People in recovery from substance use hope to change the political landscape by running for office
CBSN
Thomas Higdon was a politics fanatic his entire life: He kept up on the news cycle, he door-knocked for candidates, and he volunteered for a number of campaigns.
He long dreamed of working in government, but he and everyone around him felt it wouldn't be possible because of his substance use. His use of alcohol and other drugs began causing problems when he was in law school in the mid-1990s, and in 2014, the consequences of his substance use left him living under an overpass. He is now abstinent from the drugs, but even years later, he felt he had ruined his chances of running for office.
"I allowed this internalized stigma, over decades, to blind me to what I could really do," Higdon, now 52, told CBS News.
Five presidents in U.S. history have won the presidency without winning the popular vote, and the most recent to do so was Donald Trump in 2016. His opponent that year, Hillary Clinton, won over 2.8 million more votes than Trump nationwide, but she lost enough key states to be defeated in the Electoral College, 306 to 232.
We've all seen a lot of political ads lately. But in battleground states, it's a tsunami. Jack Levis is an independent voter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which makes him one of the most desirable voters on the planet: "Emails, texts, phone calls, it's in my news feed, it's in social media. In the last two days, I counted, I had 30 spam emails in there all about the election," he said. "It's unbelievable."