Bobby Pulido spent thirty years building a career as a Tejano music star. Now he's running for Congress in South Texas, in one of the poorest parts of the state, trying to unseat a Republican incumbent.

Pulido's opponent mocked his music career, saying the election wasn't about who you want performing at your niece's quinceañera. So he turned that dig into four thousand invitations to quinceañeras and other celebrations across Texas.

Pulido thinks the key to flipping the district is to keep showing up in unconventional places. Sarah McCammon spoke with him in Washington, D.C.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 — Cold open

01:15 — The dig, flipped into 4,000 invitations

04:38 — Trust beats policy / ranch halls

07:47 — What "Tejano" means

12:25 — Immigration, up close

18:16 — Why Hispanic voters moved right

21:46 — The gender gap and purity tests

24:50 — Faith and the "godless" label

27:19 — Rural respect over money

30:31 — Why a Democrat / social media's cancer

32:38 — Celebrity: weakness or strength

36:06 — Why leave the stage for Congress

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Nikki Budzinski is the kind of Democrat a lot of people say the party needs more of — a reluctant politician who came up in the labor movement and now represents a sprawling district in downstate Illinois. But she'd be the first to tell you her party has lost touch with the voters she grew up around.

She was born in Peoria, moved around as a kid, and landed back in the heartland. She likes to say she's one of the few members of Congress who's spent time on the kill floor of a meatpacking plant. And she just won her primary by more than 50 points against a challenger who said she wasn't progressive enough.

Now Budzinski represents a district that stretches from a college town to steel mills and soybean fields — and she's trying to answer a question her party can't afford to get wrong: how do Democrats win back working people who've stopped believing the party is fighting for them?

00:00 — Cold open
1:44 — Peoria roots and a working-class inheritance
4:00 — The kill floor in Kentucky
7:03 — A $15 wage won across the table
12:56 — On why she Democrats lost the working class
15:50 — Voting to deny ICE new money
21:46 — Workhorse, not show horse
25:10 — Money in politics and governing with power
32:16 — Her grandfather's American dream

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Rahm Emanuel believes in Israel. He also thinks its government is making historic mistakes. In Part 2 of our conversation, he aims his critique in every direction.

Sarah McCammon spoke with Ambassador Emanuel in Chicago about the Jewish upbringing that still shapes him, why he confronted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his face in 2009, and why he says the party's divide on Israel is generational rather than partisan. 

Part 1 dropped last week.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 — Cold open

00:56 — A secular country still searching for meaning

02:52 — The Sadiq Khan synagogue story

05:20  — His grandmother’s red purse and family passports

09:09 — Navigating this moment as a Jewish Democrat

13:53 — Going face-to-face with Netanyahu in 2009

16:01 — Where the Palestinian leadership failed

16:42 — "A very aggressive moderate"

20:36 — Why Democrats flinch at power

26:32 — What’s Next

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Rahm Emanuel has a reputation for two things: a tough demeanor and a policy nerd's command of detail. In Part 1 of our interview, he lives up to both.

Ambassador Emanuel argues that America has spent 25 years sleepwalking — through the Iraq war, the Great Recession, and the pandemic — and that the people responsible were never held accountable. His solution starts somewhere you might not expect: a Mississippi classroom.

Sarah McCammon spoke with him in Chicago about his diagnosis of the country, the education plan he'd run from elementary school to free community college, how we confront AI anxiety, and why he says it's the crisis neither party takes seriously enough.

Part 2 drops next week.

00:00 — Cold open

01:27 — Why New Hampshire, and what a bike trip tells you

05:51 — "America has lost its nerve"

08:23 — The pattern: elites walk off clean

10:43 — How business put the China market over national security

14:33 — The Chicago school record

15:34 — Phonics, Mississippi, and a generation lost

16:06 — A plan for every graduate, and free community college

17:31 — Trades and "build baby build"

19:54 — Ban social media under 16

20:20 — AI anxiety and why the trades are the hedge

23:56 — How a president leads without commanding the states

27:12 — The three doors and the 80 percent

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Catherine Cortez Masto has run and won twice in Nevada — even in an environment where Republicans had a six-point advantage. She's already the person many presidential hopefuls want to talk to as Democratic hopefuls plot their path to victory in the Silver State, first in a Democratic primary as Nevadans lobby to be first in the nation, and then as a battleground in the general election.  

The granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant who served in the Army, Sen. Cortez Masto grew up the daughter of a Las Vegas parking attendant — who went on to become lowkey Vegas famous. She became a prosecutor, then Nevada's attorney general, and she's married to a former Secret Service agent. And she's the first Latina ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

Sarah McCammon spoke with Sen. Cortez Masto in Washington about why she refuses to join the calls to abolish ICE even as she condemns agents’  behavior under Trump and is leading the push for accountability, what it actually takes to win swing voters, and the fights she says she'll never give up.

00:00 — Cold open

01:06 — Why Nevada wants to be first

04:05 — A message about costs

07:17 — What went wrong in 2024

08:18 — An immigrant family in Vegas

13:47 — A prosecutor's case against ICE

16:46 — Why not abolish ICE

17:56 — On "soft on crime"

20:01 — The case for moderates

24:36 — Showing up where you lose

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In 2025, Eileen Higgins was elected the first female mayor of Miami and the first Democrat to lead the city in nearly thirty years. She beat a Trump-endorsed candidate by close to twenty points—in neighborhoods where many residents were skeptical of Democrats.

Higgins left a corporate career to run the Peace Corps in Belize, served as a diplomat, then won a county commission seat representing Little Havana. Now she's mayor of one of America's most immigrant-shaped cities.

Sarah McCammon sat down with Mayor Higgins in Miami to talk about building affordable housing, what it actually takes to win Latino voters, and why she's not afraid of the word "capitalist."

00:00 — Cold open

00:02:24 — Engineer in a blue jumpsuit

00:04:00 — Writing her own obituary

00:04:57 — Peace Corps to politics

00:08:29 — 100 days as mayor

00:15:05 — Winning Little Havana

00:21:19 — Leading through deportations

00:28:07 — Affordable housing in an unaffordable city

00:42:40 — "We can be Democrats differently"

00:45:16 — The Latino vote isn't monolithic

00:46:33 — Knocking on doors

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New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill flipped five Trump counties last year and outran Kamala Harris statewide — with a message aimed squarely at voters in the middle, promising to tackle the cost of living and get government working.

Sherrill is a former Navy pilot and the first female veteran ever elected governor. Sarah McCammon talks to Gov. Sherrill in Trenton about how she actually flipped Trump voters, why she declared a state of emergency for energy prices on day one, and what she would say to Democrats who keep losing.

0:00 — Cold open

1:50 — Deciding to fly

3:57 — Life on the carrier

7:00 — On Pete Hegseth

07:32 — Tailhook and women in combat

11:06 — Getting government to yes

14:19 — The day-one energy emergency

22:37 — Flipping five Trump counties

25:40 — Thinking long-term

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