Can populist candidates save the Democratic Party?

As many grassroots Democrats seethe over what they see as their party’s inability to stand up to the Trump administration, a wave of independent-minded populist candidates is crashing onto the 2026 midterm battlefield, and their campaigns all have one thing in common.

Behind the viral launch videos and attention-grabbing headlines of candidates like Graham Platner, Dan Osborn, Abdul el-Sayed, and Nathan Sage sits Fight Agency, a group of veteran Democratic strategists betting that this is a moment in which they can permanently reshape their party’s future. The Philly-based firm, founded by Tommy McDonald, Rebecca Katz, and Julian Mulvey, has quietly positioned itself as the go-to ad shop for progressive populists aiming to break the mold in a midterm cycle defined by voter anger and Democratic soul-searching. Beyond that quartet of gruff-speaking U.S. Senate hopefuls, Fight's client roster features battleground House contenders like Paige Cognetti in Pennsylvania's 8th District and Bob Brooks in PA-07, along with progressive billionaire Tom Steyer's California gubernatorial bid and Gina Hinojosa's Texas governor campaign. Oh yeah, and they also supported Zohran Mamdani in his historic campaign for mayor of New York. 

I sat down with Fight co-founder Tommy McDonald to hear about his team’s theory of the case, populism, and where the Democratic party should go from here. Our conversation has been edited for grammar and clarity. 

Kyle: Let’s dig in. Democrats hit rock bottom after the 2024 election—whether it’s the Senate, House, presidency, Supreme Court, or state legislatures, there’s really not much left to lose. What’s your theory of the case for how the party can rebuild this cycle and beyond?

Tommy: My colleague Morris Katz and I woke up in Nebraska the morning after Election Night 2024. We’d just worked for independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn, and his overperformance really stuck with us. I started writing down a list of challenges with the way we campaign, in addition to core ideas and values—and the big one was that Democrats need to run a lot of different kinds of campaigns. More fun. More populist. More bold. Better online. You know, like the future of our Republic is at stake.

That doesn’t mean one “different” kind—it means many different kinds of campaigns. We need to elevate candidates who can actually compete and communicate in the modern media environment. That means taking core economic messages and expressing them much more clearly. It means running authentic class-based campaigns that genuinely reflect their communities—candidates who look and talk like the people they’re trying to represent. It also means embracing media platforms where people are.

I’m an old-school TV ad maker, but I’ve also had to help lead some very innovative digital and earned media efforts. We’re trying to help campaigns build a culture of yes—one that’s not ruled by the risk aversion you see so much in Washington. We also want to explore non‑ideological ways of doing things, using creative that’s relentlessly focused on the audience. 

Kyle: When you say “non-ideological ways,” do you mean aesthetically? Because the Democrats who tend to get early backing from the national committees are usually polished and buttoned-up—they look like politicians. Some of your clients are very much not that.

Tommy: There’s a playbook most Democrats use, and it works in a lot of places, but not everywhere.

For example, in 2020, I worked for John Kane, a motorcycle-riding plumber running for state legislature. That year, he was the only Democrat to flip a legislative seat in Pennsylvania. A plumber who rode a motorcycle did better than the pile of clean-cut moderates in suits. In 2023, a year before Democrats lost all five statewide races in PA, we helped Dan McCaffery—a blue-collar veteran who also rode a motorcycle—win a Supreme Court race on a class-based campaign. 

Then in 2024, Dan Osborn in Nebraska was another unconventional, working-class candidate who dramatically outperformed Harris with young voters, voters of color, and suburbanites, as well as double-digit overperformance in the reddest parts of the state. Dan outperformed Harris more than any campaign in the country. There’s clearly a way to outperform with all of those audiences at the same time, and it starts with running different kinds of candidates.

Most Democratic candidates come straight out of central casting. The “clean-cut suburban Democrat” works great where it works—but not everywhere. If we want to win in big cities, rural areas, and places where the party hasn’t been competitive in a decade, we need to try new things and be a little more comfortable trying them. 

Kyle: When I was in college, there were Democrats representing places like North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Nebraska. Today, that kind of map seems unimaginable. What changed—and can Democrats ever get back there?

Tommy: For a long time, the Democratic Party was united around class, economic issues, and the idea of taking on the powerful on behalf of working people.

What changed, I think, is that the party stopped having a coherent framework for tackling the big economic challenges of our time. Working people have been getting screwed for 40 years—it’s happened in my family, to the people in my hometown. They’re rightfully angry, and we have to run campaigns that acknowledge that anger and offer a bold path forward.

Parties in the wilderness throughout history emerge when they answer the big questions of their time. It’s time to start trying to answer them and stop ignoring them. 

Kyle: How does that square with the “Lincoln Project-ization” of the party, where the base at times seems to have become concentrated among highly educated white suburban voters?

Tommy: We’ve worked on roughly a dozen winning statewide elections in Pennsylvania over the last decade. And the data is clear: we’ve already maximized the suburbs. Fetterman did better than both Biden and Harris in 64 out of 67 counties in PA. We play with elements of reform, economic populism, and campaigns that feel different. We can’t spend nothing and take a zero in rural areas.

If Democrats want to win swing states and build new ones we need to grow our base among working people. Every data analytics person worth their salt comes to a similar conclusion. So no, I don’t think there’s any other path to something like 60 Democratic Senate seats and a House majority that can pass real things to help the people that isn’t rooted in and organized around class.

Kyle: You have clients running in competitive Democratic primaries where the national committees are throwing their weight behind opponents. Do you see that kind of D.C. intervention as a mistake?

