'Anti-AOC' Candidate Catalina Lauf's Rise To Republican Stardom

CHICAGO — On a recent workday morning, Catalina Lauf popped into Mancow Muller’s studio at WLS-AM to talk about her sudden ascent to the Republican political stratosphere.

In August, and out of the ether, the 26-year-old Trump-supporting Latina from Woodstock successfully branded herself as the Republican Party’s Illinois counterpoint to New York Democratic-Socialist Sen. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

With a boost from the political consultants who orchestrated Ted Cruz’s 2016 Iowa Republican presidential caucus victory, Lauf’s campaign announcement first made news in the New York Post, of all places, launching her into the national political spotlight.

The political neophyte has her sights set on besting a primary of well-funded white men and unseating U.S. Rep. Laura Underwood, an African-American Democrat representing the mostly white, historically Republican 14th District.

With a slick campaign video, Lauf introduced herself to 14th District voters as a young Latina woman who doesn’t fit partisan stereotypes. Her parents, a “small business owner” and a “legal immigrant from Guatemala who worked hard to escape poverty, corruption and war to find freedom and opportunity here,” played a starring role in the campaign pitch that billed Lauf as a “product of the American Dream.”

Back in Illinois, Lauf’s “Latina by heart, America first” message struck a chord with northwest suburban Trump supporters and right-leaning pundits, Muller included.

“This is very smart for you to be on this show,” Muller said, a nod to his conservative fan base in the northwest suburbs, one which Lauf aims to win over in the polls.

“And you’re the Anti-AOC?”

Lauf leaned into the microphone, “Yes.”

“You’ve got my backing. I don’t even care what you’re into. I just like you,” Muller said minutes after meeting Lauf.

“You’re going to be a superstar. Beautiful. Conservative. In this state, boy, are you needed. … AOC thinks everyone needs a handout. You think, no?

Lauf didn’t hesitate. “Yep. Personal responsibility. Let’s go back to our American values. Let’s go back to what our founding fathers wanted. Let’s go back to respecting the constitution,” she said.

“The American Dream. Re-establishing the American character. So none of this divisive rhetoric anymore. Let’s go back to what our founding fathers wanted and make sure we’re carrying the torch for freedom for generations to come.”

Lauf generally sticks to those talking points during interviews, conservative podcasts and even an appearance on “Fox and Friends.”

Type Lauf’s name in a Google search and you’ll find her take on the state of national politics (it’s too divisive), her support for Trump (she’s inspired by him) and admiration for late President Ronald Reagan (he’s her idol).

As for her "Anti-AOC" nickname, it's not a personal attack. “I’m not anti-anyone," she said. "I’m anti-everything that women like (Ocasio-Cortez) and Lauren Underwood and ‘The Squad' represent. They’re completely so far away from where we are as a country. Socialism should not be a topic of conversation. It’s sick the way they attack the president, they attack everything and people are tired of it.”

But the surprise millennial candidate hasn’t offered up many details about herself, her short resume and the political backers who helped elevate her from a near entry-level marketing position at Uber to presidential appointee, and now a congressional candidate being billed as the Republican Party’s future.

In the northwest suburbs, some political watchers hesitant to talk openly about Lauf’s candidacy are still scratching their heads at the prevailing question: Who is Catalina Lauf?

“I have no idea who she is or if she’s a real contender,” a longtime McHenry County gadfly said. “I don’t think many people do. There’s a lot of big money in the race. We’ll see. ”

Who Is Catalina Lauf?

Lauf grew up in Woodstock frequenting the town’s cute farmers markets, where her bee-keeping father still hawks his hand-crafted brand of local nectar, Ole Leo’s Honey.

Apple picking and shopping at Woodstock's town square — which played a starring role in the classic Bill Murray film "Groundhog Day" — are a few of her favorite things.

Lauf moved back home with her mom and dad just in time for the change of seasons after an eight-month stint as a Trump-appointed adviser in the U.S. Department of Commerce. Now she splits time working as a consultant for one of her dad’s businesses and hitting the campaign trail in a jagged district that stretches from the Wisconsin border to Will County between Gurnee and Sycamore.

“You must have great parents,” Muller said during their on-air exchange.

“I do,” Lauf said. “I’m very lucky.”

Public service and political activism run in the Lauf family, along with a penchant for education and entrepreneurship.

Lauf’s sister, Madeline, started her own premium baby food company, Begin Health.

