Inside the Progressive Creator House Trying to Close the Political Influencer Gap

By Nikki McCann Ramirez

Nikki McCann Ramirez

“What’s going on y’all? Congressman Chistian Meneffee here, and I am in DEE-lus, Texas right now!” 

Rep. Christian Menefee is not doing an interview with a cable news station, or talking to a reporter. He’s riffing energetically into the camera of Erika Harrison, a Houston-based attorney and part-time blogger. They’re in a cavernous industrial living room in Dallas, Texas, and Harrison is one 10 progressive influencers staying in this quirky, mismatched house that seems like it was built for content creation. Several of the others are close by, fiddling with camera settings on their phones, pairing wireless clip-on microphones, and unfolding tripods. When Meneffee is informed he has to leave the house in 10 minutes, the creators scramble to get a clip recorded with one of the youngest members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Menaffee blitzes through half a dozen social videos in the amount of time it takes most people to pick up their lunch, and departs. Everyone is satisfied.

A few miles away, Republicans from all over the country are assembled at a first-of-its-kind midterm convention, an emergency gathering to reassure Donald Trump that the party still likes him, that it’s absolutely his performance that will be on the ballot this November, and make a convincing case to voters as to why they should be allowed to maintain control of Congress. 

Over the course of the two-day conference, the 10 creators — who were put up in the rented house by MoveOn, a progressive public advocacy organization — met with Democratic lawmakers, attended counterprogramming events, networked, collaborated, and, most importantly, posted. The house was part of an effort to punch back at the highly sophisticated, well-funded network of right-wing content creators that drivel political conversations across social media. Democrats have largely failed to develop a similarly effective network, which has been an increasingly troubling issue for the party as the vertical video revolution continues to break and reshape news consumption, commentary, and journalism. One approach to flipping the script is to go local. 

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“We’re not worried about audience sizes,” says Jordal Uhl, who runs MoveOn’s creator program and brought the house together. (Disclosure: Uhl and I briefly worked together at Media Matters.) “I think we could have easily just called up a bunch of national creators with really large audiences if we just wanted to play a numbers game, but that doesn’t help the creators in Texas continue to grow. It doesn’t help them in their work.”

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The creators came to Dallas from all over the state — from the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas, and from the Texas Triangle of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. They are majority-minority, reflecting the ethnic and cultural wealth of the state and its large Black and Hispanic populations. Their followings range from 9,000 to over 2.8 million. Their content is just as varied. Some focus almost exclusively on their city or region of origin, combining local lifestyle and cultural content with political explainers about policies and events impacting their communities. Others structure their content like the modern version of a local news station, with major national stories covered in the context of Texas politics. Many have covered or outright created content with James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidates for Senate and governor who are running digitally native campaigns that have actively courted influencers.

In putting together the group of creators, Uhl says he wanted to “leverage the voice and the audiences of Texas-based creators.”   

The house served as a daytime retreat for content, with the creators entertaining visits from Rep. Menefee and Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons. Outside of the enclave, they met with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who visited the state to participate in Democratic counter-programming to the convention, and harbored Texas Democrats in Chicago in August of last year amid a quorum break attempting to block Republican gerrymandering efforts. The group toured the “Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” a traveling exhibition highlighting the connections between Trump and Epstein through the information outlined in the trove of so-called Epstein-files. They attended Democratic press conferences and interviewed local officials and party leaders. All in all, the creators turned out 62 pieces of content, 5.3 million views, and over 400,000 likes across the two days they were in Dallas.

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“The RNC is just like a goldmine for craziness that you can react to,” Uhl says. “What we wanted to do was try to take away some of the attention that Trump and his MAGA allies were going to command in Dallas for the RNC.” 

A host of political influencers and “new media” figures were at the Republican convention. Podcaster Benny Johnson made an appearance, as did X troll Gunther Eagleman, Lydia Shaffer (AKA “Conservative Barbie” on social media), and scores of other recognizable faces in the MAGA digital universe were given special credentials and VIP treatment. Democrats have been trying to keep up with the right’s sprawling ecosystem of creators — from creator networks like Double Tap Democracy, to Brian Tyler Cohen’s Chorus Creator Incubator Program, to the $20 million Speaking with American Men project — but the party is still playing from behind when it comes to social media influence.

“There’s been such an investment in digital from the right,” Kat Vargas, a creator whose Instagram account HowdyPolitics has over 100,000 followers, tells me. “It’s building that community online and really driving action. And we’re just really far behind on our side. We don’t have that investment, so like when you’re talking about scale, it’s hard.” 

Vargas points to the meteoric rise of Sara Gonzalez, a Houston native who was plucked out of virtual obscurity by right-wing media conglomerate The Blaze, and now boasts almost one million followers across her various social media platforms. There are dozens of similar cases at the national level, with heavily funded right-wing media organizations and outlets like The Blaze, The Daily Wire, Veritas Creative Media, and Turning Point USA acting as incubators for emerging conservative talent.

Vargas got her start covering the Texas legislature. She, like many of the local and state level creators attempting to shape politics in their communities, is DIY-ing it. “We have nothing for creators on the left to plug into, especially at the state level,” Vargas adds. 

