WASHINGTON — Brand New Congress, one of the groups that helped catapult Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to victory in her insurgent campaign last year, is endorsing Mckayla Wilkes, a 29-year-old Maryland student challenging House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, one of the most powerful Democrats in the country, the campaign and the organization told BuzzFeed News exclusively.



The addition of Wilkes to the group’s slate of candidates on Tuesday makes Hoyer the highest-ranking Democrat against whom Brand New Congress has endorsed this cycle.

“Mckayla really embodies what it means to be reflective of the diversity of her district, of the different kinds of experiences that an individual faces,” Brand New Congress press director Zeynab Day said in an interview with BuzzFeed News this week. “She has lived through hardship. She understands struggle … [and] she also understands policy in terms of how those struggles relate to policy.”

Wilkes has been open about her unique path to politics as her campaign against Hoyer has taken off; in ads, on social media, and in interviews, she has talked openly about having a criminal record and having gotten an abortion at age 19.

“I just don’t want any secrets,” she told BuzzFeed News in June. “I want everything to be out there. It’s not like I’m the only person who goes through these things.”

In another interview last week ahead of Brand New Congress’s endorsement, Wilkes said she sees her experience as an advantage to her campaign and, potentially, her eventual lawmaking.

“I think that having people with lived experiences who can turn those lived experiences into legislation and can lead from their experience is so important,” she said. “The thing about having people from the working class in Congress is having people who have firsthand experience with how legislation affects us. It’s having people lead from the inside out instead of the outside in.”

It’s a major contrast with Hoyer, who has been in Congress for nearly 40 years, both Day and Wilkes said.