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The Oligarch-on-Oligarch Fight That Defines Politics in 2026 by David Dayen
If a lab could create the perfect congressional candidate for a particular district at this political moment, it might spit out Alexis Goldstein. She was a federal worker who was fired amid the Trump administration’s push to cripple the administrative state, and she’s running in the Sixth Congressional District in Maryland, a state full of federal workers downsized in the DOGE push. Goldstein, a former program manager in the chief technologist’s office at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was fired, in fact, for confronting DOGE functionaries at the CFPB offices last February.
Plus, Goldstein is a highly skilled financial analyst—she worked as a programmer on Wall Street before quitting to join Occupy Wall Street in 2010—at a time when one of the most operatic and unusual financial schemes of the century is playing out in the highly leveraged data center build-out. Practically nobody in the government would have more unique knowledge to understand the dangers. “This is all being built by debt,” she told me. “It’s going to lead to consolidation after the crash and a bailout request, and will there be any conditions on that bailout? That’s what keeps me up at night.”
It all sounds great, until you see the $32 million sitting between her and electoral success.
That money is in the hands of two candidates who are among the richest people in Maryland. None of it is coming from outside, an anomalous scenario in an election cycle defined by special interests injecting millions across the country to influence the primaries. Instead, Rep. April McClain Delaney and former Rep. David Trone have spent the last several months pounding each other with charges of perfidy, criticisms that are largely correct, in an oligarch war over a seat they claim as theirs to purchase fair and square.
Goldstein, armed with a mere $40,000 in receipts for the primary, is simply outgunned. And that’s in some sense the result of who she’s facing: Donors are unlikely to invest in a candidate when her challengers can draw from a limitless stack of cash. “It’s very disheartening,” Goldstein said.
Plus, Goldstein is a highly skilled financial analyst—she worked as a programmer on Wall Street before quitting to join Occupy Wall Street in 2010—at a time when one of the most operatic and unusual financial schemes of the century is playing out in the highly leveraged data center build-out. Practically nobody in the government would have more unique knowledge to understand the dangers. “This is all being built by debt,” she told me. “It’s going to lead to consolidation after the crash and a bailout request, and will there be any conditions on that bailout? That’s what keeps me up at night.”
It all sounds great, until you see the $32 million sitting between her and electoral success.
That money is in the hands of two candidates who are among the richest people in Maryland. None of it is coming from outside, an anomalous scenario in an election cycle defined by special interests injecting millions across the country to influence the primaries. Instead, Rep. April McClain Delaney and former Rep. David Trone have spent the last several months pounding each other with charges of perfidy, criticisms that are largely correct, in an oligarch war over a seat they claim as theirs to purchase fair and square.
Goldstein, armed with a mere $40,000 in receipts for the primary, is simply outgunned. And that’s in some sense the result of who she’s facing: Donors are unlikely to invest in a candidate when her challengers can draw from a limitless stack of cash. “It’s very disheartening,” Goldstein said.
https://prospect.org/2026/06/18/oligarch-fight-defines-politics-in-2026-maryland-congressional-race-alexis-goldstein/]
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