For many of those in the MoveOn house, content creation is a part-time hobby. They have to pay their own way and take time off of work to attend major political events. Vargas relayed to me that while the 2024 Democratic National Convention attempted to place a heavy emphasis on independent content creators, unless they were being sponsored, they had to pay their own way to attend the event. “A lot of people that got accepted to go couldn’t because it just wasn’t equitable, and unfortunately, those are some of the voices that we needed there the most.” 

The level of access being granted to creators by parties, organizations, and even candidates has become a point of friction between traditional media and the growing class of political and media influencers who exist outside of newsroom culture and standards. Creators have become national figures in their own right and a significant presence in the 2026 midterm election cycle. Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and his incendiary style of commentary, for instance, has become a focal point for Republicans, moderate Democrats, and media critics.  

During an informal chat over giant platters of Chuy’s tacos, the creators debated their evolving role in the information space, virtually all of them agreeing that they don’t see their role as a replacement for journalism. “We’re just providing a more one-to-one news experience,” says Saadia Mirza, a Houston-based designer who posts a combination of Texas-focused, and national news analysis to her 300,000 instagram followers. “I think people think we’re in the space of wanting to replace media or wanting to replace these politicians, and that’s not what we’re doing.”

Later that day, the creators puddled together on the house’s large couch and armchairs — like a group of friends sitting down for a movie night or Love Island watch party — to watch the Republican convention’s primetime speeches. They whipped their phones out to record a few seconds of the screen before dipping out to another room to record a quick reaction video. Open laptops displayed half-edited videos (Capcut vs. Adobe Premiere was a running debate). The creators pull up news articles to screenshot and reference in videos, react to posts and clips from journalists I’d seen just a few hours before at the convention center. 

Mirza’s video reacting to Trump lunging and raising his voice at ABC News reporter Rachel Scott as he departed Dallas garnered over 100,000 likes and 14,000 reposts on Instagram, and nearly three million views across Instagram and TikTok. “Less than two hours ago he had a room full of you fuckers with your hands up pledging allegiance to his orange ass,” she said of a cultish pledge Trump had RNC attendees recite to him on the convention’s second night. 

A video posted by JC Frias reacting to the RNC’s decision to display a barely clothed thirst trap of Piker on the jumbotrons of the convention center racked up over half a million views. “I don’t know, if you ask me they’re not doing themselves any favors. I think more people are just going to become democratic socialists,” he says while laughing into the camera.

Vargas posted a video recapping and fact-checking Governor Greg Abbott’s speech at the RNC, which  pulled together over 50,000 views among her predominantly Texas-based following. “Greg Abbott thinks you’re stupid,” read text she imposed over her head.

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If it weren’t for videos like these, scores of online scrollers may not have even been aware the RNC was happening. According to the Pew Research Center, one in five Americans report regularly getting news from social media influencers. That number jumps to almost 40 percent among young adults ages 18-29. Most say they’re not even looking for it, but frequently encounter it in their feeds, and almost half of those surveyed said getting their news from influencers provided a greater sense of “authenticity” about the source. 

Short reaction videos and explainers are, by sheer numbers, an incredibly efficient way to conduct political messaging. “A lot of us are active on the ground,” Vargas told me, but if “I’ve got limited time, is it better spent giving four hours to knock doors that I might talk to seven voters, or during that same time I can make a really high quality video and reach 100,000 voters?” 

Whenever I wasn’t at the creator house, I was cranking away on my own coverage of the convention. A trip to a random Dallas hotel to check in and pick up my credentials, time-killing shuttles from designated parking and drop off zones. My laptop open in the most deserted part of the nosebleeds I could find, live transcription of speeches running in the background as I rushed to file a dispatch to my editors back in New York. I ran down to the arena concourses to quickly interview attendees.

All the while I couldn’t help wonder if I was doing it all wrong. Would the 800-word recap I just put to paper be more effective as a 45 second reel? Would more people see it if it popped up on their “For You” page than as a link they have to click through to see? Would it be more efficient to just watch the proceedings at the American Airlines Center from my own couch and produce content from the comfort of my own home? 

Ellae Mata, a San Antonio-based creator who focuses her content on Latino-American history and education, also spends a lot of time wondering about what will come of political influencing. Like many of her counterparts in the house, content creation is a side gig to existing careers. “In the future, I’d love to be more of a content creator with income,” she laughs. 

“What is the future of content creation, especially in the political space?” she asks. “I guess this is more of a question to the audience. Do people want political content creators that they’ve established and created trust with because these people are educated in that space, or do people want a lifestyle content creator who dabbles in politics occasionally? How do you define yourself as a content creator, and how do you create that level of connection with your audience that they’ll come to you as a trusted source?” 

Newsrooms are asking the same questions, as voters turn away from institutional information sources toward the world of mixed media that exists in their pocket. But while journalism is geared around reporting and providing the facts, the ultimate goal of influencers remains — in a stupidly obvious manner — to influence. There is, however, an undeniable symbiosis between the two. 

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