Breaking The Meta

Tom Begich is the frontrunner for Alaska Governor — and his nephew just cast the deciding vote to gut Alaska's Medicaid. The family feud is real. In this episode of Breaking the Meta, Mike Winson sits down with Tom Begich, currently leading the polls in Alaska's 17-candidate open primary for governor. Tom is a former state senate minority leader, the architect of Alaska's bipartisan coalition, and...

A man in his 50s died because he couldn't afford insulin after the price cap was repealed. Bernard Taylor was the paramedic on those calls, and now he's running for Congress in Florida's 21st District. Bernard is a fourth-generation Floridian, a firefighter / paramedic on the Treasure Coast, and a Democrat challenging an incumbent who reportedly told a constituent in Fort Pierce, "I don't come to...

A 20-year Air Force combat vet wants to flip Texas's 3rd Congressional District. Evan Hunt is challenging Republican Keith Self — and he thinks he can win. Mike Winson sits down with Evan Hunt, retired Lieutenant Colonel, B-1 bomber Weapon Systems Officer, McKinney dad, to talk about a Republican stronghold that hasn't gone blue since 1968, and why he believes 2026 is the year it flips. In this in...

Matt Robinson is running for Iowa House District 72 in the 2026 election, representing Dubuque, Iowa. In this Breaking the Meta interview, the union carpenter and Democratic candidate sits down with Mike Winson to talk minimum wage, Chapter 20 collective bargaining, Iowa's water quality and cancer crisis, school vouchers, and the half-million-dollar money fight already shaping the District 72 race...

Ruth Fortune is running for US Congress in Connecticut's 1st District (CT-01) — the first Democratic primary challenger to Rep. John Larson in 28 years. In this Breaking the Meta interview, Ruth shares why she's challenging a 28-year incumbent, her path from undocumented immigrant to attorney to congressional candidate, and what real accountability in Washington should look like. Ruth came to the...

NC House District 75 candidate Jen Wiles sits down with Breaking the Meta to talk schools, Medicaid expansion, and taking on a 12-year incumbent. Jen Wiles is a healthcare worker and working mom running for North Carolina House District 75 — covering Walkertown, Kernersville, and Walltown/South Winston in Forsyth County. Her opponent has held the seat since 2013 and currently chairs Appropriations...

Steve Merrill is running for Congress in Utah's 3rd District — a district bigger than 19 states — on a platform of uniting working communities and restoring real accountability. No corporate PACs. No curated tele-town halls. Just a database programmer, a husband, and a dad who decided politics wasn't going to ignore him. In this episode of Breaking the Meta, host Mike Winson sits down with Steve M...

Marine Corps veteran Keenen Colbert is running for Texas State Senate District 2 — and he's taking on one of the most extreme Republicans in the state legislature, incumbent Sen. Bob Hall. In this interview, Keenen lays out why he entered the race when no one else would, what accountability actually looks like, and why he refuses to take PAC money or ask anyone for their vote. Texas primary voting...

Joseph Perez-Caputo is running for Congress in Connecticut's 4th District — and his pitch is the one politicians never make: "Don't trust me. Make me earn it." A 33-year-old Sicilian-Boricua law student living paycheck-to-paycheck, Joseph moved back in with his mom to run this campaign. No PAC money. No industry plant polish. Just a punk-metal revolutionary who calls his father's death from lack o...

Case Norton is a husband, father of two, and 20-year below-the-line film industry union worker running for U.S. House in Georgia's 7th Congressional District. Only 2% of Congress identifies as working class — Case wants to change that. In this conversation, Case lays out why he's challenging incumbent Rich McCormick, who hasn't held a town hall since February 2025. He breaks down the cost-of-livin...

Oklahoma US Senate candidate Jasmine Thomas's official TikTok was restricted for being "political" — while the White House account keeps posting. Here's what happened, why it matters, and what you can do. Democratic candidate Jasmine Thomas (D-OK) joins Breaking the Meta to break down how TikTok — now owned by Oracle — restricted her official campaign account, flagged her content as a "political a...

#LaurenJewett #Scalise #LA01 Lauren Jewett is a 17-year special education teacher running to unseat House Majority Leader Steve Scalise in Louisiana's 1st Congressional District. In this Breaking the Meta interview, she makes the case that working-class people — not career politicians — should be writing laws that affect working-class lives. We get into what accountability actually looks like from...

