Democrats haven’t lost a race for state representative in Kansas’ 46th legislative district in decades, but that could change this year — if one of the candidates decides to run her own field operation.
Brooklynne Roulette Mosley, whose disastrous stint as a New Jersey political operative in 2021 still has Democrats kvetching, has entered the race for an open seat in the Kansas State House of Representatives.
The incumbent, Dennis “Boog” Highberger, is stepping down from the Lawrence-based seat he’s held for nearly a decade. Highberger has never fallen below 83.6%, and the district hasn’t seen a competitive race since Democrats won it by nine points in 1994. In 2020, Joe Biden won the 46th district with 84% of the vote.
Mosely, an Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom veteran, worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign as Kansas state coordinated campaign director and deputy executive director of the Kansas Democratic Party in 2018 and as deputy director of appointments to Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly. She led the coordinated campaign for the Texas Democratic Party in 2020 after working on Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign.
Democrats celebrated the arrival of Mosely as the director of the state party coordinated campaign aimed at winning a second term for Gov. Phil Murphy. Instead, they regretted her hiring and were left wondering how previous employers in Texas and Kansas even came to recommend her — unless they planned to sabotage New Jersey.
Mosely, Democrats told the New Jersey Globe, was a walking disaster who left votes on the table for a Democratic governor who wound up without many to spare. Murphy was fortunate that several superstars buttressed Mosely’s poor performance at the ground game of New Jersey politics on the campaign team – and party leaders who just worked around her.
In a move that left political veterans scratching their heads, Mosely encouraged a group of mostly young operations without much experience to unionize, suggested an affiliation with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), and helped to formulate some of the demands made by the union members. That came despite what appeared to be a fair salary and benefits they agreed to before their hiring. As a result, the Democratic State Committee agreed to keep the young field staffers on the payroll until the new year to compensate them for long hours during the campaign.
Still, some Team Mosely members had the day off on the Monday before Election Day after working a long weekend. The members of the Children’s Union all ended their very brief stay in New Jersey with union cards, but without recommendations for their next gig.
It’s not immediately clear if Mosely’s campaign staff will be unionized.