Breaking The Meta

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...

Jackson Franklin is an Army combat medic, National Guardsman, and paramedic running in Indiana's 5th Congressional District and taking on incumbent Victoria Spartz in one of 2026's most closely watched grassroots races. Jackson has seen firsthand what he calls the "wealth care system", a for-profit structure that puts corporate middlemen between patients and doctors. He's calling for Medicare for...

Dax Alexander grew up on a dairy farm in Martins Mill, TX. One of the reddest corners of one of the reddest states in America. No name recognition, no PAC money, no political dynasty behind him. Just a software developer, a group of Young Democrat friends, and a decision that if no one else was going to run, he would. In Texas's 1st Congressional District, recently in a runoff after pulling 22% of...

Victoria Martz is a criminal defense attorney and public defender running for Indiana State House District 55 a rural stretch of southeastern Indiana where the nearest Walmart requires a 20-minute drive and the nearest labor unit is now 30 to 45 minutes away. She's running as a grassroots Democrat in deeply conservative territory, and she's finding common ground with Republican voters on the issue...

ICE took Justin Douglas's neighbors — Bhutanese Nepali refugees who survived ethnic cleansing and spent two decades in camps before America welcomed them in. That moment pushed this Pennsylvania County Commissioner to run for Congress in PA's 10th District. In this episode of Breaking the Meta, Justin Douglas (candidate for Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District) sits down for a full interview...

After the 2024 elections, Esther Kim-Varet did something almost nobody does: she Googled how to run for Congress, convinced her husband, pulled her kids out of school, and moved her family into a Republican district in Orange County to flip it. Now she's one of the top three Democratic fundraising challengers in the country — in what may be the only congressional race in America where two incumben...

William Compton is running for Congress in Kentucky's 2nd District in 2026, a rural Kentucky Democrat who exposed government corruption and got his own mayor federally indicted. In this episode of Breaking the Meta, Mike Winson sits down with William to talk about healthcare costs destroying rural families, veterans calling America a "laughing stock," why soybean farmers are getting crushed by tar...

Victoria Broderick is a working-class mom, tech support worker, TikTok creator, and two-time congressional candidate running to flip Tennessee's 4th Congressional District — a rural, heavily Republican district that's been represented by the same 16-year incumbent who reportedly told people in closed-door sessions that speaking to his constituents costs him votes. In this episode we get into what...

A teacher, HR professional, and children's advocate walks into a town hall — and walks out a candidate for the Indiana State Senate. That's essentially the story of Cindi Clayton, who is running for Indiana State Senate District 49 (Evansville/Vanderburgh County) in 2026. After decades of staying quiet politically, Cindi was pushed to her breaking point when her current opponent — Senator Jim Toms...

Former CIA Officer Runs for Congress to Restore American Institutions | Adam Dunigan VA-8 Adam Dunigan spent 17 years in federal service — five years in the Marine Corps and then a career as a CIA case officer. He watched American institutions deteriorate from overseas assignments, cashed out his retirement, outed himself as an intelligence officer, and walked away from everything to run for Virgi...

Nate Stout spent his career at Callaway Golf and Johnson Outdoors traveling America and coming home to Indiana — until he started noticing the institutions that built him were eroding. Public education defunded. Utility bills quietly padded with hidden fees. A 700-acre rezoning request with no public hearing and no clear answer about what's even being built. And a state representative who took two...

What does it look like to run for Congress with ZERO corporate donations — and mean it? Christopher Ajluni is running as an independent in Arizona's Congressional District 1, and he's doing something almost unheard of: refusing all campaign contributions and staying under the FEC's $5,000 reporting threshold to prove he answers to no one but his constituents. In this episode of Breaking the Meta,...

James Martin is a fourth-generation Treasure Coast native, Coast Guard veteran, and former national security staffer in the Vice President's office, and he's running to represent Florida's 21st Congressional District in the U.S. House. In this conversation, James shares his path from growing up in Hobe Sound to commanding Coast Guard cutters in the Caribbean and Middle East, to working inside the...

National Guard member Demi Palecek is running for Illinois State Representative District 13. Learn why this working-class veteran is defying orders, speaking out against ICE, and fighting for affordable housing, reproductive rights, and gun violence prevention in Chicago. Interview covers her military service, activism, grassroots campaign, and vision for Illinois. In this powerful interview, Demi...

Join Breaking The Meta for an in-depth conversation with Jordan Herrera, Democratic candidate for Missouri's 4th Congressional District. Jordan is a 16-year Air Force veteran, attorney, and advocate running to bring real change to rural and urban communities across Missouri. In this interview, Jordan shares his powerful personal story—from surviving domestic violence as a child to serving in Iraq...

Jonathan Bonner is running for Georgia State House District 68, and in this interview we discuss the future of Georgia politics, grassroots campaigns, veterans’ issues, healthcare affordability, and community leadership. In this episode of Breaking the Meta, Jonathan Bonner shares why he decided to run for office and how he plans to represent South Atlanta communities including Fayetteville, Tyron...

What happens when someone decides to challenge one of the most powerful figures in Washington? In this episode of Breaking the Meta, we sit down with Matt Gromlich, a lifelong educator and candidate running for Congress in Louisiana’s 4th District, currently represented by House Speaker Mike Johnson. Gromlich shares why he decided to step into the race, what voters in northwest Louisiana are strug...

In this episode of Breaking the Meta, we sit down with Stephanie Steiner, a retired women's health nurse and mother of seven who is running for Congress in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District. Stephanie shares her story, from becoming a young mother at 15 to building a career in healthcare and now stepping into politics to fight for rural communities, farmers, and working families. We discuss the bi...