It’s not uncommon for kids to dream of becoming an elected official when they grow up — maybe because they’re natural leaders, have role models who are politicians, or just want to attend fancy events and give speeches. Deja Foxx also dreamt of being an elected official since she was young — not for those reasons, but rather because she saw from an early age how people in power made decisions that directly affected her and her future. Now, the 25-year-old Tucson native and Columbia University graduate is throwing her hat in the ring and running for a vacant representative seat in the upcoming special election for Arizona’s 7th Congressional District.
“This country and this last election broke my heart in so many ways,” Foxx tells Her Campus in an exclusive interview. “I jokingly tell people it was crash out or Congress — and so I am going for the latter.”
Foxx’s presence as a fresh face within the Democratic Party has been well received by Gen Z thus far. She got her official start at just 19 years old as the influencer and surrogate strategist for former Vice President Kamala Harris’s first presidential campaign in 2019, and in 2024, she spoke at the DNC to voice her support for Harris’s second run. She’s been growing her TikTok audience around reproductive activism and advocacy since 2020, and now, she’s calling on her followers to support her congressional campaign, which she announced in an Instagram post on April 2.
While growing up in Tucson, Foxx and her mom utilized government aid programs like Section 8 Housing, SNAP benefits, and Medicaid. She credits these programs, plus others like Title X funding for reproductive health services — which she utilized as a teen seeking birth control — with giving her the support she needed to survive and thrive, especially during the times she experienced homelessness due to her mother’s struggles with substance abuse. “Those policies, they’re not just theoretical, they play out in the lives of people like me and they have consequences,” Foxx says.
In high school, Foxx felt moved to take on her school district and demand an updated sex education curriculum (which, at that point, hadn’t been updated since the ‘80s). “It didn’t mention consent, it was medically inaccurate, and it was built to disadvantage students like me who didn’t have parents at home to fill in the gap,” Foxx says. “Sitting in a sex education classroom taught by the baseball coach that was letting me down — that politicized me. That [was what] put me into the advocacy world and showed me the power of my story, when I went to school board meetings and demanded that they do better, and won.”
Our race is banking on the power of young people.
The vacant congressional seat Foxx is running for previously belonged to Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who passed away in March of this year. Securing the primary win will be no easy feat, with opponents including former state representative Daniel Hernández Jr. and Rep. Grijalva’s own daughter, Adelita Grijalva. Because the primary election is taking place in July (less than 100 days from the time of publication), Foxx is focused on mobilizing the right voter demographics. “I have absolutely heard from people that this is going to be a low turnout race and that it’s better to focus on high efficacy voters, older voters, people who turn out every time,” Foxx says. But she’s set her sights on the future. “I want to be very clear that our race is banking on the power of young people, that they are going to show up and show out because they recognize that they have an opportunity to do something really big here in southern Arizona and prove the concept that we can elect newer and younger voices.” She gave a special shoutout to the University of Arizona students (which is within the congressional district she’s running for) who have been volunteering to get her message out across campus.
As you might expect, making time for herself hasn’t been easy for Foxx during such a short campaign period, especially when she’s balancing attending campaign events, canvassing, and still pumping out multiple videos a week on her TikTok. “I’ll be honest, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the self-care of it all,” she says. Even so, the experience has been incredibly rewarding. “I am fighting an uphill battle against a system that was built to keep people like us out. And it’s hard work, but it’s good work,” Foxx says. “People need someone they can get excited about, and I’m putting myself on the line to be that person, to keep them engaged in our democracy.”
In a time when many young, working class, and marginalized communities are feeling hopeless in response to President Donald Trump and his administration’s actions, Foxx is urging Gen Zers not to lose faith. “To be a change-maker does not mean that you have to be like me and run for office. We need each and every one of you doing your part where you are and with the people who are invested in you and your personal network,” Foxx says. She recalls a piece of advice she got during her time at Columbia that has stuck with her ever since: “I had a college professor tell me that I was not exceptional, that I was representative of the people I came from — and I think that is one of the biggest lessons I learned in college: Even though I was at this fancy school with people who had very different life experiences than me, that it didn’t make me exceptional. It just made me representative of all of the talent and hard work that’s right here in my hometown and in southern Arizona. And I’m really proud to be back to represent us.”