CNN
—
Becoming a federal prosecutor was a longtime professional dream for Erika Evans, one she achieved nearly four years ago.
But Evans soured on her job as an assistant US attorney in Seattle this year soon after President Donald Trump returned to the White House. She cites the Justice Department rolling back diversity initiatives and defending Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship.
“It just like felt like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is not the Department of Justice that I know,’” Evans recalled. “We were getting notices to report on colleagues doing diversity work in the office, and that if we reported it within 10 days, we wouldn’t be in trouble,” she said. “Crazy, crazy things.”
She quit in March. Now, she’s running to become the city attorney in Seattle.
Evans is among what some Democratic groups identify as a growing trend: Former federal officials alienated by Trump’s remaking of the federal government deciding to run for office themselves. Those groups are actively recruiting current federal employees as well as those who were fired or left voluntarily, betting that they will make good messengers against Republicans.
Ryan Crosswell testified before Congress about resigning from the Justice Department’s public integrity division over the agency’s move to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He is now running for the US House, one of several Democrats vying to unseat Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in what is expected to be one of the most competitive House races next year.
“I’m uniquely motivated to do this because of the pain that’s been caused by this administration,” Crosswell told CNN.
A recent CNN poll found Democrats are far more energized than Republicans about the midterm elections.
Seventy-two percent of Democrats and Democratic-aligned voters surveyed by SSRS for CNN said they were extremely motivated to vote in next year’s midterms, compared to 50% of Republican and Republican-aligned voters.
There’s no central list of former federal workers seeking elective office. But officials with Run for Something, a PAC that recruits and supports young progressives running for state and local offices, say more than 50,000 people have signed up to seek office since Election Day last year, a number that outpaces the group’s first three years of recruitment combined.
Amanda Litman, the group’s founder and president, says the potential candidates she talks to feel “a desire to do something specific and practical to push back against Trump.”
Interest among Democrats in running for the US House also has climbed, with candidate filings from Democrats at the Federal Election Commission outpacing those from Republicans.
Not all the individuals filing statements of candidacy with the FEC will follow through with the fundraising and campaign activity to mount a serious bid. But the early Democratic advantage mirrors a pattern seen in the 2018 midterms, when 527 Democrats compared to 338 Republicans reported active House campaigns with fundraising activity in the first six months of that election cycle, according to FEC data.
In the end, Democrats flipped more than 40 seats to regain the House majority in that election.
At the same time, Trump’s second term has seen a wave of job losses among federal workers, as his administration seeks to dramatically shrink the workforce and reorganize or shutter federal agencies.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off or targeted for layoffs, and more cuts are expected after the Supreme Court this month cleared the way for mass firings to resume.
Tina Moeinian, a 37-year-old in Littleton, Colorado, said she was let go from her job as a Department of Veterans Affairs mediator in February as part of a wave of terminations of probationary employees pushed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. Although Moeinian is a nearly 10-year veteran of the federal government, a recent promotion had resulted in her probationary status, she said.
A few weeks later, she decided to join a Run for Something training to learn more about seeking office. She was rehired by the VA in April, but Moeinian has since decided to pursue a seat for a nonpartisan position on her local school board this fall as another outlet for her interest in public service.
The firing, she said, “felt like a wakeup call to serve in a different way.”
Another group — Emerge Action Fund, which recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office — decided this year to reach out to federal workers who might be exploring new careers. One training session specifically for federal employees in April drew 40 participants.
The group’s training covers everything from how to get comfortable asking people for campaign contributions to the best way for first-time candidates to share their personal stories with voters.
“There’s a place for you,” Virginia state Sen. Danica Roem, an Emerge alum, told participants during the session attended by federal workers and observed by CNN.
“As candidates who have experience in the federal workforce, you know what constituent service is because you do it every day,” she added. “You’ve already been the ones doing it. You already know how it works from the inside.”
Evans, 35, is one of the candidates who has undergone Emerge’s training. She’s now running to become the first Black person to serve as Seattle’s city attorney in the 150-year history of the office, she said.
Her campaign platform includes creating units focused on fighting hate crimes and discrimination in housing, along with tackling wage theft, which she said builds on her past work undertaking civil rights prosecutions at the Justice Department.
Those concerns are deeply rooted in her family’s history, Evans said.
Her late grandfather, Lee Evans, who medaled in the track and field competition at the 1968 Olympics, was among the athletes who protested racial inequality in the United States at the Games by donning a Black Panther-style beret and raising his fist to the air during the medal presentation.
The elder Evans wasn’t the first to do so at those Games. Two other Americans – 200-meter medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos – famously made the salutes during the playing of the national anthem during their medal ceremony.
Once that happened, she said, other Black athletes including her grandfather received threats from the Ku Klux Klan, pledging to “shoot you dead” if they also demonstrated. Her grandfather did so anyway as he received his gold medal in the 400-meter race. An Associated Press photo from the time shows him atop the medal podium, flashing a broad smile as he protested.
“He said that he smiled because he thought it would be harder to shoot someone that was smiling,” Evans recalled.
His granddaughter recalled how the elder Evans shared stories with his family of his childhood in California, picking fruits and vegetables with his parents during summer vacations and “getting cheated at the weigh-in scale.”
“That experience of injustice guided him,” she said. “Those things just live in my DNA, of always standing up and fighting.”
Evans faces three other candidates, including incumbent Republican Ann Davison.
Davison, the first woman to hold the job, has touted support from prominent Democrats, including former Gov. Gary Locke, and has pledged to defend the city against what she describes as the Trump administration’s unlawful actions.
Evans, for her part, has scored the endorsement of Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown ahead of the Aug. 5 primary. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, will proceed to the general election in November.
Brown is among the Democratic attorneys general who have challenged some of Trump’s most controversial policies, including suing to block the president’s effort to deny birthright citizenship to the children born in the US to undocumented parents. If elected, Evans said, she plans to work with Brown to fight against what she calls federal overreach from the Trump administration.
“The strength of our country is its diversity and when that’s under attack, that’s something we should all be caring about,” she said.
