Paul Davis was a wunderkind. He was the Kansas House minority leader, then ran for governor. His loss, largely a result of a strip club scandal, set him back. After a stint in a Topeka law firm, he became Assistant Director for Government Affairs for the Insurance Commissioner -- Kathleen Sibelius. Now he is running for Governor.
Ordinarily, in politics, Randy Bryce would be a nobody, a nobody who tried some politics and failed. In 2012, he ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly. He lost the primary for Assembly District 62 70 to 30. In 2014, Bryce lost the election for State Senate District 21 by a little more than a 60-40. He touts himself as an ordinary guy. He turned out to be an extraordinary maker of campaign videos. His video went viral. Within 24 hours of its posting, he raised $100,000. He has raised more than a million dollars and the donations keep coming.
Brendan Kelly is the St. Clair County State's Attorney. In that role he sued banks for fraudulent and secretive mortgage recording. He was the first State’s Attorney in Illinois to sue big pharmaceutical companies for deceiving patients about the dangers of prescription opioids. He created a children’s justice division to prosecute crimes against children.
Susie Lee has been a leading Nevada philanthropist. Before she was a philanthropist, she had been a water and environmental consultant in Massachusetts and a policy advisor to the Las Vegas mayor. She became President of Nevada Women's Philanthropy, the Founding Executive Director of a homeless shelter for needy families, and now focuses on preventing school dropouts. She is not new to politics. Stepping in for Jacky Rosen who is running for the US Senate, Lee has Rosen's support, Harry Reid's support, and the support of the very powerful Culinary Workers Union.
Matt Cartwright is not exactly a Liberal Democrat in Trump country, but he is not a Trump Democrat either. How he approaches a controversial issue is instructive. On health care, he created a panel of more than twenty leading local figures to identify weaknesses in the Affordable Care Act. The donors were Democrats and Republicans. While waiting for the report he signed on for he the Medicare for All proposal. He seems to have figured out how not to be all or nothing, how to listen to locals about an important issue, and how to make sure that the locals he listens to are both independent and loyal enough not to be destructive.
Lisa Brown is another Congressional candidate in what is now a Republican oriented district who does not tout controversial positions. Her website says: Gets It. Done. Lisa Brown has been a leader among Democrats. Initially elected to Washington's House of Representatives, she became assistant Minority leader in her second term. Elected to Washington's State Senate, she became Ways and Means Chair during her first term and Majority Leader not long after that. One thing she gets done is election by her colleagues.
Elissa Slotkin lives on her family's farm in Southwestern Michigan. Her grandfather, Sam Slotkin, was a butcher. He founded Hygrade, the company responsible for Ball Park Franks, the hot dogs sold in the Detroit Tigers' Briggs Stadium. She went on to Columbia to study international development. Elissa Slotkin's first day at Columbia was September 10, 2001. Her second day was 9/11. She sought public service and became an analyst for the CIA. She worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and for the National Security Council under President Bush. She was the only Iraq adviser Obama held over from the Bush administration. When Elissa Slotkin returned home shortly after her marriage to a helicopter pilot in Iraq, she had thoughts about running for political office. The incumbents vote against the ACA clinched her decision.
Until her loss in 2016, Gretchen Driskellhad only successes as a politician. In non-partisan elections, she was elected to the Saline City Council in 1992 and reelected twice. She was elected as the first female mayor of Saline in 1998 and was elected four more times before running successfully for the state senate. As mayor, Gretchen Driskellnotes she passed 14 balanced budgets in 14 years. Saline was named one of the top 100 small cities in America three times. She ran for the state legislature as a Democrat -- defeating a popular Republican in what was considered a Republican District. While the state legislative election was partisan, the negative campaign in her run for Congress was a shock.
Cheri Bustos was one of those few Members of Congress elected in a district that Donald Trump carried. Even so, she is probably not endangered. She won in 2016 by twenty points. Her remarkable victory led to a profile in the blog Politico which described her as the new face of the Democratic Party. That's not quite right. The success of the Democratic Party required integrating moderates from rural districts like Bustos', suburban Democrats, and more traditional urban Democrats into a party that speaks for all of them.
If resumes count, Nancy Soderberg would be elected to anything she ran for. She is CEO of Soderberg Global Solutions and Director of the Public Service Leadership Program at the University of North Florida.Soderberg is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a regular commentator on national and international television and radio. She is the author of numerous articles and two books on American foreign policy. She was Deputy National Security Advisor to President Clinton, senior advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy. President Obama appointed her as Chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board (2011-2014). She has also served as President of Connect U.S. Fund, as Vice President of the International Crisis Group, and on the Board of the Jacksonville Port Authority.