Deja Foxx: A Generational Change Agent

Deja Foxx, revving her supporters, June 2, 2025

There's a Democratic primary today in Arizona's 7th Congressional District that could produce an upset -- indicative of the temperature on the Left for a radical changing of the guard. Fox News said this special election (to fill the remaining few months of Congressman Raul Grijalva's term) would provide "a barometer of where the Democratic Party is headed as the party deals with longstanding divisions between its establishment and its outsiders...."

There are five candidates on the ballot, including Raul Grijalva's own daughter, who has the backing of the Democratic establishment, and one big, powerful outsider -- Deja Foxx -- who's suddenly surged in the polls and set off a media storm of attention. Foxx, who is now 25, learned early at the ripe age of 16 to make herself heard, to use her own narrative of homeless struggle to enlighten, galvanize, and motivate an audience. At the age of 16 she went viral in a confrontation with Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake over his vote to cut off Federal funding of Planned Parenthood -- at a packed town-hall (memorialized in this video).  She learned the power of commanding an audience, of speaking truth and being wildly applauded for it. She became in short order a well-known political activist and outspoken advocate for women's rights. 

Her own story of poverty, of learning "code switching" between the world of all-white public schools and the spiraling environment created by her single mom, who got into drugs and bad company. (Foxx's mom eventually turned her life around and is now Deja's Number One door-knocker for this campaign). Young Deja says she was forced at age 15 to take the extraordinary step of emancipating herself from her mother. And thus becoming functionally homeless, a kind of camper who depended on the kindness of friends to give her a temporary bedspace. She was for years part of what she calls "the hidden homeless," particularly young people who move from friend to friend to relative and back to friend. 

She learned the power of sharing her story and soon went to Capitol Hill as a teenager to do lobbying work for Planned Parenthood. It was a natural step from there to motivational speaker and social media content producer before she was 20. According to Politico, she's of a class that is peculiar to the 21st Century, savvy young people -- some smart, some beautiful, some both -- like Deja Foxx --finding a voice and building a presence that can become little digital empires with a history of forcing change. "Influencers," indeed.

Her 10-minute campaign autobiography tells it best. It's a compelling story of a survivor who learns her power as a wise narrator of life. I commend it as an authentic story of American struggle and American achievement. 

Foxx has gained nearly 400,000 followers on TikTok and over 245,000 followers on Instagram. "She’s become a real figure in the Democratic Party’s online firmament," doing social media for Kamala Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign, appearing at the 2024 Democratic National Convention and helping host the Hotties for Harris party at the convention.

So not surprisingly Foxx has surged in polling. She's attracted a good deal of attention as another AOC. Media attention drives polling (though Deja Foxx is being compared to her, both AOC and Bernie Saunders have endorsed Adelita Grijalva as the birthright candidate). David Hogg has campaigned for Foxx (and damn the Democratic Party establishment that ran that kid off!). Hogg recently stepped down from his position as a Democratic National Committee vice chair after upsetting party leaders for his efforts backing primary challenges against what he called "asleep at the wheel" older, longtime incumbents in safe, blue districts (Fox News). His campaigning for Foxx sends a clear message that the rebellion will continue.

Brad Elkins, a longtime Democratic consultant who is advising Foxx’s campaign, marveled that even before the campaign started its advertising, the 25-year-old candidate “couldn’t go anywhere without people recognizing her.”

I'll be looking for those Arizona returns late tonight.

UPDATE

Polling was wrong or at least misleading, and generational change will have to wait in the 7th Congressional Dist. of Arizona. Adelita Grijalva won easily and going away, 60% against four other candidates including Deja Foxx (21%), Grijalva's closest competitor. Will Foxx stay in politics and continue to build a base of Gen Z?

All Hail the Arizona Supreme Court

 

Progressives do have their cracked pots, or crackpot ideas, but you can't beat the current crop of American conservatives for their new levels of lunacy.

