'Knock Down the House' Stars Endorse Bernie Sanders' Campaign

Amy Vilela, Cori Bush and Paula Jean Swearingen have all thrown their support behind the openly socialist 2020 candidate.

Three of the four stars of the Netflix documentary Knock Down the House, which followed female progressive candidates running in the 2018 midterm elections, have endorsed Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.

Amy Vilela, Cori Bush and Paula Jean Swearingen have all thrown their support behind the openly socialist 2020 candidate, Bernie Sanders 2020 announced on Twitter on Saturday. "Thank you @CoriBush, @paulajean2020, and @amy4thepeople for endorsing our campaign! Together we can defeat Donald Trump and finally create a government that works for everyone in this country," the tweet read.

Vilela, who ran for Congress on a Medicare-for-all platform in Nevada after the death of her daughter and placed third, continues to advocate for Medicare for all. Bush, a community organizer active in Ferguson, Missouri, who ran for the state House and lost, is prepping another bid for U.S. Congress. Swearingen, who ran for Congress in West Virginia as an environmental activist and lost, is also preparing a new 2020 campaign, for the Senate.

"I am proud to receive the endorsement of true grassroots leaders and organizers who know what it takes to build a movement across this country to demand change for all Americans," Sanders said in a statement about the endorsement. "Together, we will continue our fight for racial justice, economic justice, health justice, environmental justice and social justice."

The remaining Knock Down the House star, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is still mulling whom she will endorse in the race, she told CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert when she appeared on his live post-Democratic debate show on Wednesday. Ocasio-Cortez formerly worked on Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, and when she ran in New York in 2018, he backed her at multiple turns.

So far, the freshman representative has suggested she is leaning toward both Sanders and Warren, another of the Democrats' more progressive candidates for 2020. “What I would like to see in a presidential candidate is one that has a coherent worldview and logic from which all these policy proposals are coming forward,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN months ago. “I think Sen. Sanders has that. I also think Sen. Warren has that.”

Knock Down the House, directed by Rachel Lears, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was picked up by Netflix after fielding interest from rival streamers Apple and Amazon.