Democracy Dies in Darkness

‘Blue wave’ or ‘left-wing mob’? Anti-Trump fervor fuels a new movement aimed squarely at winning elections.

October 15, 2018 at 9:28 a.m. EDT
Lorraine Wilburn, who is running for a state House seat in Ohio, talks with voters during the Perry Township Oktoberfest at Hartwick Park in Canton, Ohio, on Sept. 15. (Dustin Franz for The Washington Post)

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio — President Trump’s political nightmare, a mother of two in a custom campaign polo, bounded down the driveway like a sweepstakes winner. She had just chatted up a shirtless Republican out to mow his lawn, and he liked what she said.

“He’s with me on the cost of health care and preexisting conditions,” Lorraine Wilburn, a first-time Democratic candidate for the Ohio statehouse, told her 11-year-old son, Finn. “He said he would take a look at me.”