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