Her father, Philip Lauf, is a self-made tech-gear entrepreneur who served on the Seneca Township Planning Commission for five years. He abruptly resigned in 2015 over a $1,500 fine he received for not filing an economic interest statement on time. In his resignation letter, Lauf said he decided to quit rather than pay such an "exorbitant fee for a volunteer position.”

Lauf’s mother, Luisa Lauf, a bilingual teacher who now works as a counselor at McHenry County College, home-schooled the candidate in high school, helping her earn an early associate’s degree before she attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

“I had a lot of guidance from my parents,” Lauf said in an interview with Patch after the Mancow show. “My mom was a school teacher her whole life. Every kid has a different way of learning and we found our own way to do it. It worked for me.”

At Miami University, Lauf volunteered with the local Republican party and started to speak out about her conservative beliefs, publishing her opinions in the college newspaper.

“I felt very empowered to put my voice out there and fight for conservative values, especially in a liberal college environment,” she said.

In 2012, Lauf wrote a column criticizing Miami administrators for exhibiting “liberal favoritism” by sponsoring a politically charged lecture by Jerry Springer but refusing to be affiliated with an appearance by alumnus, and then-vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan.

She championed Mitt Romney as the fiscally responsible alternative to President Barack Obama’s “hope-and-change gimmick.”

“Why would we re-elect someone that hasn’t significantly increased jobs for the working class American and has 46 million mouths on food stamps? Does being jobless and food-rationed sound like the American dream to you?” Lauf wrote in The Miami Student.

Since then, Lauf said she hasn’t strayed from her political ideals.

“I stick to my guns,” she said. “I think we need to focus on what makes us come together and where we can find common ground but also stick to our principles.”

In that way, Lauf's nuanced political view seems to be influenced by her mother, whose “legal” immigration story was prominently featured in her daughter’s campaign video.

In 2017, Luisa Lauf spoke at a candlelight vigil protesting the McHenry County sheriff’s policy of holding people in jail solely based on their immigration status, and the Trump Administration’s move to phase out the federal policy to defer action against undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children know as “Dreamers.”

Luisa Lauf told the crowd she overcame adversity with the support of family and the community since immigrating in 1989, and urged folks to be compassionate and work together.

“When I came here from Guatemala in 1989, to make one phone call was $50,” Luisa Lauf was quoted as saying in the Northwest Herald. “Now I can communicate with friends and family as much as I want through technology. We are so advanced in technology, but we are not advanced in the support of each other.”

Candidate Lauf said she favors President Trump’s call for increased border security and “legal immigration,” but hasn’t yet laid out her position on the fate of “Dreamers.” But she wants voters to know that her family experience has given her a different perspective on things and she’s out to break the stereotype that Republicans lack empathy.

“Being a Republican doesn’t mean that I don’t care,” she said.

‘Millennial Men, Step It Up, Guys’

In the WLS-AM 890 green room, Lauf joked it felt great to dress for radio rather than morning TV in comfortable shoes, stretchy pants and a green, flower-print shirt.

While Muller's fast-paced morning talk show ping-ponged between guests, comedy bits and callers, Lauf talked dating, her fascination with narcissism and even name-dropped her famous pal, former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer.

When Spicer called the show to chat about his experience on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars,” Lauf’s eyes lit up. She quickly sent him a text message.

“Do you know Sean?” Muller said, muting Lauf’s microphone.

“Yeah, tell him I said, ‘Hi.’ We just talked on the phone a few" days ago, Lauf said.

Lauf says she got to know Spicer “through the network” during the eight months she served as a Trump-appointed special advisor to the national director of minority business development in the Commerce Department. He never introduced her to the president.

“I’ve seen (Trump) before but never talked to him,” she said.

Lauf had a fangirl moment when Ross Rosenberg, author of “The Human Magnet Syndrome: The Co-Dependent Narcissist Trap,” plopped down in the stool next to her.

“I’ve been waiting for this book,” she said, confessing she’s had some experience with narcissists and quizzing Rosenberg about whether they can ever change. (The answer, Rosenberg says: Don’t count on it.)

After a commercial break, Muller playfully asked Lauf about her experience with the topic of Rosenberg’s book. “You dated a narcissist,” he said.

“Oh … No,” Lauf said.

Muller protested, “Yes, you …”

“I love all my ex-boyfriends,” she said, laughing.

Muller offered a hypothetical scenario: “If you went out with a narcissist what would he have been like?”

“When you’re such a loving and giving person it’s easy to get caught up in that,” Lauf said. “I think the manipulation is a big thing. Yeah, it is an interesting disorder.”

