Deja Foxx speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention
You might not have heard of her but that means you haven't been hanging out in the new-age communication platforms offered by the internet.
At 25, Foxx is already a veteran of political campaigns, having been the youngest member of Kamala Harris media staff at the age of 19 when Harris launched her campaign for President in 2016.
“This country, this last election, left me just as disappointed and horrified as you,” Foxx said in a recent Teen Vogue interview.
After celebrating her 25th birthday recently, she was faced with the disappointment of the results in November 2024 and a choicce between abandoing all hope in a badly damaged political system or a dive deeper into politics to try and right the flaws and widening gap. She chose the latter by running for Congress.
Fate stepped in when Democrat Congressman Raúl Grijalva of Arizona's 7th district died in March from complications of his cancer treatment. His death created a scenario of a special election to replace him. The Special Primary Election will be held on July 15, 2025, and the Special General Election will be held on September 23, 2025.
“This country, this last election, left me just as disappointed and horrified as you,” Foxx said in a recent Teen Vogue interview. “It was crashout or Congress — and I chose Congress.”
Foxx, a Filipino American, faces four other formidable candidates for the July 15 primary for the largely Hispanic disctrict. Besides Foxx, the candidates include Adelita Grijalva, a former Pima County Supervisor and daughter of the late Congressman; Daniel Hernandez, Jr., a former state lawmaker; Patrick Harris, Sr., a businessman; and José Malvido, Jr., an Indigenous scholar. All are better funded and more experienced than Foxx.
Foxx announced her candidacy April 2, a week before she turned 25, the minimum age for a seat in Congress. If she wins, she would become the youngest member of Congress and she'd join Rep. Bobby Scott, D-VA, as only the second Filipino American in the current Congress.
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| In May, Filipino American Deja Foxx, center, posted this on Instagram. |
Raised in Tucson, Foxx was only 15 when she left home because of her mother’s struggles with substance abuse.
“You can imagine what it's like to be a teenage girl in high school — the last thing you want to do is tell all your peers that you’re homeless,” Foxx recalls in an interview with Campaign US.
“I wasn't the typical definition of homelessness, when most people think of being on the street,” Deja says. “Instead, I just was housing insecure -- I was without a home of my own.”
She balanced high school classes with long nights working at the gas station and found her fight advocating for better sex education in her school district. Organizing a campaign of student storytellers, she delivered a win for tens of thousands of her peers who until then had been learning a curriculum last updated in the 1980s and worked firsthand in clinics around Tucson to provide support to young people seeking reproductive care.
Foxx went toe-to-toe with Republicans who voted in favor of the Trump Administration decision to defund Planned Parenthood. Still in high school, she made national headlines as, overnight, millions of views poured in on a video of her fiery exchange with Arizona's former Republican Senator Jeff Flake. After he voted to strip her and millions of other women of their access to essential birth control funding that empowered them to control their bodies and their futures, at a town hall she asked him pointedly:
Foxx went toe-to-toe with Republicans who voted in favor of the Trump Administration decision to defund Planned Parenthood. Still in high school, she made national headlines as, overnight, millions of views poured in on a video of her fiery exchange with Arizona's former Republican Senator Jeff Flake. After he voted to strip her and millions of other women of their access to essential birth control funding that empowered them to control their bodies and their futures, at a town hall she asked him pointedly:
“So I’m a young woman, and you’re a middle aged man. I’m a person of color, and you’re white. I come from poverty and I didn’t always have parents to guide me through life. You come from privilege. So I’m wondering, as a Planned Parenthood patient and someone who relies on Title X, who you are clearly not, why is your right to take away my right to choose…,” she said as the audience began cheering making it difficult to hear the rest of her question.
“Why would you deny me the American dream?” she asked.
Looking back at that viral moment. she said, "Because of people like us, Republicans like him didn’t stand a chance."
Those Democratic policies made it possible for her to walk across the stage as the first in her family to graduate college. A graduate of Columbia University, she made history as one of the youngest presidential campaign staffers, leading Influencer Strategy for Kamala Harris at just 19-years old.
In 2024, she used her platforms as a speaker at the Democratic National Convention to shine a light on the ways the rising cost of living, restrictions on reproductive rights, and student debt affect her generation. She spoke in front of TV cameras and to the delegates about reproductive rights being 'the issue of this election'.
She continued: "Particularly in some swing states like Arizona. It isn't just about winning the electoral battle. When we see a combination of race and gender-based attacks, it's about winning the narrative battle because little girls are listening to see what is possible.
FYI: Donate to Deja Foxx's campaign.
"So content creators, like the ones you see here, have the opportunity to shape a generation's political understanding in this election cycle."
"So content creators, like the ones you see here, have the opportunity to shape a generation's political understanding in this election cycle."
As a teenager she once unabashedly stated that she wanted to become President of the US. She was already eyeing the District 7 race in 2026 when Raúl Grijalva's passing speeded up her plans.
While speaking to all voters, it is clear that her greatest appeal is among young people and her campaign is leaning into that demographic who are more prone to respond to a DM than to pick up a phone call from an unknown phone number.
"I came to the personal feeling that I couldn't ask them to keep doing that if I couldn't give them something to really get excited about after this hard loss. That influenced my decision to get into this race…. Every election, people ask me, How do we get young people involved? And the answer is, we need to get young people on the ballot."
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X or at the blog Views From the Edge.
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