on “whether a Catholic school that does not accept the children of gay parents can participate in a Colorado prekindergarten program” may test how far the court will go.
“I support religious organizations’ right to discriminate based on its religious tenets. However, they shouldn’t do it using taxpayer money,” wrote John Perryman.
C.K. Reid wrote that “the church needs to welcome all good people, and all people seeking to become good. This is one case in which the Supremes need to go ahead and honor the law of the land.”
And Paul Gutterman added, “There should be no state involvement at all, meaning so state support of religious schools, no interference in private ‘discrimination’ unless the acts violate other independent rights and privileges.”
And then there was Doug Lynch, who said that the far right criticize “the Muslim religion and Saudi Arabia for being a religious state with low tolerance of others” but “don’t see the irony that that is the same parallel they are trying to achieve in this country.”
Send a reply
The national political environment seems to be moving toward Democrats. Nonpartisan prognosticators consistently move races toward the party, citing polls. But Republicans push back by arguing that polls are undersampling Republican voters. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) made this case yesterday. Have you ever responded to a poll? If you are a Democrat, do you worry that the polls are wrong? If you are a Republican, do you agree with the House Speaker? Let me and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
Thanks for reading. You can follow me on X at @merica.
The post ‘People in my own party don’t understand what the average worker is going through’ appeared first on Washington Post.