The conversational intersection of politics and egomania inspired Muller to play a pre-recorded political parody, “Dueling Narcissists” that pitted the boasts of Trump against Kanye West’s braggadocio to the tune of dueling banjos from the John Boorman movie, “Deliverance.”

Muller pivoted, asking Lauf, who is single, about her dating life.

“Catalina, what are you looking for in a man? You’re a beautiful Latina,” he said.

Lauf said she’s interested in a “real man” — someone who can change a tire and knows his way around a grill.

“Intelligence is a huge thing. I think, character,” she said. “Millennial men, step it up, guys.”

‘A Call To Duty’

At 26, Lauf understandably has a thin resume compared to her Republican primary election opponents. But she doesn’t consider that a campaign disadvantage.

“Being young is a strength,” she said. “Millennials are changing the world.”

In politics, though, nearly 60 percent of millennials either vote for or identify as Democrats. And only about 11 percent of Hispanic voters said they think the Republican Party has “concern for Hispanics,” according to a 2016 Pew Research Center statistics.

For that, Lauf might be a Republican unicorn.

“Young people need to get involved now. America is so sick of career politicians who sit there and make empty promises and are not defending [conservative] values,” she said. “I’m qualified for (Congress) but I’m also bringing new ideas, new perspectives and carrying that torch for future generations.”

After college, Lauf said she worked at a few small public relations firms before getting hired to work in community engagement at Uber in Chicago in 2016.

In 2018, she joined former Gov. Bruce Rauner’s failed re-election bid and accepted the presidential appointment in the commerce department. Lauf says those few years in a mix of private sector and public service experience prepared her for public office.

During an interview, Lauf declined to offer specifics about her job duties. For instance, Lauf described her job at Uber as a marketing “hybrid” centered on how the “political landscape and how community engagement played into how (Uber) was viewed in the community.”

That might have been a bit of an overstatement. Later, Lauf’s campaign manager Alex Meyer sent a revised version of duties at Uber saying Lauf worked with the “community of drivers as well as organizations and companies and represented Uber at public events.”

Lauf left Uber in October 2017, according to her LinkedIn profile. “Ultimately, I felt this call to public service. Trump had a big impact on me for wanting to fight for conservative values,” she said. “His election showed that the country really needed people who are going to fight for everyday Americans. His campaign spoke to me.”

In 2018, while living Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood, Lauf joined the Rauner campaign in what she called a “senior level” position as a “field director statewide.”

Between February and November 2018, Rauner’s campaign paid Lauf almost $35,000 at a monthly rate significantly less than top-level campaign workers, state campaign finance records show.

In December, Lauf received the commerce department appointment, working as a director of minority business development. Lauf said she applied for the appointment and “worked hard for it,” networking with the “right people, putting my name out there and having, obviously, the right experience for it.”

The type of presidential appointment Lauf received requires neither Senate confirmation nor any specific qualifications, and is often passed out as political favors. Every four years those type of “policy and supporting positions” are printed in the “Plum Book,” a nod to the publication’s purple cover and “also because some of these political jobs are plum jobs,” said John Palguta, vice president of policy at the Partnership for Public Service.

Lauf called her appointment a “catch-all position” advising on different initiatives including Opportunity Zone tax breaks to promote the administration’s work with business owners, chambers of commerce and other organizations.

Most presidential appointees are either unpaid or receive a daily stipend. Lauf wasn’t listed in a database of federal government employees who received a salary in 2018. She initially didn’t list the Trump-appointed position as a paid position on a candidate financial disclosure statement filed with the Federal Elections Commission in September.

Kristin Davidson, veteran Republican political consultant who works for Missouri-based Axiom Political strategies, said Lauf’s salary had been “unintentionally omitted on the original personal financial disclosure form, but the campaign has been in the process of amending (disclosure forms) to reflect it.” On Oct. 17, Lauf amended her financial disclosure statement to include a $30,000 “estimated” salary from the Commerce Department.

Lauf said the biggest takeaway from her stint in the Trump administration was how the president has “disrupted Washington in a very necessary way.”

“I saw the real-world impact of policies and how it makes a difference. This administration is very driven to work hard for the everyday working American people,” she said. “Everything needs to be disrupted to get back where they need to be. Young people getting involved in Washington is a way to disrupt things. We have to constantly innovate and never forget you’re accountable to the American people.”

Lauf left D.C. to work as a consultant for one of her father’s companies, Body Worn Gear, according to a financial disclosure statement filed in September that listed her 2019 compensation as $12,000.

