Federal Workforce Cuts Drive Ex-Workers Into Midterms

Federal workforce cuts drove former public servants out of government and into congressional races. Election officials are preparing for threats, while lawmakers are mapping out what they might do with power after the midterms.

“They cut a lot of high performers inadvertently,” said Mike Croley, a former federal employee who lost his job in April 2025 after serving as a presidential management fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “A serious concern I have is the lack of institutional knowledge that we’ve lost and that will take a long time to get back.” He added: “DOGE accomplished nothing but chaos.”

The cost of the cuts

Federal News Network profiled 12 former public servants running for office. Dozens of former career federal employees are seeking office, the outlet reported, and many said the Trump administration’s government overhauls pushed them toward congressional races. Their political views vary, but all said public service shaped their decisions.

Chris Backemeyer spent more than 20 years as a career federal official at the State Department before he resigned in May 2025. He told KOLN: “I wanted to continue my nonpartisan public service, but when DOGE came in and was more concerned about firing people than it was about pursuing a mission or changing our policy I realized that we were playing by a different set of rules.” Backemeyer, a Democrat, is challenging Republican incumbent Mike Flood in Nebraska’s 1st District.

Zach Dembo resigned as a Department of Justice prosecutor in 2025 because of the Trump administration’s overhaul. “It’s not something I would have planned, but once it was clear I could no longer be a federal prosecutor, this is what my principles said I needed to do,” he told the Courier Journal. He’s running against Republican Ralph Alvarado in Kentucky’s 6th District.

Alissa Ellman, a disabled Army veteran, lost her Department of Veterans Affairs job during the 2025 workforce reductions, after working there for just under a year. “The impacts of some of these federal decisions are directly impacting people that I personally know,” she told WHAM in Rochester. She is running against Republican incumbent Claudia Tenney in New York’s 24th District.

Sam Forstag, a former wildland firefighter and smoke jumper, said in a Machinists Union video that cuts affected Forest Service union members and coworkers. “The DOGE cuts last year meant a whole lot of union members and my coworkers in the Forest Service being under attack and having their lives turned upside down.” He’s running against Republican Aaron Flint in Montana’s 1st District.

Karen Ortiz said she lost her job in early 2025 as an administrative judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because she refused to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two “immutable” sexes. She told Patch she was “a whistleblower who spoke out about the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people and Elon Musk’s DOGE operation.” Her listed opponents are Democrat Micah Lasher and Republican Caroline Shinkle in New York’s 12th District.

The ballot and its limits

Other candidates described leaving federal jobs or resisting orders they said violated their principles. Lauren Reinhold, laid off from the Social Security Administration in 2025, told the Kansas Reflector: “It wasn’t about me losing my job. It was about my commitment and faith in federal government, and watching what they did to break it.” She’s running against Republican incumbent Tracey Mann in Kansas’ 1st District.

Trina Swanson, most recently director of international operations for the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in an interview with WDIO: “Overnight I was asked to violate my oath and do unethical things ... I decided to run for Congress because we need real representation.” Mike Masuda, a former State Department foreign affairs officer and an engineer, is running against Republican incumbent Tom McClintock in California’s 5th District. Kristin Hook, a former biological scientist at the Government Accountability Office, said the federal government can be “a powerful force for good” but is “being weaponized against us.” She’s running against Republican Mark Teixeira in Texas’ 21st District.

A run for office leads back to the same congressional structure. Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP, said leadership contests were planned for a week after Election Day. If Republicans kept the House, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would likely keep the speakership; if they lost it, he might seek to become minority leader. If Democrats retook the House, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) would likely become speaker. These are possibilities, not outcomes.

Miller said a Democratic House could pursue affordability measures and consider reversing Medicaid cuts, but Republican control of the Senate and a presidential veto could curb its power. A Democratic Senate could delay or block judicial nominations. Congressional control also bears on a proposed $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget and the unapproved Pentagon budget and National Defense Authorization Act. Miller said Democrats could seek testimony or a subpoena of Elon Musk about DOGE and federal workforce cuts.

The machinery behind election day

Chetrice Romero, senior cybersecurity advisor at Ice Miller, described election administration as months of preparation followed by post-election verification, audits and certification. Local officials coordinate with emergency managers, commissioners, IT staff, legal advisers, bipartisan boards, the public, and state and federal partners. Romero said local election officials often hold other demanding jobs.

Officials prepare for storms, crowd control, physical threats, including active shooters and bombs, and cyberattacks. Romero said election infrastructure is segmented from other local-government systems, so an attack on local systems may not reach election systems. She also identified AI-generated deepfakes and misinformation or malinformation attributed to sophisticated nation-state actors as threats to confidence in elections.

Results can change after voting as officials count mail ballots and other votes, Romero said. That’s normal. Bipartisan boards oversee validation at local and state levels and, where applicable, federally. Officials coordinate across institutions to administer the ballots and safeguards; candidates’ promises, meanwhile, run into the hard limits of who controls the chambers and the presidency.