What the Midterms Meant for Working-Class Candidates

Yesterday’s midterms were a case in point. According to our tallies, there were 933 Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress, but the two major parties ran just seven candidates in the general election whose campaign websites listed a working-class job as their most recent non-elected occupations: Tim Rogers, a delivery driver (Wisconsin-4), Brian Poindexter, an iron worker (Ohio-7), Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper (Montana-1), Ray Pooley, a machinist (Michigan-9), Christopher Reichard, an electrician (Missouri-8), Rebecca Cooke, a waitress (Wisconsin-3), and Troy Jackson, a logger (Maine Senate). These seven candidates—so few you could easily write all of their names on a Post-It note—have recent experience in the kinds of jobs that most working Americans go to every day.