“I was sad to leave. I loved the work I was doing for the country and expanding on the president's America First agenda,” she said. “Ultimately, I just decided to do this. I felt a call to duty.”

Better Chance Than ‘Old White Guy'

Davidson, who helped launch Lauf's campaign, calls the rookie candidate the “future of the Republican Party and the only candidate who can beat Underwood in a general election showdown."

“I’ve run races across the country, she’s got a good shot,” Davidson said. “She’s received a great response nationally and at home in the district. She has good fundraising numbers and she’s making some folks in the primary nervous.”

Lauf's campaign raised more than $100,000 in the two months after she joined the crowded Republican primary that includes perennial candidate state Sen. Jim Oberweis and former Notre Dame place kicker and businessman Ted Gradel, who each have more than $500,000 in their campaign war chests.

The bulk of Lauf’s fundraising, $13,935, has come from small donations funneled through Trump-backed “WinRed” online donation platform featured on her website, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Lauf also collected campaign cash from Republican super-donor Dick Boyce and his wife, Sandy Boyce — who each donated $2,800 to her campaign. Young Americans Against Socialism President Peter Olson was among 13 Lauf backers who contributed the campaign donation limit of $2,800, records show.

Lauf raked in $28,710 from 24 Illinois donors including $5,600 from her parents. Raymond Scarpelli and his namesake son, owners of Ray Chevrolet, pitched in $4,500. Parking lot paving magnate Gary Rabine Jr. and his wife, Cheryl, donated $2,800.

Rabine's good pal Alfredo Ortiz, CEO of Jobs Creators Network — the non-partisan small-business advocacy group established by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus — urged him to consider supporting Lauf.

“I was impressed. I liked everything about her right away,” Rabine said. “She’s from my hometown of Woodstock. I met with her with her parents. Her dad’s an entrepreneur. She’s conservative. She’s got guts and spunk and won’t back down from anything. She’s got grit and I think she’ll be strong.”

Rabine, who owns Rabine Group, a national “one-stop-shop” for commercial paving, roofing and snow removal, among other things, said he decided to support Lauf over his friend and fundraising frontrunner, Oberweis.

“I decided to support this girl over Jim. I don’t like to look at things this way but she’s a woman minority with a lot of spunk and Jim is an older fellow,” he said. “She can beat this Underwood gal way easier than an old white guy.”

Rabine said he’s not worried about Lauf’s limited work experience.

“Unfortunately, today, not a lot kids her age have a ton of work experience. But politics isn’t rocket science if you do what’s best for people and best for the country,” he said. “We’ve got stagnant politicians in D.C. How about some bright minds?”

Blue To Red?

On paper, Lauf and Underwood have some things in common. The young minority women both worked in the private sector before accepting presidential appointments.

In November, Underwood ousted Republican four-term incumbent Randy Hultgren by a 5-percentage point margin to become the youngest black woman to serve in Congress.

The 33-year old Democrat is a former nurse who was appointed by former President Barack Obama as a senior advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services. She worked to reform the Affordable Care Act, which Hultgren voted to repeal and replace.

During her first term, Underwood, who supports the Trump impeachment inquiry, has taken heat from conservatives for her stances on immigration, health care and for saying she believes there's a "layer of racism, sexism, -isms is on everything that they, the Republicans, put out." She currently leads the campaign fundraising with more than $1.2 million cash on hand.

If Lauf pulls out a primary win, she says she’s confident that she’s got what it takes to flip the 14th District from blue back to red.

“Across the board, Lauren Underwood is so far left that fundamentally she doesn’t represent our district at all. She wants to create this socialist paradise that is not going to happen and not realistic,” Lauf said.

“When she called all Republicans racist and sexist, that was completely ridiculous. Of course, there are bad people everywhere. But to say that all Republicans are racist and sexist is a really offensive statement. She doesn’t represent who I am or the majority of people in the district with her values. It’s time for someone to counter that.”

If Lauf falls short, her campaign could launch her on a different trajectory.

At least, Mancow thought so. After the show, he took to Instagram live and pressed Lauf on whether she’s got her sights set on becoming a Fox News pundit.

“How long until you have your own Fox TV show?” he asked.

Lauf demurred, “I’m running for Congress.”

“If I was Fox News channel, I would hire you,” Mancow said.

Lauf stuck to her guns with a promise that all she wants is to be a public servant — that is, until Mancow ended his social media live shot.

“I’d love to be on Fox News,” Lauf said.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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