Meet The Candidates Running Against Election Deniers In Their Communities
Emily Tseffos never imagined she’d run for public office. But something in her activated in 2016, as Donald Trump campaigned for president.
“I was living in a world where I was able to — I was enjoying my privilege,” she said. “I’m a white woman that never experienced the ill effects of policies or legislation in any way that shook me. But in 2016 that was something that woke me up to it.”
After her awakening, Tseffos — a former teacher and mother of three who was living in Tennessee at the time — started getting involved in politics by volunteering for organizations advocating against harmful legislation.
“I spent a lot of time in the legislature in Tennessee, and once you really understand that some of these folks have zero compassion or understanding with the harm that they’re doing, whether it’s through policy or rhetoric, there’s really no turning it off,” she said in a recent interview with Democracy Docket.
Tseffos has since moved back to Wisconsin — to just outside of Appleton, not far from where she grew up in Slinger — where she saw the harm Rep. Dave Murphy (R) was doing to her community. And so she decided to do something about it: Run against him.
She’s not the first Democrat to run against Murphy — who’s held the state assembly seat for District 56 since 2013 and is a known election denier— but she’s nonetheless giving her campaign everything she can to try and defeat him.
Since getting involved in 2016, she realized the actions coming out of state capitals have a direct impact on people.
“I would like for Wisconsin not to be one of the battleground states,” she said. “I think we are a bastion for progressive values, and we just need to start doing more deep organizing to remind folks of that.”
Tseffos is one of dozens of people across the country mounting grassroots challenges to the far-right extremists in local elections in their communities. Some are running for office for the first time. Others are mounting long-shot campaigns in deep red districts. Regardless of their experience or likeliness to win, what unites them is a shared sense of obligation to protect democracy.
A campaign for democracy
At least 42 candidates in six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — were recruited to run for office by Contest Every Race, a project by the progressive, anti-fascist incubator and consulting firm Movement Labs. It’s part of Contest Every Race’s unprecedented effort to “ensure every MAGA extremist faces a challenger in November, and to boost Democratic vote share in rural communities,” according to an emailed statement.
The goal of the effort is to recruit down ballot candidates in deep red, often rural districts where Democrats left races uncontested. According to data conducted by Contest Every Race, Democrats left 32% of down ballot races in seven surveyed swing states in 2022 uncontested, whereas Republicans only left 13% uncontested.
A majority of the candidates recruited by Contest Every Race are — like Tseffos — running for office for the first time.
Tseffos’ first inclinations to challenge Murphy came in 2023, shortly after Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz was elected. She faced a cacophony of attacks from Wisconsin Republicans calling for her impeachment, because of her candid comments on reproductive rights and gerrymandering while campaigning for a nonpartisan seat on the state’s highest court.
“[Murphy] was one of those people that was calling for impeachment without a legal pathway, as far as having any real case to be made,” Tseffos recalled. She tried twice to meet with Murphy to discuss the situation because, as his constituent, she was concerned about how impeaching the new Supreme Court justice would affect some of the issues she’s passionate about — abortion access and fair congressional maps. Both times he stood her up.
“I arranged a babysitter for my youngest kid, and he stood me up. Both times. I gave him the benefit of the doubt the first time,” she said. “And then after that second time, I realized that it was purposeful. So I went to the Capitol myself, because you have to catch him on his heels to be in a room with him if you’re not politically aligned.”
That’s when she realized: this isn’t supposed to be how representatives serve their constituents. When they make comments or decisions that affect their entire constituency, they can’t shield themselves from the people who don’t agree. “If you’re going to make a statement, or you’re going to take a stand on something, you need to be able to back it up,” she said.
Combatting conspiracists
Like Tseffos, Joy Banks decided to run for office in Cochise County, Arizona because of the extremism and conspiracy theories she saw taking a hold in her community. Specifically, it was an incident in the 2022 midterms, where the two Republican members of Cochise County’s three-person board of supervisors refused to certify the election.
The incident led to the two board of supervisor members — Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby — being indicted for felony offenses. All of which happened after county election officials tried, and failed, to hand count all ballots in the 2022 election. Banks recalled going to the meetings as they were debating hand-counting ballots and how they were flooded with people spouting election conspiracy theories.
