Mother Jones

OUT OF THE BLUE

This year, a surge of Democratic candidates is challenging Republicans in places—and races—where progressives usually fear to tread.

BEFORE SHE COULD talk about her campaign for the Texas House of Representatives, Lisa Seger needed to check on her goats. Seger, who lives with her husband and 30 goats on a farm outside Houston, had a doe in the maternity stall that was due any minute. “Spring is kidding season,” she explained.

If elected, the 47-year-old Seger, a sustainable-agriculture proponent who got into farming after reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, would likely be the only member of the Legislature with her own brand of yogurt. Her crimson-dyed hair and floppy-eared companions notwithstanding, Seger’s political origin story is unexceptional in 2018. After President Donald Trump announced his “Muslim ban” early last year, she drove to George Bush Intercontinental Airport to protest. A week later, she was back in Houston demonstrating outside the Super Bowl. She joined a local chapter of the progressive grassroots group

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