Tommy: Putting a finger on the scale in primaries has alienated large parts of the Democratic electorate—and it doesn’t have a great track record of success. Look at past Senate races in Pennsylvania or North Carolina or Maine: it hasn’t always worked out. 

Now, some stellar candidates like Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown won’t face primaries this year, and that’s because they are great—they’re both popular, establishment-aligned figures who connect with working-class voters. But the broader principle matters: communities should have a say. For the party that claims to defend democracy, letting voters choose their nominees shouldn’t be controversial. We shouldn’t be afraid of democracy.

If an establishment candidate is strong and has game, they’ll win. Trying to suppress primaries doesn’t produce broad, durable general-election coalitions. Swing voters can smell a party hack, and can sense when an authentic grassroots movement is there.

From a practical standpoint, both campaigns and candidates need to evolve. The Democratic Party is at a low point in terms of systemic power. Where we have regained it, it’s because we ran a lot of different candidates with very different brands. The one-size-fits-all approach from D.C. has never served us well, and there’s a bunch of election results that serve as a pretty compelling counterargument to appointment from Washington boardrooms. 

Kyle: Let’s shift to the tactical side. Your clients tend to break out online and raise big grassroots money. How do you think about digital engagement?

Tommy: Our industry needs to rethink a lot. I love TV, I probably enjoy placing a thousand points on the air in Scranton more than anyone, my team makes fun of me for it. I’ll watch a Phillies game and count the number of political ads. I love it, sometimes more than the actual game. 

But the way Democrats use linear media needs the same level of rigor, criticism, and innovation we apply to digital. Paige Cognetti is in a district that relies overwhelmingly on TV to get their news - but she still believes in running smart digital video and her “Paige Against the Machine” campaign is present online and off. Josh Shapiro has a real influencer plan and strong digital comms. You can do both well.

Take Zohran Mamdani: the paid team focused almost entirely on TV and very little on digital because they already had younger voters locked in. That can be the right approach when it fits the candidate and the audience. 

Kyle: There’s been a lot of online debate about whether Democrats should move left or center on a set of issues—including what some call “abundance” discourse. Is that the real fault line inside the party?

Tommy: Honestly, I don’t think the left-versus-moderate frame is that useful. With campaigns from everywhere from Summer Lee to John Fetterman —which we’re very proud of the campaign we ran—the success wasn’t ideological. It was non-ideological in its message and its framing.

The voters who swing elections aren’t thinking in terms of political theory. They’re deciding whether to vote at all, whether to choose the Democrat or stay home. The working class in this country hasn’t had a raise in decades and holds a tiny share of the nation’s wealth. You don’t need to be Bernie Sanders to say that, its not ideological, it’s just reality.

Campaigns that clearly identify villains, take on corporate power, and fight for working people across communities tend to perform well. That’s what the evidence shows (Everyone from the Working Families Party to the centrist Deciding to Win post-mortem report hit these points well). A party centered on class—improving people’s lives and standing up for workers can fight anywhere. And we gotta fight back everywhere. The question for those arguing for a non-class-based approach is: what’s the math to win, where is the map to true governing power to improve people’s lives? Also, can it beat the muscular populism on the other side in ad on a Phillies game? 

Kyle: What would you like to see the Democratic Party or the broader progressive movement learn from your experience?

Tommy: We started this work to help a new generation of candidates who weren’t being supported by traditional firms. Many of the people we’ve worked with were turned away by the big consultancies. What if we had a place filled with qualified people and great creative that understood the modern media landscape, that worked for the folks locked out of a process that favors the status quo? More people should take on candidates that are different.

We need to rethink what makes a “good candidate.” Recruiting working-class people means changing the structures and incentives in how we find and evaluate talent. What makes a good candidate is not just how many people are in your college Rolodex. At some point, it’s time to get votes. More broadly, the party has to ask what being a Democrat really means, what we fight for, and who we fight for - and who shows that. 

That doesn’t mean every campaign should look like Fetterman’s or Shapiro’s or AOC’s. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula. You don’t need steel mills and sparks in every ad (though there should be a lot more of that on our side). The point is to run campaigns that authentically reflect their communities. The future of the Republic (the one conceived here in Philly) depends on that kind of authenticity—on looking and feeling like the places we’re trying to represent, and then when we get into power, fighting like hell for them.

The Republican National Committee has officially joined TikTok after the app’s partial sale to a group of American owners was finalized. @Republicans launched on Friday with a video mashup of Trump rally footage and an 80’s power ballad-vibe. So far, the account has just over 70,000 followers and 2.3 million total video views. 

Historically, Republican politicians have not found much success on the platform, and the majority of GOP Governors, Senators, and members of Congress do not have TikTok accounts. One exception is @TeamTrump, which is run by the President’s political advisors and is one of the largest and most viewed political accounts on the app. 

You already know the story by now: Donald Trump and his political team strongarmed Texas Republicans into making an unprecedented and highly partisan mid-decade redistricting play, setting off a nationwide scramble for both parties to gerrymander their way to a U.S. House majority. The latest development in that fight is in Virginia, where the legislature unveiled a proposed map that would wipe out nearly all Republican members of Congress in the commonwealth. In order for the map to go into effect, the process will need to survive legal challenges over the next few weeks, and be approved by voters in April. 

The Washington Post editorial board decried Virginia Democrats’ move, calling it “hypocrisy.” Although, they were quick to defend Texas’ hyper-partisan gerrymandering play just a few months ago.