Do You Think Congress Needs More Working Class Members? Or Should It Just Be A Playground For The Wealthy?

At the end of the week, a non-political source, Teen Vogue, featured Nabilah Islam's proposal on behalf of working class candidates. It's something we discussed with Nabilah earlier as part of the Blue America endorsement process. A dedicated advocate for Medicare-for-All, his advocacy for health care for candidates is related but different. The idea is to help elect more working class candidates who, in turn, will advocate more working family-friendly policies. That's not going to happen if only relatively wealthy people can run for Congress. Her idea is pretty simple: allow candidates to use their campaign contributions for health insurance.

She wrote OpEds for both Teen Vogue and Vox. She began her piece for Vox with an all-to-familiar statement: "About four months ago, I canceled my health care plan. A couple of months before that, I put my student loans-- of which I still owe $30,000-- into forbearance. My story isn’t unique among working-class millennials in the country. But what sets me apart is that I had to do all of this because I decided to run for Congress... I’m here to tell you what I’ve learned: Political campaigns are often a pastime for the wealthy, meaning they’re off-limits for working-class people with backgrounds like mine. Let’s start with the fact that it’s nearly impossible to run for Congress while holding down a job. Campaigning is a full-time endeavor that requires having enough money to live without a salary for months on end. It also usually means paying out of pocket for health insurance, forgoing money that could have been put toward a retirement account, buying a house, or caring for loved ones.

All of this might be fine if you’re independently wealthy, but that’s not me. I grew up in Gwinnett County as the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, attending Gwinnett public schools. My father was a file clerk with the IRS for nearly 30 years, and my mother has worked multiple low-wage jobs all my life. I worked odd jobs as a teenager and in college, putting myself through school and helping my family make ends meet.

I never thought I was electable. But 2018, the year we elected the most diverse Congress in history, showed me that “electability” is a myth. So I came back home and worked really hard to put together a grassroots campaign.

And yet, hard work isn’t enough. People like me can do everything in their power to cut costs and climb the ladder, and still find themselves at the bottom financially.

I thought I would be able to hold down a part-time job waitressing or driving for Uber while campaigning, but the demands-- calling and meeting with voters, attending events across my community, pursuing endorsements-- became too high. For a while, I was paying out of pocket for a junk health care plan. It was unfortunately the only plan I could afford, especially since Georgia has refused to expand Medicaid. I knew the plan wouldn’t do much for me if I got sick or got hurt on the trail, so eventually, I canceled it. Having no income also means I’ve eaten enough packets of dollar ramen to last a lifetime.

My situation is difficult, but it’s not unique. Working-class people don’t usually run for Congress, and when they do, they often find themselves struggling like I am. It’s hard to build up independent wealth if you aren’t paid fairly, and women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by the wage gap. I’m struggling to support just myself, and I know it would be nearly impossible for me to continue my bid for Congress if I had a family to care for too. It’s no wonder nearly 40 percent of Congress members are millionaires. Three of my competitors in this race have spent more than $250,000 to self-fund their campaigns.

If we don’t eliminate barriers that prevent candidates from supporting themselves while running for federal office, we’ll continue to see a Congress that’s largely composed of wealthy, older white men. Americans will be deprived of representation by people who understand their lived experiences, and will continue to struggle under mounting student and medical debt.

The Federal Election Commission currently doesn’t allow candidates to use campaign funds for health care. I’m challenging the FEC to change its rules and to explicitly allow working-class candidates to use campaign funds to pay for health care, so at least one hurdle to running for Congress is eliminated for the non-wealthy.

I have hope that the FEC’s position will change. Liuba Grechen Shirley, an activist and founder of Vote Mama, successfully petitioned the FEC to use campaign funding for child care costs in 2018 while running for Congress, and it’s why I’m hoping to change the face of health care funding for candidates for years to come.

Running for Congress has taught me that the process is not designed for the working class. It’s also taught me that voices like my own are badly needed in the House of Representatives. And that starts with creating a system where people like me can run in the first place.

