Dressing 'Shacky' and Making the Tent Bigger

I’ve never run for office before, and the learning curve is steep. Sometimes I’m a little too up in my feelings. Sometimes I wear the wrong clothes, say the wrong things, fall into lizard brain defensive mode when I should be operating from a place of calm.

Three months into launching my campaign for Congress, my team and I have held a dozen or so listening sessions across Congressional District 6. We’ve tried to be nimble, speaking in both versions of the CD-6 as the redistricting battles play out. We’ve also burned up Interstate-81 holding fundraisers, meet-and-greets, and volunteer sessions in libraries and church basements, in schools, breweries, and coffee shops. It’s alternately heady and humbling.

We’ve potlucked and pontificated. We’ve met with farmers and veterans, with peer-recovery specialists fighting to help their brethren heal from addiction and homelessness. My favorite moments include petting a lot of dogs, having tea with an Irish grandmother, and speaking from the pulpit of an historic AME church.

When I’m not on the road, I’m calling every person I’ve ever interacted with in my 61 years—and a few of their cousins, neighbors, and neighbors’ cousins—asking them to donate money or time toward helping me flip the House.

I start by saying I’m not a career politician—a bonus in some rooms, not so much in others. Then I walk people through the fact that we are living in the most corrupt era of our lifetimes, quarterbacked by a coin-operated president and a rubber-stamp Congressman who is more interested in keeping his job and cushy health insurance than meeting with his constituents to explain why he voted against Head Start, veterans care, and school lunches, and why he made it harder for folks to get the healthcare and public education they deserve.

Trump and his Republican enablers have destroyed international alliances, endangered our planet with deregulation and threats of war, deported immigrants and citizens alike, and threatened our voting rights—all while modeling for our kids and grandkids that it’s OK to be racist, greedy, and thoroughly indecent.

A writer for the Financial Times, a center-right publication based in London, nailed it when he wrote that the United States is experiencing “the most rapid episode of democratic and civil erosion in the recent history of the developed world.”

If Democrats don’t take the House of Representatives back, democracy—and more importantly, civility—as we once knew it (and took for granted) is toast.

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So what does a day in the life of a nascent campaign look like on the ground? Well, if your husband built forts in the woods behind my husband’s childhood house, I’m sorry but he will probably be getting a call from one of us. If you and I competed to be Ms. Tabor’s favorite writer in her tenth-grade English class, I will be hitting you up. (Thanks for the super-generous check, T.G., but you know I’m still her girl!)

When Sen. Tim Kaine endorsed my candidacy in November, he called me “Virginia’s best listener.” But running for office requires a tougher style of listening than I’ve ever done because it gets personal. It demands the fortitude to be perceived as a hero in some rooms and as the anti-Christ in others—while still keeping my ears (and heart) open. Which is easier tweeted than done.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the road:

• Trust in people and institutions is at an all-time low. Nowhere was this more obvious than at a recent anti-data center meeting I attended, where people didn’t just think their local elected officials were bad; I heard it from people on the far left and the far right—who actually believed their leaders were on the take. (I, too, have been accused of taking corporate PAC money, even though I have not, and you can check for yourself; donations are all public.)

• Most voters don’t feel listened to, including 30 million poor and low-wage people who didn’t bother to vote in 2024 in part because nobody talked to them.

• Democrats have no idea how to reach Independents, centrists, and Republicans. (Show up at community dinners, suggested folks I met in Buena Vista. Host health fairs, Narcan trainings, food drives and the like.)

• “Don’t dress so shacky,” my dear friend, the NAACP leader Naomi Hodge-Muse, said as only she could, before I spoke to her sister’s AME church. Instead of my usual jeans and Blundstones, Naomi urged, “Think: what would Abigail wear? Girl, wear a suit!”

• The far right doesn’t have a lock on rigid thinking. A few times on the trail, I’ve been shouted at, intimidation-filmed, and accused of lying. Some activists press hard over phrases that risk becoming ideological purity tests. What we need to be discussing is how to build local, sustainable coalitions around making life better for our neighbors.

For the record, I realize my words may not always be eloquent on the spot. But here’s what I believe: Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet are committing crimes against humanity and should be prosecuted. How do we justify continuing to send taxpayer dollars to fund a war overseas when we’re cutting ACA subsidies and refusing to fund universal childcare?

I think Minneapolis proves that ICE is too far gone to fix. We need to focus on finding solutions, not just slogans.

Say “abolish,” say “defund”—the core thing is that we need to dismantle it. We should get rid of masked agents lawlessly ripping people out of their homes and create legal pathways for citizenship that would fill workforce gaps with the goal of reforming immigration for the first time since 1986.

But what are we doing to help the woman whose partner was just deported? How are we helping the crying woman in Luray, on the verge of losing her house because her husband’s job got axed by DOGE? How are we helping the rural pregnant moms in danger of having to drive two hours to deliver because of Trump/Cline’s Medicaid cuts?

What about the 200 Roanoke children who lost Head Start services as the result of their Big Ugly Bill? Or the USDA cuts that mean your local food advocates can no longer hand out weekly fresh produce, eggs, and milk to people on SNAP.

I want to work with and support the efforts of everyone trying to help the most vulnerable among us—people who are being harmed right now. Let’s unite to help the people in Botetourt County worried about Google hurting their farmland, usurping their water, and raising energy bills—with most of the details buried under the cover of an NDA.

I don’t want to argue about language when more than 70,000 people in Gaza have been killed. When more than 400 Harrisonburg immigrants have been deported, I don’t want us to split our efforts by falling into discord over what to call the abomination that is ICE.

The best social movements are welcoming, hopeful, even joyful. They help you find your people, like the rallies outside Ben Cline’s office organized by Richard Gooding of Roanoke Social Circle. “Work to connect the different parts of your life,” advised my friend, the authoritarianism scholar Andrea Pitzer, who helped Roanoke rally-goers organize as a response to the re-election of Trump.

The answer is always community. I’m learning and re-learning that as I stumble my way toward the primary, now set for August 4. “A movement needs people who feel safe with each other, who can hang out and talk about things besides politics,” a Wisconsin party activist recently told Charles Duhigg for The New Yorker.

Another rural organizer framed exclusionary tactics as “kryptonite,” explaining that the most effective candidates focus on bread-and-butter issues that people agree on, regardless of party. Like the future of our kids and grandkids.

To volunteer or donate to my campaign:

Democrats, let’s make our tent bigger, not smaller. I am here for the sometimes hard conversations on how we can do that. And I want to listen to and learn from each Virginian who wants me to hear about how we can move forward together.