On a Sunday night in March of 2010, former President Barack Obama gathered his staff on the famed Truman Balcony—overlooking the south lawn of White House—to celebrate what would be one of the milestones of his presidency: signing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law.
Among those gathered for this watershed moment, one the president has often remembered as a highlight of his time in office, was Alejandra Campoverdi, then an aide to White House deputy chief of staff for policy Mona Sutphen. She had joined the Obama campaign back in its early days, forgoing an M.B.A. from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management to be part of a political movement that spoke to her, and millions of others, in a way that none had before. She lived off her credit cards, worked without pay, and had no regrets about dropping her plans so she could be part of a change she could believe in.
It's been seven years since Campoverdi stood with the president on the Truman Balcony and nearly nine years since she first joined the campaign, but once again she’s living off her credit cards in the hope of realizing an unforeseen political dream: her own campaign for Congress.
Campoverdi is running in a special election being held in early April to replace the vacant seat left in California's Thirty-Fourth Congressional District. Following the election of former California attorney general Kamala Harris to the U.S. Senate, Xavier Becerra, District 34's former representative, was tapped to be Harris' replacement. And now Campoverdi is hoping to make Becerra's seat her own.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Campoverdi was brought up by her single mother and her grandmother, a Mexican immigrant, in a three-bedroom apartment that was shared by five additional family members. There were periods when her family was on welfare and she and her mother were taking WIC. She was able to afford a private school because her grandmother worked as a kindergarten aide.
"It was very much a lot of love and not a lot of resources," Campoverdi said.
Growing up in L.A. during the 1990s, Campoverdi lived through a tumultuous decade for the Southern California city, one that was marked by the Rodney King riots, the OJ Simpson trial, and the vote for Proposition 187 (an initiative meant to keep undocumented immigrants from using public services, like education and health care; though it was approved in a 1994 referendum, it immediately faced numerous legal challenges and was never enforced). Though she was only a teenager, these events shaped her worldview and ultimately set her on her political trajectory.
"I had never heard communities, particularly immigrant communities like my family, being referred to in such a one-dimensional way. It was really upsetting for me," Campoverdi said. "That was a big spark that eventually put me on that path I'm on right now."
With the help of scholarships and grants, Campoverdi attended the University of Southern California and then worked for the California Endowment’s Agricultural Worker Health Initiative before graduating from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with a master's degree in public policy. Next on her agenda was her M.B.A., but the Obama campaign led her from a scholarship at Northwestern to an unpaid position doing voter outreach.
Campoverdi had thousands of dollars' worth of student loan debt and no health insurance, and had to live in supportive housing, but she knew she'd made the right decision and ultimately was given a job in the White House. Though she’s back in a place of financial uncertainty with her congressional campaign, she has no doubts about her bid for office. To her, the political and the personal have always melded together, and the concerns of 20 years ago are still just as present today.
Families in Campoverdi's community average well below $40,000 in median household income. With a large immigrant population, District 34 residents fear Donald Trump’s extreme stance on border protection and the increasing number of ICE raids. An emphasis on voucher programs rather than investment in public schools has numerous families worried about the quality of education for their children, especially in classrooms where a majority of students may not speak English as a first language.
And then, of course, there’s health care. With the House GOP unveiling their proposed health care plan earlier this month, the prospect of losing the protections of the Affordable Care Act is looming over Los Angeles residents. Having witnessed the passage of Obama's historic law, Campoverdi knows just how monumental the ACA was—and how much is at stake if it's repealed.
For Campoverdi, health care is perhaps the most personal issue of all, and she’s been candid about her family’s own medical struggles. Her mother was on Medi-Cal, California's public health insurance, when she was born. She and her family relied upon the health safety network, and Campoverdi’s seen firsthand the devastation that a terminal illness can leave. Her grandmother died of breast cancer. Her mother battled breast cancer. Her aunt is currently receiving treatment for breast cancer. Campoverdi herself has been diagnosed with the BRCA 2 gene.
“Even before she made the decision to run for Congress, [Alejandra] was determined to find a policy-oriented role following the November election, having concerns about the election results,” said vice president of ABC News Robin Sproul, a longtime friend and mentor to Campoverdi. “Ali is like that: determined to jump into the arena at all times. Her decision to go public with her own health issues is just one more example of her intense desire to have people focus on what is important, on how policy can impact lives.”
