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THE BLUE COLLAR BRIGADE HAS THE RIGHT MESSENGERS  
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Jared Abbott
August 2, 2026
Jacobin
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_ 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. _

Bob Brooks, a career firefighter and congressional candidate, speaks
during a campaign event in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 2026. ,
(Joe Lamberti / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

 

When Brian Poindexter made his first fundraising calls in his campaign
for Congress (OH-7), he phoned
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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
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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
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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 [[link removed]]
with working-class voters, and that an upper-class background is a
serious liability. In turn, we’ve consistently found
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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
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“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 [[link removed]] 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
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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
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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
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buy into the same trusted and high-quality coverage Medicare already
provides, to creating millions of well-paid jobs
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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 [[link removed]],
“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
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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
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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 [[link removed]]. “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 [[link removed]] 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
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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 [[link removed]]
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
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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 [[link removed]], a dairy
farmer’s daughter who can be found waiting tables when not on the
campaign trail. And Nate Powell [[link removed]],
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
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in Nebraska and Democrat Troy Jackson
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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
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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.

_Jared Abbott is a researcher at the Center for Working-Class Politics
and a contributor to __Jacobin__ and __Catalyst: A Journal of Theory
and Strategy__._

* 2028 Elections
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* Working Class
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