Shortly before the July 15 Democratic special election primary to nominate a candidate to fill the vacant congressional seat in Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District, Politico reported that “Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old social media influencer … has a legitimate shot to win.” Her internal polling in late June showed considerable momentum, trailing the frontrunner Adelita Grijalva, a former Pima County Board of Supervisors member, by just 8 points, after May polling pegged Foxx behind by 31 points.  

The May poll was closer to reality. The 54-year-old Grijalva won the primary by 41 points. 

While Grijalva was running to succeed her recently deceased father, Raúl Grijalva, we should not assume her last name was why she won. Nepotistic dynastic politics have taken a beating in recent years. Many rank-and-file Democrats are eager for generational change and fresh faces. A familiar last name is only a sure benefit if your record proves you have been living up to the expectations of that name.  

The late Raúl Grijalva was synonymous with “progressive.” He was the longest-serving co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (with a decade at the helm before he was given the title of Chair Emeritus. As the Seventh District is deep blue—60.5 percent voted for Kamala Harris—the candidate with the strongest progressive bona fides would likely win the primary. 

Grijalva’s daughter did not coast on her name. She spent decades providing in public. For 25 years, she worked for the Pima County Teen Court, where, according to her website, “she helped court-involved youth and their families through a restorative juvenile diversion program.” For 18 years, she served on the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board, a volunteer elected position. Then from 2020 through this spring, she served on another elected body, the Pima County Board of Supervisors.  

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Surely, her father’s relationships in Congress played some role in her ability to secure endorsements from Arizona’s two Senators, Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and about 20 other congressional members. But she also had endorsements from officials on the Board of Supervisors, the Tucson City Council, and other offices. Moreover, we have countless examples of flawed candidates who were not saved by big-name endorsements, so we shouldn’t presume endorsements made the difference.  

What most likely made the difference was Adelita Grijalva’s work with families, connections with constituents, and many years of earning votes in her community. She was well-positioned to win a congressional primary, regardless of who she would succeed. 

Reducing Foxx to just an “influencer” is not fair because she has been a progressive activist since high school, just one with a knack for social media. She created a viral moment in 2017 by confronting then-U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican, at a town hall about abortion rights, and soon after traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress in favor of maintaining funding for Planned Parenthood. She worked for Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign as a digital strategist, then built a big following on her social media accounts. She was one of 200 content creators enlisted by Harris’s 2024 campaign to help reach younger voters and spoke at the Democratic National Convention. That was enough to attract the support of David Hogg, the Gen Z activist who started a political action committee dedicated to young candidates, even if it means taking out aging Democratic incumbents.  

But most of her political experience in the short time she has been an adult was not on the ground in Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District. During her congressional campaign, she produced a TikTok video that touted her “decade of experience,” which mainly covered her social media work and protest activity in national politics, outside of Arizona, though she was raised in the Grand Canyon state and was politically active in her high school.  

Others have made it to Congress with weaker resumes. Nevertheless, when it comes to earning votes, social media savvy doesn’t trump years of in-person public service in the community you want to represent. 

It’s not just impatient whippersnappers who don’t fully grasp the importance of community roots. The Democratic Party’s congressional candidate recruiters have long been enamored with military veterans, hoping they provide a biographical superpower that can flip districts from red to blue. But while military service is a positive line on a political resume, that service doesn’t usually happen in the congressional district where the candidates run. Many a veteran-turned-candidate doesn’t begin a campaign with much connection to the local electorate. 

I explored the poor track record of Democratic candidates with military backgrounds in 2017 for Politico.  

According to data provided by the Veterans Campaign and Military Times congressional reporter Leo Shane III, Democrats nominated 42 veterans for House races in 2016 and 54 in 2014. Each time, only three veterans won, and all succeeded fellow Democrats. No Democratic military veteran has defeated an incumbent House Republican since 2012, when Tammy Duckworth of Illinois took out the vitriolic Joe Walsh, who publicly complained that Duckworth talked about her service too much.  

… Before Duckworth, four Democratic vets took Republican-held seats in the 2008 election, but that was hardly a model class. Two of the four were defeated in their 2010 reelection bids, and a third resigned after charges of groping and sexual harassment.  

Last month, NOTUS reported that “Democrats are turning to a tried-and-true campaign strategy as they try to win a House majority next year: recruiting and running military veterans,” and further noted, “In 2018, the party relied on many veterans-turned-candidates on their way to gaining 41 House seats and the chamber’s legislative majority. Party leaders say they are deliberately copying elements of that strategy now, hoping to achieve a similar level of success next year.” 

But military veterans were not the linchpin to the Democratic 2018 victories, when they net-gained 41 House seats and reclaimed the majority in the chamber. Only six candidates with military service flipped Republican-held House districts, while 37 lost. It helps nurse the myth of military service as a political sure thing that one veteran of the 2018 cycle, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a former naval officer, is now the frontrunner in this year’s gubernatorial race. Still, the biggest upset of the cycle happened in Oklahoma’s Fifth Congressional District, where Democrat Kendra Horn—an attorney who led two organizations that trained Oklahoma women on how to run for elective office—defeated an incumbent Republican who was not only an Army veteran but was in the unit involved with the capture of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. 

Of course, there isn’t a singular biographical profile that guarantees victory. But neither is there a shortcut to electoral success, be it social media panache or stripes on a uniform. The best way to win an election is to be present in your community for several years and develop a reputation for servant leadership.