This year’s midterms have been described in a few different ways: Year of the Woman, ‘Blue Wave’, historic, critical. But there’s another aspect to these midterms that have made them different from many other election cycles: the staggering vulnerability of many of the candidates.
Elections are brutal. They can be aggressive and cutthroat. Showing any weakness can sometimes be enough to tank an entire campaign. Which is why elections have always been marked by an element of perfection. Not to say that any candidates are perfect, but rather that almost all candidates will try their damnedest to appear so. But these midterms have been a bit different. There are candidates, from local to federal races, that are opening up their lives to scrutiny and willingly showing their wounds and weaknesses. But in a political environment as fragile and tenuous as this one, where tensions are high and a lot is at stake, maybe that’s exactly what this election needs.
Openness and vulnerability has been seen in candidates from every level. Schuyler Hudak is a 35-year-old woman from San Francisco running for District 2 Supervisor. She has political experience, a valuable younger perspective, and money to back her run. And on October 17, she posted publicly about being sexually assaulted in 2016. Amid this #MeToo era, sharing stories of sexual assault is becoming much more common for civilians but generally not for anyone running for public office. It is shocking yet powerful to hear a young woman share such a personal story just weeks away from Election Day. But the sentiment behind her story is both sanguine and compelling. Her public story ends with this: “Finding the will to keep going has given me my voice back, and now I plan to use my voice to change the policies that keep victims silent and to be relentless in the fight to ensure that every person feels safe in San Francisco.” Sharing this story, while probably terrifying and at the very least uncomfortable for Hudak, was able to breathe life into her political agenda and policy stances, as well as intensify her relatability and overall humanity.
We have also seen a similar vulnerability in candidate Kyrsten Sinema, a female Democrat running for Senate in Arizona. Sinema has opened up about living in “an old, abandoned gas station without running water or electricity” with her family for three years in Florida when she was young. This story, while potentially painful for Sinema to re-live, has resonated with Democrats and Republicans alike. Why? Because Sinema has discussed how this period of life taught her the importance of working hard, while also mentioning how government assistance played a pivotal role in her upbringing. “I never believed that being homeless was going to stop me from being who I wanted to be,” she says. She has spoken extensively about the need to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” a message that resonates strongly with Republicans, while noting that her family relied on help from others like the church and even the government as they were struggling to make ends meet, representing a Democratic policy view. “I worked really hard but I still needed a little help,” she says.
Another candidate who has been extremely open, as well as extremely visible and publicized lately, is Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke. In a hotly contested race against incumbent Ted Cruz, he has had to face many questions about his past. One of the main points of contention has been O’Rourke’s past drunk driving incident. In 1998, when O’Rourke was 26 years old, he was arrested and charged with a DWI after crashing into a truck while under the influence of alcohol. He later completed a court-approved diversion program, and the charges were dismissed. He was had a 1995 misdemeanor arrest for jumping a fence at University of Texas at El Paso campus — filed as a burglary. O’Rourke has addressed these incidents very openly, and very frequently, ever since he ran for City Council in 2004. O’Rourke has acknowledged both cases, saying that he had no justification or “excuse” for his behavior then and that he was “grateful for the second chance.”
“Some 20 years ago, I was charged with driving under the influence and, during my college years, I jumped a fence at the University of Texas at El Paso which resulted in a burglary charge,” O’Rourke told a local paper, the Palestine Herald-Press, in 2017. “I was not convicted of either. Both incidents were due to poor judgement and I have no excuse for my behavior then. However, since then, I have used my opportunities to serve my community and my state. I’m grateful for the second chance and believe that we all deserve second chances.”
He has since continued to call his DWI a “terrible mistake”, for which there is “no excuse, explanation, or justification”. Recently, on The Ellen Degeneres Show, he even acknowledged that if he were a member of an ethnic minority group, the outcome for him might have been different. “I know that if I were African American, if I had been arrested with marijuana, it might be very hard for me to then get a job,” he said. “I’d have to check a box on an application form; I couldn’t finance my student loans. That might very well narrow my choices and options in life.” While past mistakes such as these may have been enough to tank another candidate’s campaign, it hasn’t done so for O’Rourke. Some polls are even putting the Cruz-O’Rourke race within single digits.
All of these candidate examples are further proof that being open and honest, being willing to admit to mistakes or address downfalls and vulnerabilities, may be more important to voters than being viewed as perfect. If this is true, this could be a major game-changer for future campaigns and elections. But we will have to wait until November 6 to see just how this affects voting, and see if being transparent can win them the election.
By/: Cianna Allen