She's been reaching out to progressive members of Congress for advice and support. Today Ro Khanna announced his endorsement for her campaign. Iron worker and former congressional candidate Randy Bryce told me yesterday that "It’s tough enough finding an everyday working person willing to put their life on pause for a while in order to run for Congress but most of us can agree that we need more working people to be elected to Congress. There are already quite a few hurdles. Money is probably the biggest. Not only do we need it to fund a campaign but we need it to pay our bills and it needs to come from a different source. Too many live paycheck to paycheck. One of the biggest worries is health care. Imagine having an amazing campaign that comes screeching to a halt because the candidate can’t afford to go to the doctor? Until we have Medicare for all this is going to be an issue. Appears most of those running for office who would benefit from being covered the most have a M4A platform to make sure all of us have health care. It says a lot to oppose a candidate being allowed to cover their health insurance while expecting them to take care of their staff. We can take care of everyone and we should be looking for ways to remove the hurdles if we really want to see people like us representing people like us. If we don’t we’ll keep having people elected who just view us as money farms.And we still won’t be able to afford to see a doctor ourselves."

I asked some of the other Blue-America endorsed candidates what they think about Nabilah's proposal. Kara Eastman is running for the second time in the Omaha swing district (NE-02) and she's experienced this already. "When I decided to run," she told me, "people told me to pull out my 'Rolodex' and call my friends and ask them for money. As a nonprofit CEO, I asked 2 questions. 'What is a Rolodex?' And 'how will I fund my race with the $50 each one of my nonprofit friends and colleagues can afford to give me?' As a mom, and the primary breadwinner in my family, running is and has been a sacrifice. The system is set up for wealthy people to run since the average net worth of a sitting congressperson is $1 million. Before we finally get around to getting money out of politics, we need to make running more attainable for regular working people. Allowing candidates to use funds for healthcare and childcare would certainly help."

This is Robin Wilt's first congressional campaign, but not the first time she's run for office. "Today, the majority of members of Congress are millionaires," she reminded me, "and the typical congressional representative has an estimated net worth of over $500,000-- roughy fives times the median US household net worth. At the same time we are more likely to be represented by a member of the financially elite, running a Congressional campaign has become increasingly costly. If we don’t want running for and serving in Congress to be exclusively the province of the wealthy-- those who don’t have to pay a mortgage, college tuition or student loans, or other every day real-life expenses-- we need the campaign finance rules that allow fundraising to relieve some of the burdens that are associated with running for office. If more people like Nabilah ran for office, we would have more representatives that share our priorities-- like Medicare for All and legislation to remove money from politics. That’s why we need more people like Nabilah in Congress that share the average Americans experience!"

California Central Valley progressive Kim Williams told us last night that she "grew up in Nabilah’s home county, and I’m behind her 100%. She is spot on when she says that the candidates we need are hampered by a system that supports the candidates we don’t. Like her, I’ve had to make hard choices. I’m a single mom, and I’ve had to maintain my full-time job to support my child. This means I start my day at 4:00 a.m. to get a jump on my day before work and then I drive to events all over the district in the evenings and on weekends. But I have great hope that the system will change, and I know every working class candidate that makes it into office will fight to make sure those behind them have a fair shot. It's why I back Nabilah’s proposal and why I support publicly funded elections."

Rachel Ventura, the Will County reformer running for Congress against New Dem multimillionaire Bill Foster: "I certainly agree with Nabilah that we need to allow candidates to use campaign funds to pay for healthcare. In my first two campaigns I went without insurance and it was unsettling. Working people have it much harder than the 40% of Congress that fall into the millionaire category. The only way we are going to take our democracy back is to build a powerful grassroots movement that can propel working people into the halls of power without corporate campaign contributions. I look forward to fighting alongside Nabilah to pass a Medicare for All system and transform our political system to being one that serves all Americans."

"Running a campaign while working full time," said Arizona progressive and labor activist Eva Putzova, "is almost unheard of and even that is a privilege most people don't have-- they don't have an understanding employer that allows a candidate to flex their time to run. We need a complete overhaul of the campaign finance law and we need campaigns to be publicly funded-- to ensure that it's not just rich and corrupted to have a chance to represent us in Congress. Until we have such system, the campaign finance law should allow candidates to raise money to reasonably replace their income and non-wage benefits, including healthcare."