Politics

‘Furious and looking for action’: DOGE is turning into a Democratic candidate recruitment tool

Published

1 year ago

February 25, 2025

Democrats say sweeping government cuts led by Elon Musk have started to awaken a latent opposition to President Donald Trump — and they’re hoping it will motivate a slew of new down-ballot candidates to run in the years ahead.

Early interest in running for office is already beginning to rise — at least one major candidate recruitment organization saw a sharp spike of more than 2,000 new applications pouring in as Musk issued major actions pushing federal workers out. A lot of that web traffic came from Reddit threads of former federal employees considering runs for political office that sprang up last week.

Capitalizing off the influx, Run For Something will host an “Ask Me Anything” event to answer questions about running for political office on a Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-focused sub-Reddit thread on Friday.

While it’s still early, Democratic strategists said they hope fired federal workers could be potent recruits for next year’s midterms — and serve as powerful communicators on what the cuts from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency means for voters.

“I expect we will see some candidates this year and next year who will talk about how Donald Trump and Elon Musk fired them while they were working for the American people,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run For Something, a progressive group that recruits Democrats to run for office.

“It’s a pretty compelling campaign message,” she added.

About 20,000 people have joined Run For Something since Trump won reelection in November, Litman said, with 10 percent of that coming just in the last week. Democrats, still adrift after their 2024 losses, hope the fury over DOGE’s gutting of the federal government and House Republicans efforts to cut funding to Medicaid represent a turning point for the party, giving them tangible grassroots energy to tap into that so far hasn’t manifested at the same intensity as Trump’s first term.

Backlash to the first Trump presidency fueled a wave of candidates with unconventional — and primarily non-political — backgrounds to run for office in 2018. That flood of first-time candidates included women like former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), people of color like New York Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado and former members of the military like Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.). They rode the wave of anti-Trump sentiment to retake control of the House. They’ve also deepened the party’s bench of talent, many of whom are now running for or already won statewide offices.

Now, Democratic groups hope that former federal workers will be among a coalition of non-traditional candidates who they plan to recruit for the midterms. Federal workers, who are “already inclined toward public service” but previously barred from politics, are now “liberated from that constraint, furious and looking for action, [running for office] is a really concrete step that people want to take,” Litman said.

House Republicans in several red districts have already begun to face angry constituents at town halls in recent days over the DOGE’s cuts to the federal workforce. Clips of Republican House members being booed by constituents at town halls went viral on social media. Anti-Musk protesters gathered outside of congressional offices in swing districts in Arizona, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“The town halls, the tele-town halls, the activism from protests over the holiday weekend, it speaks for itself,” said Ben Ray, vice president for federal and gubernatorial campaigns at EMILY’s List, a liberal group that recruits abortion rights supporting women to run for office. “It’s early days, still, and it’s not going to be a 2017-level reaction, but I think folks are getting fired up for the fight.”

The fresh grassroots energy came after a wave of layoffs hit government workers in recent weeks, and a barrage of news coverage showed how DOGE cuts had upended scientific research funding and pushed veterans out of jobs. The agency’s officials also potentially gained access to private taxpayer data, triggering private panic for congressional Republicans. Even Democrats, who had initially expressed interest in working with Musk and DOGE, are now backing away from the effort. Several polls released last week found a majority of Americans disapprove of Elon Musk and DOGE’s actions.

Democrats are moving to harness the backlash, which is already “changing who we are talking to” to run for office and “what we’re talking about,” Ray added. He predicted that DOGE “is probably going to be a major feature in this election, and potentially a definitive one.”

Musk and Trump, for their part, aren’t backing down. Appearing alongside Trump in a Fox News interview last week, Musk called the criticism of DOGE an “antibody reaction from those who are receiving the wasteful and fraudulent money.”

The White House did not respond to an emailed request for comment. But when asked by reporters about constituent reaction to the “chainsaw approach” to federal job cuts, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said there was “overwhelming support” for it. “There should be no secret about the fact that this administration is committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse,” she said. “The president campaigned on that promise, Americans elected him on that promise and he’s actually delivering on it.”

The anger from voters may be a gift to Democrats, who have struggled to form a coherent message against Trump in his second administration.

“When it’s organic, when it’s grassroots anger, then it doesn’t need to be bottled and sold by a political party,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic consultant.

“Democrats just need to point to that zeitgeist and show disenchanted voters that people refuse to be steamrolled by this administration,” Hogan said.

Internal Democratic polling, conducted by the leadership-aligned House Majority Forward, found a majority of voters in battleground districts view Musk negatively. An accompanying memo urged Democrats to not “chide Musk, Trump, and others for being rich,” but rather emphasize that Musk could undermine key safety net programs while enriching himself.

That’s why some Democrats see the “real-life stories” of federal workers and what the DOGE cuts mean as another way to connect these actions to voters: “When you’re able to put a face to a story, then people have much stronger feelings on it when they realize it’s their friends and neighbors being fired,” said C.J. Warnke, communications director for House Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC closely aligned with House leadership. “We need to amplify these stories and make these cuts real for people.”

Indivisible, a progressive group formed during the first Trump administration, leaned into the DOGE cuts in a memo to its volunteers, called “Musk Or Us.” The memo urged them to attend congressional town halls during this week’s recess and ask questions about “the Trump-Musk budget power grab” and “Musk’s control over government spending.”

Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, said that Democrats “didn’t have juice before the OMB freeze,” referring to the federal freeze Trump’s White House implemented then rescinded last month. “That was the flashpoint when it started to go mainstream and it’s been picking up ever since then.”

Politics

Michigan pollster accuses McMorrow campaign of killing unfavorable Senate poll

Published

2 hours ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A prominent Michigan pollster is accusing state Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s Senate campaign of pressuring a state capitol news outlet into killing a survey of the heated Democratic primary.

The pollster, Steve Mitchell, told Blue Light News the survey was conducted on behalf of Michigan Information & Research Service, an independent news outlet covering the state capitol that his firm regularly works with. But MIRS ultimately chose not to publish the survey after pushback from the McMorrow campaign.

The poll found McMorrow at just 6 percent ahead of the state’s pivotal Aug. 4 contest, far behind former public health official Abdul El-Sayed at 42 percent and Rep. Haley Stevens at 33 percent.

“The poll, in the eyes of the McMorrow campaign, understated their support,” Mitchell, whose firm Mitchell Research & Communications conducted and paid for the poll, told Blue Light News. “And they put intense pressure on MIRS, and therefore MIRS decided that they weren’t going to run the survey. That’s their decision, and I support their decision.”

McMorrow has trailed the other two candidates in a number of recent public surveys, but 6 percent would mark a new low — a sign her campaign for the critical Michigan Senate seat may be mired in third place. McMorrow’s campaign told Blue Light News the polling methodology was faulty and that its resulting memo was riddled with errors, including spelling her name wrong.

Kyle Melinn, a news editor with MIRS, said he killed the poll after speaking with the McMorrow campaign and other pollsters.

“I told Steve that the campaign did raise issues with the poll, and that they were pressuring me to not run the poll,” Melinn said in an interview. He added that after registering the McMorrow campaign’s concerns, he solicited the advice of other pollsters, and “didn’t run it because I didn’t feel comfortable with it.” The other unidentified pollsters shared his issues with the poll, according to Melinn.

McMorrow campaign spokesperson Jackson Boaz said in a statement that “Voicing concerns about a poll isn’t a pressure campaign. They chose not to publish a survey that is deeply flawed.” Asked whether the campaign had asked MIRS not to run the poll, Boaz said, “MIRS chose not to run the poll because they agreed the poll did not meet their standards.”

Boaz said the McMorrow campaign reached out to MIRS after “we noticed odd things about the data,” including that 0 percent of Black voters were undecided in the race; 0 or 1 percent of voters in Detroit and its metro area were undecided while other parts of the state had undecided voters at 25 percent, 48 percent, and even 54 percent; and that McMorrow was at just 5 percent support in her home base of Oakland County.

Their suspicion — which they said MIRS confirmed — was that the poll allowed anyone to take it through an open link, rather than having access controlled to ensure a random and representative sample of the state.

The poll was conducted through a methodology known as text-to-web, in which random voters are selected to receive a text message link to a survey to fill out. That allows pollsters to ensure they are reaching an appropriately wide-ranging group of voters. But the McMorrow campaign said all respondents received the same open-access link, which would allow anyone with the link to take the poll — potentially multiple times.

“The outlet that sponsored this poll declined to publish it because it didn’t meet their standards.

It was conducted through an open SurveyMonkey link sent over text, meaning anyone who

received this poll could vote multiple times or send the link to friends and supporters to impact

the results,” Boaz said in a statement. “This is fundamental polling malpractice. We urge either of our opponents, or any reputable pollster, to stand by this shoddy methodology.”

In an interview, Mitchell admitted he got some of the polling memo wrong, saying for example that he meant to write El-Sayed supported Medicare for All, not “Social Security for All.” But he said he stood by the poll and its methodology.

“I have always had 100 percent confidence in all the polling I do,” Mitchell said. “I believe that we’ve been very strenuous in the methodology that we use. We’re very careful about it. We weighted it well, and more importantly, we have a track record that shows we are a strong and good pollster.”

“A poll is a poll,” Mitchell said when asked about the open link question, sharing a poll with Blue Light News from GOP gubernatorial candidate John James that he said used a similar approach.

The controversy over the spiked poll underscores the importance of the Michigan Senate race. Democrats view defending the open seat as crucial to reclaiming the Senate majority, and the party establishment has mobilized hard against Bernie Sanders-backed El-Sayed, who they argue could pave the way to Republican Mike Rogers flipping the seat in November.

But recent pollssuggest McMorrow is falling behind El-Sayed, who is experiencing a surge in support, and Stevens, who is backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

In the memo about the contested poll, Mitchell wrote there has been a “huge erosion in support for Mallory McMorrow.”

“One of the reasons for her seeming collapse is the fact El-Sayed had received a large amount of unpaid media because of the endorsements by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Hasan Piker the anti-Semitic podcaster while Haley Stevens had an outside organization spend more than $6 million on her candidacy,” Mitchell wrote. However, he added: “Our poll was conducted June 11-13 which coincided with an ad buy of at least $5 million on behalf of McMorrow that started just the day before we began our polling. Therefore, McMorrow’s ads did not have enough time to impact our results.”