I Raised $50 Million for the Democrats. This Week, I Voted for Trump.

I was 17 when I started working in Democratic politics. While still in high school, I was an intern for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign; later, I served as a field organizer for Hillary Clinton. By the time I turned 26, I was a consultant for dozens of U.S. House and Senate campaigns, four George Soros-backed district attorney races, and a wide range of Democratic organizations. I’ve raised at least $50 million for the left.

And yet, on Tuesday, I voted for Donald Trump. It felt like the biggest middle finger I’ve ever raised to the party I’d supported for most of my adult life. When he won, I was utterly euphoric.

Let me tell you why.

I was born and raised in the Kansas City, Missouri area, in the middle of the country. My family floated somewhere between working and middle class. Neither of my parents went to college; my father never even earned a high school diploma. We moved around a lot, to different towns and different accommodations depending on whether my mom was married or not—sometimes a house, other times a trailer park. Many of my relatives were members of either the laborer’s union or the carpenter’s union. Much of my childhood was spent in union halls. My grandfather used to dress up as Santa Claus at the annual union Christmas party.

My mom and dad divorced when I was only 10 months old. She scrambled as a single mom, often switching jobs through recessions and layoffs. Her most profound regret, she used to tell me, is that she never went to college; it locked her out of so many opportunities. So she pushed me hard to finish. I went to Johnson County Community College and the University of Kansas, and it took me six years to finish. I had a rare lung disease called primary ciliary dyskinesia—it’s similar to cystic fibrosis—and when it put me in the hospital six times during my freshman year, I was ready to quit. But she wouldn’t let me. At one point, she sold all the wedding rings from her six previous marriages to ensure I had the tuition for a semester at the community college. (For many lower-income women, the quickest way out is to get married.) She was adamant that having that piece of paper—that diploma—was the key to my having a better life.

I was close to my stepbrother Charles, who found another path to a better life, one that many working-class young people take. In 2008, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He joined to secure credentials that could unlock opportunities he otherwise wouldn’t have had. Before he enlisted, he worked as a janitor in the same office where Barack Obama served as a state senator in Illinois. The navy did beautiful things for him. He truly loved his job and was able to serve and fulfill his true potential as an electronics technician. He provided for his two children and fulfilled his lifelong dream of living in Japan, having taught himself Japanese as a child.