Candace "Candy" Greer is running as a Democrat for Indiana House District 64 — a seat that had no opposition on the ballot. She's talking minimum wage, bodily autonomy, education funding, and what it means to be a progressive in deep-red rural Indiana. 🗳️ CANDACE GREER — Indiana House District 64 📘 Facebook: Candace Candy Greer for House 64 🎵 TikTok: @notthatcandace Breaking the Meta platforms g...

Autism advocate mom of three kids with autism, Tabitha Zeigler is running for Congress in Indiana's 8th district and she's done waiting for someone else to do it. Indiana just capped ABA therapy at a 3-year lifetime maximum. RFK is spreading misinformation about autism. And her current rep answered none of her questions at his virtual town hall. So Tabitha jumped in. In this interview, she talks a...

He was apprehended, tortured, and had drugs planted in his vehicle by state police. Instead of going quiet — he's running for U.S. Senate in Alabama. 🎙️ Mike sits down with Dakarai Larriett, independent Democratic candidate for the Alabama U.S. Senate seat, to talk about the wrongful arrest that changed everything, the Motorist Bill of Rights he's authored, and what he'd fight for in Washington on...

Oregon's 4th Congressional District is massive — coastal towns, college cities, farmland, forests — and it's being left behind. Dr. Melissa Bird is a social worker, a descendant of the Shivwits Band of Southern Paiutes, and the kind of regular person Congress was designed for. In this episode she breaks down how SNAP cuts quietly devastated school lunch programs, why a hospital on the Oregon coast...

What does it actually take to run for Congress without corporate PAC money and win? Jen Johannsen left dentistry to help 80+ grassroots candidates across the country build real campaigns on almost nothing. In this episode, she breaks down the insider barriers blocking authentic candidates: signature-gathering nightmares in Connecticut, the funding catch-22 that keeps people-first politicians off t...

She works on the front lines of a broken system and now she wants to fix it from the inside. Kirsten Root is a licensed social worker running for Indiana State Senate District 21, covering Westfield, Kokomo, and Tipton County. In this conversation, she talks about why the people quietly switching parties won't say it out loud, why SCA 1 hurt working families while corporations saved thousands, and...

Chelsey Hockett won her TX-05 Democratic primary but Texas runoff rules mean the fight isn't over. She's back on Breaking the Meta ahead of her May 26 runoff to talk strategy, policy, and what's really at stake in East Texas. In this episode: the surprise primary results, 54,000 voter turnout in a district that usually sees 17,000, how redistricting created chaos at the polls, and what she plans t...

42% of American cancer patients go broke within 2 years. Matt Fulmer is running for Congress in SC-01 to fix that — and he's a bartender. Matt is running in the South Carolina coastal district currently held by Nancy Mace, who is expected to vacate the seat to run for governor. He's making an unapologetic working-class case for Medicare for All, a federal land value tax to address the housing cris...

Jessica Salas is running for Oregon's 3rd Congressional District — a massive district stretching from East Portland all the way to Hood River County and Mount Hood. She's not a career politician. She's a working-class woman from Southern California who spent 12 years in the beer industry, launched an international beer collaboration called Hasta La Raíz to fund immigrant rights nonprofits, and dec...

Georgia's 10th Congressional District has a shot at flipping — and Lexy Doherty is the candidate running to make it happen. In this episode of Breaking the Meta, Lexy breaks down the affordability crisis hitting rural Georgia, the federal government's plan to build a 10,000-person ICE detention facility in a small town of 5,000, and why she believes raising the minimum wage is the fastest thing Co...

Breaking the Meta sits down with Jewel Kelly, a 10-year Air Force veteran, real estate professional, and mental health advocate running for Missouri State House District 106. Jewel shares a deeply personal story — from growing up as the eldest of 18 siblings in poverty, to losing his bonus daughter to suicide in 2018, to founding the Fighting Chance mental health foundation. Now he's channeling th...

Army veteran and nuclear medicine technologist Maura Keller joins Breaking the Meta to talk about her run for Georgia's 3rd Congressional District and why she says she can't be bought. Maura spent 26 years in the military, rising from enlisted military policewoman to Lieutenant Colonel, then spent over a decade as an independent contractor for the Department of Defense before becoming a nuclear me...

Alani Bankhead is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, counterintelligence agent, and supervisory special agent who spent her career hunting terrorists, spies, and child sex traffickers across every continent. Now she's running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Montana. She's running because she's seen what broken government looks like from the inside. In this conversation, Alani breaks down...