The Arizona Supreme Court voted 4-2 today to restore a total abortion ban -- okay, almost total, but I see very little difference -- that was in effect from 1864, from well before Arizona was even a state of the union, but the Arizona Supremes have decided that the law is still in effect. The ban provides that "anyone who administers an abortion could face a mandatory prison sentence of two to five years. That ban could compel Arizona’s licensed abortion clinics to ramp down dramatically or shutter — though it’s unclear how the decision will be enforced."

Kris Mayes, the Arizona Attorney General, has already declared she won't be enforcing this wacko decision.

Meanwhile, abortion rights activists have apparently gathered enough signatures to get a guarantee of legal abortion on the November ballot as a citizen initiative. The voters who care about women's rights are going to be thoroughly stirred up in Arizona this year.

Meanwhile, Trump if twisting around his own axle trying to figure out how to temper his own promises -- not to mention performance of his boys (and girl) on the Supreme Court -- because someone has finally managed to convince him that his policies are sheer poison to American woman and their male friends. So he says it should be up to the states. His former BFF Lindsey Graham didn't like that at all and criticized him for giving up on being a hardliner on life, and Trump blasted Graham in turn as trying to single-handedly lose the election for Republicans.

These are truly bizarre times. And thanks to the Supremes' Dobbs decision, all Republican apple carts are currently upsidedown. Where they belong.

Nothing But Embarrassment in the Arizona Audit, But It Won't Matter

 

How anti-climactic could you get?

Rep. Keith Kidwell knows there
was pro-Democrat fraud in North
Carolina elections last year. He just
hasn't found it yet.

It's been obvious for months that the Great Arizona Election Audit of Maricopa County did not turn up what its promoters hoped for, which is why Cyber Ninjas kept putting off the issuance of a report. It was just gonna be too embarrassing. So they delayed and delayed and hoped -- what? -- that some evidence of nefarious goings-on in Biden's favor would suddenly drop out of the ceiling tiles, covered head to toe with bamboo fibers?

Already on Twitter, a Trumpist said "Ridiculous! Audit the audit!" A "fringe" GOP Arizona state senator by the name of Wendy Rogers "was one of many audit believers trying to change the conversation: She announced her support for an audit of Maricopa’s neighbor, Pima County" (Matt Shuham). (Point of order: How would anybody pick out one Arizona state senator as "fringe"?) But of course the Trump people will refute the truth by assertion alone. That's the Trump M.O. Assert anything you think of, and the stupid will believe it: "Satanists also wear masks and stand six feet apart. Just sayin'."

Or they'll ignore the truth and continue to peddle the fiction of voter fraud because it pleases the ignorant. Even Texas now is auditing last year's election in four urban counties -- "urban" meaning Black or non-white, of course -- because winning isn't the only goal for authoritarian regimes. Some Republicans in Raleigh want an audit here, because it wasn't enough they won seats in the NC House and Senate and seats on the highest courts and a slew of Council of State offices. They didn't get the Governor. Must have been fraud. 

Rep. Keith Kidwell (R) from Beaufort/Craven has demanded access to the state's voting machines, alleging fraud in NC that attempted to benefit Democrats. "Kidwell ... said in an interview ... that he is confident there was at least some fraud in the 2020 elections. He just wants to find out how much, he said, and who is behind it." That's what they thought about witches in Massachusetts. The lack of evidence proves the conspiracy is working, no?

On Facebook, Kidwell's group has suggested that it may actually be state or local elections officials who are committing fraud: “The House Freedom Caucus is now focused on BOE officials and the specific precincts themselves. We absolutely think tampering happens in North Carolina.”

Where Republicans run things, delusion is king and no honest public servant is safe.

UPDATE

See: it doesn't matter what the facts are.

"Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed during a rally in Georgia on Saturday night that the results of the Arizona election "audit" concluded that President Joe Biden lost in Maricopa County, despite the report clearly stating that Biden won with 1,040,873 votes—99 more votes than shown in the certified ballots." (Newsweek)