“People were showing up at the board of supervisors meetings at the county and saying, ‘We want a hand count! We don’t trust machines!’ And there were literally dozens of people at these meetings,” she recalled.
Banks is no stranger to right-wing politics. She used to be a fundamentalist Christian who, along with her husband, homeschooled their nine children and tried to shield them from the influences of the outside world. She used to be a staunchly pro-life activist who would picket outside of Planned Parenthood locations.
But when some of her children faced issues like accidental pregnancies and alcohol and substance abuse, it changed her and her husband’s worldview. They became more accepting and opened their mind to others’ points of view, she said. She became more involved in local politics and organizing, as she identified more with progressive values and Democratic policies.
Banks had been somewhat involved in local politics before — she previously served on the Huachuca City Council — but it was this incident in 2022 that temporarily soured her on being involved in politics.
After that I just pulled away from politics altogether,” she said. “It just really blew my mind. And then my Democratic friends asked me last year. They said, ‘Joy, we don’t have anyone to run for district three supervisor, would you please consider it?’”
So she jumped into the race, challenging Judd — one of the two Republican supervisors that was indicted for refusing to certify the 2022 midterm election. “My chances are slim to none, but doggone it, I at least get to say these things in public,” she said. “I get to say that a lot of us are very scared of this and we don’t want to see this happen again.”
Though the efforts of Contest Every Race have played a large part in increasing the pro-democracy challengers to far-right candidates in local elections, Tseffos thinks it’s part of a larger trend in Wisconsin.
“I think we’ve suddenly experienced this hope across our state that we can bring back that better governance,” she said. “These are uphill battles, but we are dedicated to our communities and to upholding our Constitution and making sure that we are actually serving the people, instead of serving ourselves or just falling in line with party leadership that does not represent the people and the values that we hold in Wisconsin.”
It’s not just Wisconsin. George Arredondo, an Arizona native who’s running for supervisor of Pinal County — where he was born and raised — also sees a demographic shift in his state.
“You have a cluster of people leaving higher cost areas and coming to Arizona,” he said. “They’re younger. They want jobs, things like that. So we are kind of transitioning, I think, from a dark red state, to a light red state, to ideally purple or blue. That’s because of the growth that’s been coming in.”
That shift, he thinks, is what’s driving the surge in conspiracy theories among the conservative contingent of his community. “Our board of supervisors are kind of sitting there questioning our election process, our county recorder, and our elections department,” he said. “Basically questioning our democracy and how they believe it should be working.”
And Arredondo, like Tseffos and Banks, felt compelled to do something about it. So he jumped into the race for Pinal County Supervisor.
It’s not unlike why Cameron Schroy, a career civic teacher who’s running for state senate in Pennsylvania, jumped into the race. “I’m someone who talks about the importance of our democracy,” he said. “I talk about being involved, the importance of law and order, of a peaceful transition of power. And I got into this race mainly because I couldn’t let one of the most extreme members of the Pennsylvania State Senate go unchallenged.”
Schroy is running for the seat currently held by Sen. Doug Mastriano, an election denier and failed gubernatorial candidate who notoriously bussed people to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s a deep red district and Schroy admits that his campaign is an uphill battle. But he thinks it’s nonetheless important for Democrats in his position to make a stand.
“Locally, at least, we see a lot of apathy, which is quite unfortunate,” he said. It seems like a lot of people don’t want to be part of the process. And so what comes along with that? What I’ve seen is the loudest voices in the room are the ones that get heard more often because they tend to be more engaged. So part of what I am doing is trying to encourage people, even if, when people with progressive views are the minority in our district and our county, we still at least deserve to be heard.”
It’s this attitude that Tseffos wants to see more people around the country embrace. “I think that we are long past the time for folks to sit this one out,” she said of the upcoming election. “I think that we need to understand what’s at stake. And once you understand what is truly on the line, and the fact that there are folks that are connected to us through our community, that are being harmed, it is our responsibility to fight for them, and it’s our responsibility to be active in pushing back against things that are done out of hate or spite that coalesce power around communities.”