It was mid-September 2019—the thick of the Democratic presidential primary. Pete Buttigieg had just touched down in Santa Barbara, California. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was scheduled to speak with Ady Barkan, the progressive activist diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) weeks before Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. This cycle Barkan was endeavoring to discuss health care policy with every Democratic presidential hopeful. But before he and Buttigieg could meet, Barkan’s team called. They had to cancel. Barkan had woken up that morning exhausted and struggling to breathe. He was rushed to the emergency room. There, he and his wife, Rachael King, decided to move forward with a tracheotomy, a procedure where a plastic tube is inserted into one’s throat so a ventilator can be hooked directly to their lungs. The interviews were put on hold—possibly indefinitely—as Barkan awaited surgery. But when he woke up, he insisted they resume.
Inside the Buttigieg camp, there was no question as to whether they would reschedule—even if an endorsement from the progressive Barkan wasn’t on the table. “We thought it was absolutely critical to engage with Mr. Barkan because this conversation is so critical. These are conversations that every American family at some stage, at some point, is having…Ady is the embodiment of that,” said Nina Smith, who served as Buttigieg’s traveling press secretary during the primary and was with him in Santa Barbara. “We definitely thought that what Ady was doing was sparking the type of conversation that we wanted to be a part of and an important conversation for the country broadly.”
During the primary, Barkan endeavored to meet with every Democratic presidential hopeful. Here he is pictured with Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Courtesy of People’s TV.Barkan’s intent with the interviews, which were compiled into a video series called Uncovered, was to engage the candidates in a real, candid conversation. “When you’re asked by a dying person about health care, giving the standard messaging [and] talking points is probably the most hollow and empty a politician could look,” said Julia Barnes, executive director of Be a Hero, the PAC cofounded by Barkan and democratic strategist Liz Jaff. “Ady knows that, and we all know that. So getting in there and asking questions about Big Pharma and ‘Medicare for all,’ and their own personal health care connections, allowed us to pull out some of the most personal and also the most honest content around the health care discussion that was had during the presidential primary.”
The bigger Barkan’s platform gets, the harder it will be for politicians to ignore him. Though his roots in progressive activism were planted long before his diagnosis—a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School, Barkan first drew national attention for his work on the 2014 Fed Up movement—he has emerged as one of the most prominent “Medicare for all” advocates in the country, in part because his fight to reshape health care policy and the fight for his life are synonymous. Displays of Barkan’s activism have gone viral, from his arrests on Capitol Hill to his tear-inducing speech at the Democratic National Convention. He also happens to be one of the most prominent faces of health care messaging at the very moment Democrats are leaning heavily on that very messaging to give them a boost in the 2020 election, both at the presidential level and down the ballot. As I’ve previously reported, Democrats are hoping that Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s potential dismantling of the Affordable Care Act will fall at the feet of the Republicans who confirmed her and the president who pushed her through. “We have wanted to make this election about health care, and we’ve wanted to make this election about Trump’s handling of the COVID crisis,” a senior Democratic aide told me. “And they are throwing those issues into more intense focus than we could have dreamed.”
At the moment Barkan’s cause and the cause of the party happen to be interlinked. Which means that the recent slew of ads from Be a Hero could tangibly move the needle on Election Day. The PAC spent $2 million on ads to air in a number of key battleground states where Democrats hope to flip Senate seats. Its investment might seem small next to the millions other Democratic or Never Trump organizations are pouring into the race. But it captures an ethos that Barkan and Be a Hero hope reaches across political lines. With the 14 ads now airing, the goal isn’t to create #resistance catnip for the blue-check Twitterati, but to win over independents and disaffected Republicans, the voters needed to actually flip the Senate. The hope, said Barnes, is to use Barkan’s “story and experience as a tool to find the places where we’re not just going to shine as brightly as everybody else, but we are actually going to make up yards.”
“He’s not using it to garner pity to move people. He is using it to help connect the experience that so many of us have,” Barnes continued. “It’s his whole family that has committed to letting this time be used to move the ball down the field.”
In theory, Be a Hero’s efforts will be good for Joe Biden. But like many progressives, Biden wasn’t Barkan’s first choice—that was Elizabeth Warren. He wasn’t even his second choice, which became Bernie Sanders after Warren withdrew. But when Biden emerged as the Democratic nominee, Barkan set aside their extensive policy differences and pledged to do everything in his power to get Biden into the White House. After that the pressure is on. “We have been clear: Ady is going to do everything on ‘Medicare for all.’ He’s going to fight Joe Biden tooth and nail if he’s elected,” Jaff said. “But in order to do that, he has to get elected.”