“You have to talk about these issues like a human being, and not like an MSNBC host on TV.”
The City Hall clock tower and surrounding buildings in Oswego, New York, part of New York’s 24th Congressional District.(John Greim / Loop Images / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Can the current wave of progressive populism move from its successes in big cities to wins in America’s rural communities and Rust Belt? The answer will likely decide whether Democrats can wrest control of Congress this fall and what the nation’s politics will look like for years to come.
In the far northwest corner of New York State, in a sprawling House district that takes more than four hours to drive across from end to end, Alissa Ellman is inventing her own brand of progressive populism in a race against one of Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress.
Ellman, 42, is the Democratic nominee in New York’s 24th Congressional District, an expanse populated by dairy farms, apple orchards, and small towns with populations that rarely surpass 10,000. A child of a working-class family, Ellman joined the US Army at 17, was sent to Afghanistan, was exposed to the Army’s toxic burn pits there, and got a deadly cancer. She beat the cancer with medical care from the Veterans Administration and later went to work at the VA helping other veterans get needed services. Then, in February 2025, she was among the first federal workers fired by Elon Musk and DOGE.
Soon afterward, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer plucked her from her small Lockport, NY, home to be his symbolic guest for Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech. Ellman also did a series of national news interviews, on MSNBC and elsewhere. Blunt and plainspoken, she quickly drew the attention of network producers. Trump administration officials also took notice and offered her job back on the condition that she stop talking to the press.
“I was like, ‘Fuck you, I’m running for Congress,’” Ellman said.
Ellman’s November opponent is Representative Claudia Tenney, the most ultra-MAGA member of the state’s House delegation. (One of Tenney’s top legislative priorities is to make Trump’s birthday a national holiday.)
“I’ve talked to approximately 20,000 rural New Yorkers and I ask them all the same question: What matters to you most? And overwhelmingly, it’s just cost. Their electrical has doubled, their cost for interest has doubled,” said Ellman.
But the way Ellman talks about cost issues here differs from many other progressive candidates around the country. “Stop using buzzwords like ‘affordability.’ You have to talk about these issues like a human being and not like an MSNBC host on TV. Talk about the actual electric bill. Talk about the fact that people aren’t moving out of their parents’ homes till they’re 30. Talk about the cost of food, of gas, and maintaining a car.
“Out here, people also want to talk about actual solutions. It’s like when the plumbing breaks in your house. You hire a plumber, you bring in a pipe, you screw it together. People want to know what all of those steps are. They don’t want to just be told that tomorrow you’re going to get up and all the pipes are going to be fixed.”
Ellman said that also applies to the other big issue she hears about while campaigning—the country’s broken healthcare system.
“Medicare for All—80 percent of people do not know what that even means. They’re like, ‘That sounds like some stupid liberal buzzword.’ We have to get people to buy into this. Why don’t we take Medicare for All and initially cover everybody who does physical labor, expand Medicare for those people down to age 45. Why don’t we do that first? Because then we get the buy-in from the people who really need this the most.”
With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.
As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
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Candidates who campaign in places like this also need to be prepared for voters who bring up hot-button social issues.
“When you’re talking to a person who’s super right-wing, they’ll often immediately bring up trans people. And I’ve learned to just push that away. I’m like, ‘I’m not here to talk about the propaganda of social issues. I’m here to talk about why your electric bill is $750 for a three-bedroom house every month. I’m here to talk about the practical everyday stuff, like is the snow getting plowed?’”
The other hot-button topic in communities like these is guns, which Ellman says is just built into the culture here.
“You grew up as a 10-year-old getting taken out to the big field behind your house and your dad set up some cans and you sat there and you shot at ’em and you learned some gun safety rules. Then one day when you’re around 12, they’re like, ‘Hey, wanna go deer hunting with me? We really gotta fill the freezer this winter.’ And then you go out and you deer hunt for six hours silently in the woods with your dad. Maybe you don’t even shoot at a deer.
“A lot of places are 30 or 40 minutes away from a police station. You think that you’re going to wait around if you’re getting robbed. There’s bears and foxes and you have a small dog or a cat. If we’re going to reform gun laws and burn the political capital that’s going to take, then make a law that’s actually effective. I think that it would be a lot smarter to talk to gun owners and involve them.”
Another issue that Ellman talks about often is a rare one for a progressive woman candidate—the struggles of working-class men.
“I think I have a unique perspective because I was in the Army and I worked with a lot of these people. I’m also married to a very blue-collar working-class guy. What I really think it comes down to is that they feel they’re being screwed, and they’re not wrong. But who are they being screwed by?
“You’re talking about blue-collar working-class men who get up at four in the morning, go outside when it’s four feet of snow on the ground, shovel their driveway, go work outside all day throwing drywall up or pouring roads, hurting their hands, their backs, their knees. I think it makes them people we should really be focused on taking care of in this country. They are the backbone of society. I mean, you like flushing your toilet. You like turning on a light switch.
“They’re sick of their real-life work being less valued than, say, intellectual work. We should be moving that Social Security age down for those people. Do you think your body’s going to last till 65 when you’re picking up 350 pounds of drywall every day for 15 years?”
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You also run into a lot of hardcore Trump supporters here. “My answer is connection,” said Ellman. “I talk to them about fishing or hunting or what they like to do. I talk to them about the places that we agree, like, yeah, we should be more fiscally responsible. I think we gotta stop pretending that we have all the answers.”
Ellman also hears story after story about the personal cost of political division. “There’s been so many times that I’ve been told by people, ‘I don’t talk to my brother anymore. I don’t talk to my dad. I don’t go to church anymore. I’m not in the VFW anymore because of MAGA.’ That’s the wrong answer. The right answer is to sit next to those people, smile, and boldly be who you are.
“There’s no shame in standing up for the marginalized. To me that’s very Christ-like.”
“I’m not doing this for any other reason than to fight for people,” Ellman told me, “for my friends and family, my community, the children that my children will grow up with. That’s who I’m fighting for.”
Win or lose in November, progressive populists looking to build support in communities like these would do well to listen to Ellman, especially those in New York City who harbor ambitions statewide down the road.
Jim ShultzTwitterJim Shultz is executive director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He is the author, most recently, of The Democracy Owners’ Manual (Rutgers).