Honest politicians may be hard to come by, but the only thing harder to come by is a politician with a working class background. Why is that?
Here’s Five Fast Facts About Working Class Politicians in Congress:
- 🛠️ Clock In - Researchers define working class as someone who currently or last worked in manual labor, the service industry, clerical, or labor union jobs. A total of 50% of US workers fit that definition. That’s a lot of people!
- 🗳️ Big Picture - Nationwide, only 116 of the nearly 7,400 state lawmakers come from a working class background. That’s less than 1.6%, and it’s down from 1.8% two years ago!
- 🛻 Break It Down - Along party lines, you have 2% of sitting Democrats and 1% of sitting Republicans who qualify as working class. There are 10 states without any working class representatives: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. The state with the highest percentage of working-class lawmakers is Alaska with a whopping 5% or three of 60.
- 🤷 Hard Knocks - If you’re wondering why that’s such a big deal, think of it like this: working-class politicians are more likely to have experienced economic hardship, making them more interested in policies that address it.
- 📊 Fenced In - A national survey shows that working-class Americans are hesitant to run for office because of financial and societal barriers. In other words, it’s hard to run if you aren’t rich.
🔥Bottom line: After reading this, you have to ask yourself, “are my best interests being represented in Congress?” If you’re a working class person, the answer, statistically, is a definite “no.” In fact, it can be argued that you’re being distracted from those same interests with meaningless issues so you’re unaware. That’s why down-ticket races matter even more in elections than the president.
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