When Democrats dream of a blue wave sweeping the country in November’s midterm elections, it’s candidates like Katie Hill that they see as poster children for a brighter future.

Hill is running for Congress in a bumper year for female candidates. She is a grassroots candidate who has easily outraised her opponents without taking a cent in corporate money, a progressive advocate on homelessness and affordable housing who is also a pragmatist willing to work across the aisle and a millennial (she just turned 31) running in an election in which turnout among young people will be crucial.

She has no previous experience of elective office, but she connected easily and winningly with voters in California’s 25th district during the primaries and hopes to do so again on 6 November with a simple overarching message: American politics is broken, and only fresh voices and fresh ideas will fix it.

“Our representatives in Washington don’t represent us,” she told the Guardian. “They represent corporations and lobbyists, and put partisan politics ahead of the public interest. They tell us one thing and do another. All that has to change.”

First, though, she has to win. And that’s where things get more complicated.

Hill is running in an area of sprawling suburbs and exurbs to the north and north-west of Los Angeles that run the gamut from the wealthy, ardently pro-Trump subdivisions of Santa Clarita, next to the Magic Mountain theme park, to the heavily Latino farm country of Ventura county and the impoverished blue-collar communities of Lancaster and Palmdale in the high Mojave desert.

The district does not lack California liberals – Democrats enjoy a 4% registration advantage over Republicans. But it’s also home to a lot of active and retired police officers and military veterans – all groups that skew conservative.

Steve Knight, is widely credited for his energy and his effectiveness in bringing projects and federal dollars back to his constituents. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

On paper, at least, it’s a good bet for the Democrats: it is one of seven California districts, and one of 25 around the country, that returned a Republican congressman in 2016 but also favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. (Clinton won here by 6.7 points.)

But it’s also a district that, in any normal year, would probably be beyond the Democrats’ reach because the incumbent, a military veteran and former Los Angeles police officer named Steve Knight, is widely credited for his energy and his effectiveness in bringing projects and federal dollars back to his constituents.

In his first two terms in office, Knight has worked with Democrats to improve veterans’ access to healthcare, to speed up security clearances for defense industry contractors and to mandate privacy for breastfeeding mothers in airports. Over the summer, he distanced himself from his own party – with one eye, perhaps, to the Latino community that makes up almost 40% of the district – by introducing a bill to end the separation of immigrant families at the border and calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

Knight has also been quick to climb the seniority ladder in Washington, serving on the armed services and small business committees to drive legislation he knows will resonate back home.

“We’ve worked with the issues we told you we would,” Knight said in the first of three candidates’ debates with Hill. “I told you what I would do, and I did it.”

Of course this is no ordinary year, and Knight has been forced to defend – or distance himself from – a lot more than his own legislative interests. Hill has hammered him for his votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare; for his vote in favor of last year’s huge tax cut that favors corporations and the rich and will add a projected $1.9tn to the deficit by 2028; and for the money he has taken from the National Rifle Association.

The desert city of Palmdale sits in California’s 48th District where Katie Hill is competing for the seat held by Republican incumbent Steve Knight. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Knight likes to play up his cross-party bona fides, citing a study that puts him in the top quarter of Republican members willing to work across the aisle. And he has belatedly come out in favor of the Obamacare provision protecting patients with pre-existing conditions. But, as Hill loves to remind him at every turn, he has voted with the Republicans – and with President Trump – 99% of the time.

“In a purple district,” Hill tweeted after another of their debates, citing the bipartisanship study, “no one should get a medal for 63rd place.”

And so the battle has been joined. Just as Knight likes to tell voters he has raised a family in the hardscrabble Antelope Valley, Hill has a similar ring of middle-class authenticity: her father is a police officer, her mother a nurse, and she raises animals on a farm in a rugged mountain area halfway between Santa Clarita and Palmdale.

Both pride themselves on telling it like it is. In Hill’s case, her lack of pretension was a big part of the reason why she beat her most dangerous primary opponent, Bryan Caforio, a Yale law school graduate who was a bit too fond of telling people he was a Yale law school graduate. “In this district,” Hill told the Guardian, “people pride themselves on being down-to-earth. We’re a little redneck, frankly – and we’re proud of that too.”

Arguably the biggest difference-maker in the race is momentum. As California voters find themselves increasingly at odds with the Trump administration, and female voters, in particular, look for voices to push back against what they see as entrenched male privilege in Washington, Hill has managed to tick a lot of the right boxes.

She has also proven to be a prodigious fundraiser, a darling of moneyed liberals in the Hollywood Hills and Bel-Air who have invited her to reception after reception. In the three months to September, she pulled in $3.8m, dwarfing Knight’s haul of $456,000. She has attracted a small army of young, enthusiastic campaign workers and volunteers who have knocked on an estimated quarter-million doors since the start of primary season.

Katie Hill is running in a Los Angeles district that runs the gamut from wealthy, pro-Trump subdivisions to the heavily Latino farm country. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

Part of her strategy for making a name for herself in the early running was agreeing to be the subject of a fly-on-the-wall Vice documentary series, however. While the show did wonders to establish her campaign as, in her words, “the most millennial ever”, it also revealed things that would make most seasoned campaign operatives wince: the spectacularly messy slacker apartment that served as her first campaign headquarters (Seth Rogen would be a natural to play her manager, Zack Czajkowski); a slew of off-color jokes and frank admissions that, some days, she didn’t feel in the mood; and footage of her borrowing talking points for a debate from John Oliver’s hit HBO comedy show.

The Vice series is still filming, and still airing – even though it is now providing material for negative ads produced by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a major Republican Super Pac. One recent spot showed footage from the show of Hill in a tank top, doubled over with laughter, under the slogan: “Immature. Out of touch. Expensive.”

Hill dismisses such attacks as sexism, pure and simple. “They make comments about my appearance and call me immature. I have to deal with this every day,” she said. “In our last debate, Steve Knight was asked what his biggest accomplishment was. Then they turned to me and said: ‘You have no experience, why should people vote for you?’ That’s something you hear a lot as a woman that you wouldn’t hear as a man.”

The polls suggest a nailbiter race – an LA Times poll this month put Hill four points ahead, but a more recent New York Times survey had her trailing Knight by two – and the result is likely to turn on which side is more adept at turning out the base.

Hill acknowledges that allowing herself and her staff to be seen so unvarnished is unorthodox. But it worked in the primary and she feels it might still work – even if more cautious voices might tell her that the millennial slacker image is unlikely to make much impression on independent or Republican voters.

“I decided early on that if I’m going to run, I’m running as me,” she said. “It’s a risk, but it’s a risk I believe will pay off.”

There are questions, too, about how Hill is using what precious time is left before election day. On a recent Friday afternoon, she was in Lancaster at a sparsely attended meeting of a high school political club, some of whose members were not old enough to cast a ballot.

Hill, for her part, is full of optimism. “We’re seeing the energy everywhere,” she said.

Outside the Lancaster high school event, however, it was hard to ignore the desert silence, the empty parking lot, and the line of Knight campaign posters hanging defiantly on a fence across the street.