Joshua Collins, a 26-year-old Democratic Socialist, is running for Congress to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Denny Heck in Washington state's 10th district.

Collins was inspired to run by Sen. Bernie Sanders' bid for the White House.

Collins has grown a considerable following on social media, which has served as a cornerstone of his campaign.

TikTok, the fast-growing social network, is incredibly popular among Gen-Z, and Collins says his use of the platform has yielded positive results for his campaign. He raised more than $40,000 in individual contributions in 2019.

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26-year-old Joshua Collins is changing political campaigning one TikTok at a time.

The truck driver, a Kansas native, has amassed a remarkable following across social media platforms, espousing his Democratic Socialist platform online in an effort to bolster his campaign to take over the Congressional seat currently held by outgoing Democratic Rep. Denny Heck of Washington's 10th district.

Collins, whose Twitter bio proclaims he's the "CEO of socialism" was inspired by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign for the White House and emboldened by victories of fellow progressives like Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and candidate Sarah Smith, who in 2018 won a primary race in Washington's 9th district and was called "Washington state's own version" of Ocasio-Cortez. Smith went on to lose the general election against incumbent Democrat Rep. Adam Smith.

"I had also lost interest – or lost faith – in the political process before Bernie Sanders ran for president, and I really just went full all in for Bernie and got really active because of that election," Collins told Insider.

Collins has posted just under 100 videos to TikTok and has earned more than 26,000 followers 570,000 likes. On Twitter, Collins has more than 60,000 followers and his tweets regularly get thousands of likes and hundreds – if not thousands – of retweets. A Facebook page for the Collins' campaign has 7,822 likes. On Instagram, Collins' @joshua4congress page has 44,5000 followers.

"My biggest support base by the time I filed was on Twitter, though. The thing that caused that was actually Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retweeted me twice about a year ago, and doing that kinda massively boosted my social media," he said.

As a result, Collins noted that many of his early supporters were fans of the Bronx Congresswoman, though he said his support has diversified since the boost from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.

Using TikTok to fight climate change

Collins told Insider the driving issue of his campaign is climate change, which is reflected across his social media accounts, including in the many of the short videos he's posted to TikTok.

Using a popular TikTok meme format that relies on the opening jingle to Nickelodeon's 1991 "Rugrats," Collins tells his followers that socialism is the way to stop climate change. The short (less-than-10 second) video is largely representative of the rest of the videos Collins has created to grow support for his candidacy.

At 26, Collins said his age allows him to navigate social media in a way that connects with young audiences. And it seems to be working. Collins' TikTok feed often features the latest trends and meme formats on the platform with his political message. In one video, he ponders why members of the working class would support capitalism. In another, Collins lists his policy goals to "Delfino Plaza but progressive bass boost," a popular TikTok sound that relies on a remix to music from "Super Mario Sunshine," a 2002 Nintendo game.

Another TikTok – featuring audio from Nicki Minaj's 2018 track "Chun-Li" suggests that Collins would rather drown than serve in the US Military under Trump, and another video uses Justin Timberlake's 2013 hit "Suit & Tie" to urge President Trump to de-escalate tensions with Iran.

While the content of these made-for-virality videos could be perceived as unusual of a Congressional candidate, the short, seemingly light-hearted commentary on politics is familiar to users on TikTok, who often joke about topics like LGBTQ conversion camps and tensions between Iran and the US.

Collins' TikTok is more about money and attention than votes

The videos, made in Collins' own home, are a far cry in production value from the high-cost political television spots of yesteryear, though the strategy has seemed to work for Collins, who says he would be the first member of Congress living openly with Autism, if elected.

TikTok, populated mostly by teenagers, may seem like an odd choice to campaign for votes. In the 2018 midterm elections, just 36 percent of registered voters ages 18-29 showed out at the polls, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The number, though, was a 20 percent jump from the number who turned out in the 2014 midterms, signaling – perhaps – a shift in typical voter behavior patterns that could yield positive results for Collins.

