With blunt talk & compelling stories, viral videos are turning unknown women candidates into...

[DonViejo]

With blunt talk and compelling stories, viral videos are turning unknown women candidates into political sensations

By Mary Jordan
July 3 at 6:00 AM

MJ Hegar, an Air Force pilot shot down by the Taliban in Afghanistan, was a political unknown until she opened fire with 2018’s most effective political weapon: the viral online video.

Hegar’s 3½ -minute biographical ad, called “Doors,” has been viewed online by nearly 5 million people. It features the door from the chopper whose crash she survived and refers to the glass door she says her mother was thrown through by her abusive father. Inspired by Hegar’s story, donations have poured into the Texas Democrat’s campaign to unseat Rep. John Carter, a Republican who has been in Congress since 2003.

In New York’s Democratic primary on June 26, 28-year-old activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knocked off incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley, a 20-year veteran and power broker in Congress, partly on the strength of her online video.

In it, Ocasio-Cortez, a community activist who tended bar and waited tables until recently, introduces herself to her heavily Hispanic district in the Bronx and Queens. It would have cost a fortune to air the ad on TV in the New York market, but through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter she inexpensively explained her working-class Puerto Rican roots and her demands for “Medicare for all” and free public college tuition.

Millions of people have viewed her ad. Ocasio-Cortez won Tuesday’s election by 4,000 votes. After the November election, she will probably be the youngest member of Congress.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-blunt-talk-and-compelling-stories-viral-videos-are-turning-unknown-women-candidates-into-political-sensations/2018/06/30/de823cd6-7a31-11e8-80be-6d32e182a3bc_story.html