“Do you hug?” a blonde, wide-eyed 20-something named Shannon asks of Abby Finkenauer, a Democratic candidate running for Congress in Iowa amid the 2018 midterms. We are at a Labor Day picnic in Cedar Rapids, where the young supporter has just introduced herself. After they embrace, Abby catches my amused look and laughs: “You’re like, ‘I’ve seen her all day — yeah, she hugs!’”

Does she ever. Finkenauer, 29, is running on a combination of grit and authenticity to unseat Republican representative Rod Blum in Iowa’s 1st District, and the hugs and high-fives she doles out freely to just about anyone are just one manifestation of her brand.

She’s a progressive female Democrat and, if elected, she’d be the second-youngest member in Congress — just behind anticipated winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, from New York’s 14th District. But Finkenauer’s campaign is hardly focused on her age, even though Finkenauer first became interested in current affairs when she was in elementary school. After asking for a Newsweek subscription when she was 10, she would discuss politics with her uncles at the dinner table on Saturday nights. She learned the value of public service from her grandfather, a local firefighter. Yet when she told her parents she was going to run for the Iowa State House at age 24, in 2014, “You would’ve sworn I was telling them I was gettin’ a full-body tattoo!” she recalls, laughing.

But age is just a number, and Finkenauer wants to show voters in her district — which is mostly white and working-class — that she’s the one who's fit to represent their interests in Washington. The daughter of a union pipe-fitter and public school employee, Finkenauer markets herself as someone who knows what toughness is because she sees it every day in the people of northeastern Iowa.

In campaign ads and interviews, she emphasizes that she has working folks’ backs, implying that her opponent, a Tea Party Republican and member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, is only looking out for corporations and billionaires. “Nothing for the people like us,” I overhear her say to one voter at the picnic, as a live band plays country music in the background.

“She’s not a normal politician — she resonates with working folks,” Iowa independent voter and retired sheet-metal worker Joe Roman, 63, tells Teen Vogue. The picnic was the first time he’d spoken with Finkenauer, but Roman says he knows her dad and feels that she is sincere in her promises. “I believe her,” Roman says. “I saw her right in the eyeballs.”

Finkenauer’s battle cry rings familiar with some aspects of Donald Trump’s populist message during the 2016 campaign. (“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” the president said in his inaugural speech.) But the difference, says Troy Price, the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, is that Abby lives it.

“Abby has walked the walk, not just talked the talk,” he tells Teen Vogue. “She’s going to make sure that [her constituents] are getting protection, and they’re going to have a voice once she gets in this government.”

Working families are Abby’s priority. She wants to invest in small towns and improve infrastructure to create more job opportunities in her district — an issue she has championed since she joined the Iowa State House as a legislator. She supports renewing DACA while also strengthening our borders — unlike Ocasio-Cortez, she does not support abolishing ICE.