Director flags 2030 redistricting risk for California and New York
Swing Left, a grassroots political group focused on electing Democrats to office, has canvassed dozens of districts and heard from hundreds of thousands of voters during the cycle, according to Radjy. Asked to identify the defining issues of the midterms, Radjy said canvassers hear two dominant concerns: “a feeling like the system is broken” and cost of living. “The two are often related,” Radjy said, “but there are very few conversations where one or both of those issues are not coming up.” Both parties, she added, recognize the need to talk about affordability.
Radjy named four candidates she said are effectively linking those concerns with their districts: El-Sayed, running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan; Peltola in Alaska; House candidate Cognetti in Pennsylvania; and House candidate Shah in Arizona. El-Sayed, Radjy said, is modeling a “talk to everybody and engage with everyone” approach and won his primary through organizing. In Michigan, she added, canvassers hear a sentiment she called ubiquitous: “both parties suck, and no politician cares about that voter, their community and people like them.” El-Sayed, Radjy said, speaks compellingly about a feeling that “the system is broken,” tying that to affordability and a host of other issues. Across the four candidates, she added, “they are connecting those dots in a way that is specific and that is also mirroring the nature of those districts.”
On rebuilding trust with voters, Radjy said the party must follow up with people who express urgency about “the very real and material concerns” they have. “We also need to acknowledge that a lot of the things we’ve been doing aren’t working,” she said, calling for “tough, not just conversations, but introspection, and openness to trying new things, testing new things and taking bigger, riskier swings than we’re accustomed to.”
The biggest obstacle for Democrats in the cycle, Radjy said, is the party’s continued inability to articulate a vision beyond anti-Trump politics. “We need to start answering that now,” Radjy said, “and it’s OK if that answer has shades of difference in Michigan, Alaska and North Carolina.” Second, she said, Democrats cannot assume their base will turn out on anti-Trump sentiment alone in a way “that can sustain durable power.”
She also flagged the longer-term risk of redistricting, citing projections that California and New York — two big blue states Radjy described as “essential for presidential math” — will lose electoral votes beginning in 2030 while Texas and Florida gain them. “If we don’t have power in the states,” she said, “we will not be able to win congressional majorities because of how bad redistricting will look.” Radjy characterized the midterms as “our most important moment to build infrastructure while there’s money pouring in, while there’s energy to have a shot at winning tough Republican seats in a way we can sustain.” Without that effort, she said, “we are going to lose without question in the future, because we will have squandered an opportunity.”
Radjy pushed back on the focus among some in the party on a Democratic Socialists of America-versus-centrist divide, calling it “a completely false binary.” Swing Left, she said, has members who are DSA members and others who view DSA as a threat to democracy. “Voters are idiosyncratic, strange and full of contradictions because they’re human,” Radjy said, adding that canvassers regularly encounter voters whose views vary across issues, with the same person potentially aligning with DSA on healthcare and with Blue Dog Democrats on the border.
Asked about the recent messaging shifts on trans rights from Texas Senate nominee James Talarico and Iowa gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand, Radjy said most Americans “want trans people to have rights” and characterized the public discomfort on the subject as rooted in an information gap shaped by Fox News coverage. “The way to talk about these issues — and this is what the data shows — is to break down the pieces,” she said, adding that “all Americans want every American to have a certain set of freedoms.” On trans athletes in sports, she called the matter “complicated” and said “it is not really a decision for governments, it’s a decision for the leagues.” She cited Sarah McBride as a model of “leading with grace.”
On election-protection efforts, Radjy said there is “an asymmetric investment” across the progressive ecosystem, with effort concentrated on litigation, donor organizing and grassroots organizing, and less on the basic task of winning individual competitive races. “There is nothing more important for election protection than winning each competitive race by a big enough margin that Trump doesn’t have the incentive to try any kind of funny business,” Radjy said. She called the act of winning competitive races “the most essential ingredient to election protection.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity by The Guardian.