But under congressional Republicans' intended replacement for the ACA—the American Health Care Act (AHCA)—protections and health programs for families just like Campoverdi’s could be in jeopardy.
For low-income families, in particular, the GOP proposal would be catastrophic. One of the most significant parts of the ACA was the expansion of Medicaid. Millions of Americans across dozens of states were able to obtain health care because of this provision. But, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported, the passage of the AHCA would lead to 14 million people losing their insurance by 2018 and 24 million by 2026—in large part to the elimination of the Medicaid expansion.
"My family knows all too well that having quality health coverage can mean the difference between life and death," Campoverdi says. "Those who benefited most from Obamacare—low-income individuals, seniors, and those who are sick or have preexisting conditions—will suffer. I don't trust Donald Trump and Republicans to be honest about my health care. And neither do Los Angeles families."
Having spent years working on the Obama campaign trail and then in the White House, Campoverdi watched how a vision for health care became a reality. While today’s political climate could not be more different than that of eight years ago, she hopes to use her candidacy to revive the action and mobility she saw almost a decade ago.
But in doing that, there’s one moment from the early Obama days that Campoverdi had hoped to forget but remains a constant presence as she makes her case to District 34.
Just days after Obama's inauguration in 2009, the website Gawker thrust Campoverdi into an unwanted spotlight after identifying her as then-speechwriter Jon Favreau's girlfriend and digging up photographs from a five-year-old Maxim photo shoot that featured her posing in lingerie. The snarky profile, "Ali Campoverdi: Obama Hottie, Feminist Paradox," launched a wave of tabloid coverage—one that even went international (Australia's Courier-Mail boldly proclaimed, "White House looks hotter with sexy staff"; The Daily Mail wrote, "Meet the new girl at the White House (good job Clinton's not still President!)").
As her personal life and her body became public fodder, Campoverdi felt embarrassed and ashamed. She cried herself to sleep for weeks. She stopped wearing makeup and started wearing shapeless clothing. She feared it would jeopardize her new role with a president she had worked so tirelessly to help elect.
But when she alerted Sutphen about the Gawker piece, Campoverdi was given nothing but support.
"I felt very strongly that the way I would judge her—and the way her colleagues would judge her—was through her work in advancing President Obama’s agenda, not a magazine photo from several years earlier," Sutphen said.
Just as Sutphen expected, Campoverdi excelled in her role and eventually became the first deputy director of Hispanic media in White House history. She left the White House after Obama's first term and went on to join Univision to help launch the Fusion TV network and became part of the staff at the Los Angeles Times, serving as the managing editor of a platform dedicated to race and immigration identity.
But now, eight years after the Gawker piece—and over 15 years after she actually posed in Maxim—her appearance and her sexuality are still frequent talking points used to undermine her status as an accomplished woman and her political aspirations.
"Men are given the liberty to be complicated, complex humans, but women aren’t given the same latitude. We’re siloed and typecast in our own lives: We’re 'the sexy one,' or 'the smart one,' or 'the girl next door,'" Campoverdi said. "That’s not the reality of who we are. As a woman, and as a feminist, I very strongly stand for women’s rights—including the right to be as complicated and contradictory as we are."
Out on the campaign trail, Campoverdi has been no stranger to sexist remarks and latent misogyny. During one meeting with a local political leader, he didn't even wait for an introduction before telling Campoverdi that "all the articles were right" about her looks (he also made a suggestive comment about her Catholic school education that could make anyone's skin crawl). While canvassing, another man told Campoverdi that he'd rather buy her a purse than donate to her bid for Congress.
As Campoverdi puts it, unless a woman spent the duration of her life sitting at home alone wearing a turtleneck, the digital age has made it all the easier for women to be subjected to sexism and shaming. One of her greatest fears is that the threat of such attacks will keep women from getting involved. Though she herself faced her own setbacks, she's not going to let her past be a deterrent. If anything, she's using it to fuel her own aspirations—and her vision for her community.
"There are always going to be ways to shame women for who they are," Campoverdi said. "I decided to not let these pictures, the fact that I used to be a model, and knowing I am going to be attacked in a very sexist way for these things, be the thing that stops me from doing what needs to be done, which is stopping Trump, fighting for my community and the women of Los Angeles, and running for Congress."
