Autism and Political Careers

In The Politics of Autism, I write:  "Support from the general public will be an important political asset for autistic people. Another will be their sheer numbers, since a larger population of identified autistic adults will mean more autistic voters and activists."  Previous posts have discussed autistic officeholders and political candidates in California,  New York, Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Friedman, Sally, Kennedy Cox, and Richard K. Scotch. 2026. "Autism and Political Careers: Navigating Political Leadership" Societies 16, no. 2: 67.   https://doi.org/10.3390/soc16020067.  Abstract:

Individuals on the autism spectrum have been stigmatized as not being expected to engage in certain activities, such as interpersonal interaction and communication, which are related to the capacity to exercise leadership and may have implications for their capacity to effectively function in political roles. In this paper, we profile four politicians (who happen to be state legislators) with autism who have beaten the odds with electoral success. We examine their routes to office, their range of activities, including how they represent autism, and the intersectionalities (in addition to autism) that impact their lives.

From the article:

More specifically, we profile four state legislators who self-identify as on the autism spectrum. Jessica Benham and Abigail Salisbury (both Democrats) currently represent the 36th and 34th districts, respectively, in Pennsylvania. Benham was first elected in 2020, and Salisbury in a special election in 2022. Briscoe Cain (R), in office since 2017, represents the 128th district in Texas and is running for Congress in one of the areas involved in the current mid-stream redistricting controversies. Yuh-Line Niou (D) represented the 65th district in New York between 2017 and 2022, when she engaged in what turned out to be an unsuccessful run for Congress. While these are the only elected officials our searches turned up as identified as autistic, as Cain’s story below shows, autism, under some circumstances, can be an invisible disability if or until an individual chooses to “come out.” Given the stigma, the choice not to divulge may make sense for many. Despite the notable stereotypes attached to people on the autism spectrum and acknowledging that the people studied here are “highly functioning,” these four legislators have, nonetheless, by virtue of their political careers, taken on leadership roles. As such, they are involved in the many and varied activities generally engaged in by state legislators. We focus below on their backgrounds/roots to political office, their “autism journey,” their activities as state representatives, and the several intersectionalities that are part of their lives.

 

Autistic People Decry Speculation about DeSantis

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential campaigns.

Michael Schaefer at Politico:

[Democratic Pennsylvania State Rep. Jessica Benham] recently found herself in the somewhat surprising position of pushing back against an emerging line of attack against DeSantis, something that’s been trotted out by supporters of Donald Trump: The attempt to draw attention to DeSantis’ awkward public presence by claiming that the GOP presidential hopeful is “a little bit on the spectrum,” as Trump hatchet man Steve Bannon first put it last week.

It’s not that Benham thinks such a diagnosis would be disqualifying. Rather, she’s troubled by the act of armchair diagnosis as a way of knocking someone. The implication is that the status of being on the spectrum is problematic or shameful or bad — and, at any rate, something intentionally kept secret.

“It’s frankly none of our business until he tells us one way or the other,” she tells me. “But if you want to delegitimize someone as a politician, certainly leaning into those stereotypes that people have about autistic folks is one way to do it. And that’s what’s happening here.”

No kidding. In short order, Bannon’s comment, which used the pseudo-diagnosis to explain DeSantis’ disastrous Twitter campaign rollout alongside Elon Musk, was echoed across the MAGA ecosystem. “Ron DeSantis is 100% on the spectrum,” tweeted the pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer. “Can we finally talk about this?” Grace Chong, the CFO of Bannon’s War Room podcast, called him “DeSpectrum” in one tweet, and in another one contrasted him unfavorably with the former president: “Trump does it BIGGER, BETTER, and with HEART. Unlike that guy on the spectrum.”

...

 “God give me strength,” says Eric Garcia, Washington correspondent for the Independent and author of the 2021 book We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation. “It’s really fucking disgusting what Steve Bannon is doing.” Garcia says his group chat with fellow autistic writers lit up on the Bannon news. The refrain: “Are we really going to have to spend 18 months on this?”

...

 “I’m pretty good at working a room,” says Benham, the Pennsylvania legislator. “Because working a room follows a set of rules and social norms that you can learn. But there are plenty of my colleagues who are not good at that and who are not autistic. … Maybe they’re just introverted.”