"Young people seem pretty excited," Collins, who noted even teenagers below the voting age can exercise civic engagement by volunteering with his campaign, added. "We've had more people sign up to volunteer through TikTok than any other platform since we started."

He attributed the specific success with TikTok to the app's algorithm, which provides users – in part – with content based on their geographic location on the "For You" page.

Collins added that his social media strategy has afforded him more opportunities to interact with his community, helping him mobilize on-the-ground support in his district.

Collins said his campaign wasn't worried about reaching people too young, too far away, or too apathetic to vote because his strategy on TikTok – and social media in general – is meant to reach widespread audiences.

"We are not using social media as our strategy for voter outreach," he said. "It is a strategy to raise money and recruit volunteers, and for those two things it has been massively successful. If we were just doing social media, then I think that would be a big problem, but we have a very effective field game that we are running, so we are using social media to empower that."

According to data from the Federal Elections Committee, from January through September 2019, the Democratic Socialist congressional hopeful raised some $43,463.68, the most out of any of the six candidates running for Heck's seat.

A campaign representative told Insider that the campaign raised some $86,884 between October 1, 2019 and January 17, 2020, comprised of 5,639 individual donors, though those numbers are not yet reflected by the FEC.

In comparison, the district's outgoing Rep. Denny Heck raised $1,632,852.46 during his 2018 campaign with $851,450.00 coming from political action committees, which included groups like Capital One, Deloitte, JP Morgan Chase, State Farm, and Lowes, according to the FEC.

Collins' social-media funded campaign included no PAC donations, per the FEC data.

But in a tweet Thursday evening, Collins tweeted that candidates who have entered the race since Heck's retirement announcement were corporate funded.

—Joshua 4 Congress (@Joshua4Congress) January 17, 2020

"They'll spend *millions* trying to defeat me, & it won't work," Collins tweeted.

TikTok isn't Collins' only non-traditional campaign tactic

In addition to TikTok and other social media platforms, Collins has also used Discord – an online messaging tool used primarily by the video gaming community – to organize and communicate with his supporters across the country, yet another sign that campaigning in 2019 looks a lot different than campaigns of just a few years ago.

"It's allowed us to be super accessible, and to communicate with our thousands of supporters all over the country in a way that's really safe, personal, and organized," Danni Shull, political and communications director for the Collins campaign, told Insider.

"Rather than form-emails sent to lists or text-banks, we're in their notifications with a searchable chat log that allows folks to control their participation. People really don't have informal communication over email anymore, and it's worth pointing out that many people think of politics as an interest or a hobby, rather than just something you volunteer to do out of civic duty. Our Discord allows people at all levels of experience to directly interface with us in a way that is exciting, and causes them to bring their friends into the political process with them."

Collins said his start on social media didn't begin on TikTok, though his presence on the platform feels like a natural evolution for a millennial candidate in the new decade. Even some of the 2020 presidential candidates have gotten in on the TikTok game, appearing on the platform in videos made by The Washington Post.

A TikTok about Bill Gates' net-worth clued Collins into the virality potential of the platform, known previously as Musical.ly until it was purchased by Chinese company ByteDance in 2017.

"That video was so viral that I saw it on every platform with millions of views and I realized 'oh, there's a giant audience that's waiting for a candidate to talk to," Collins told Insider. "So, I went on there and I started making videos, and that was in October, and eventually I had a couple viral videos, and those helped it grow really quickly. The decision was pretty casual."

In addition to support from his TikTok fans, Collins said much of his early support came from the Chapo Trap House community on Reddit. ChapoTrapHouse, a left-wing podcast that rose to prominence during the 2016 election, has a community of 148,000 members on Reddit, though the community has been quarantined by the company "due to significant issues with reporting and addressing violations of the Reddit Content Policy."

Collins led an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with members of the community, which he said led to early donations and in-person volunteers for his campaign.

He said that while he has had several viral pieces of content on TikTok, not everything is a crowd-pleaser.

"Not all of them are funny, some of them flop, but reaction has been very overwhelming positive, aside from trolls," he said.

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