After eight years of nonstop scolding from Democrats about threats to American democracy, we have finally learned the identity of its most dangerous villain. And it’s not a Republican. It’s a lady from Oro Valley named Athena Eastwood. Her sin? She ran for Congress in the sixth district as a Green Party candidate and the 10,759 votes she tallied are likely larger than the margin by which declared winner, Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani, defeated Democratic challenger Kirsten Engel.

In an interview Sunday, Ms. Eastwood described to the Arizona Globe the vicious messages she’s received since Election Day.

“Several have called me directly and of course they’re reacting to everything I post on X.” Ms. Eastwood asked the Globe not to share the techniques her detractors are using to find her phone number and told us that one curious person even showed up at her home.

On Nov. 11, @LSTrip44 wrote “So you basically work for the Trump campaign? Get paid by Moscow? Thanks a lot. Pathetic.”

A user called @CFM_AZ said, “Can you point us to at least 1 campaign event you did? Over 8K voters supported your campaign it is easy to say at least a few thousand of those would have gone to Engel. You also have no website and you created a social media account after you were pressed by reporters.”

And @cuchulain9 carped, “The most anti-environmental president ever may now have his own House of Representatives full of climate change denying sycophants and fossil fuel devotees. Great work!”

Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that the final tally of Republicans will probably end up being more like 221, not exactly the 218 that gives them a one seat majority. Let’s also put aside the fact that no one can say with certainty exactly how many Eastwood voters would have gone to Engel had there been only the two major party names on the ballot.

Even aside from these hypotheticals, what on earth has gotten into these angry Democrats who are suddenly viciously attacking a woman simply for running for Office? Is that how they intend to win back enough hearts and minds to reclaim the House and retake the majority they just lost in the Senate in 2026?

As for why she ran a third party candidacy, the answer she gave is pretty straightforward: Eastwood believes both parties are seriously flawed.

“The whole identity politics of Democrats—you can quote me on this if you are doing an article, and again, this was something I was going to write about—the identity politics seems to have come up and isolated down into that their identity is being a Democrat and opposing anything that threatens the power of the Democratic Party as the ruling party. I’m not saying I agree with many of the things of the Republicans, when it comes down to free speech and stopping censorship, that used to be what the ACLU fought for. That used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party. So there has been flips in the ethos of the two parties, but there are other things of the Republicans that obviously I think are very extreme. So, for me personally, you know, I was dragging my feet. It was very last minute, I was personally compelled. The divisiveness in the country that I think is not good for the country. But also, the war [in Gaza] is going on and the expectation of continued escalation. I thought, okay, nobody’s talking about peace. Nobody’s talking about de-escalation. Nobody’s talking about negotiated settlements, every war throughout history, no matter what, it always ends with a negotiated settlement. So you can either do it early on, or you can do it after mass loss of life, you know, and we’re intelligent people in this country and on the planet. And I think unnecessary death is unforgivable. So that sparked me that, okay, nobody else is saying the obvious that maybe, you know, mass deaths is not a good idea. So that gave me the strength to put myself out there. I can put my voice out there because it’s not about me. I’m trying to make this statement for peaceful communication and interaction in the United States and elsewhere and how the U.S. impacts the world elsewhere.”

As for the charge many are leveling on X — that Eastwood was not a serious candidate as evidenced by her low profile during the campaign—it’s true that like many third-party candidates, Athena Eastwood attracted almost no attention in the weeks before Election Day. And she didn’t exactly seek it out. Her campaign had no website and only recently put up a placeholder, and her presence on social media was nearly nonexistent. The one article that went into any depth on her story, appeared on Oct. 25 in the Arizona Luminaria, and seemed perplexed by the quixotic path her campaign had taken as it played what Democrats considered a spoiler role.

That article made a big deal out of how difficult Ms. Eastwood was to reach and how little retail campaigning she did: “she’s made few public appearances, doesn’t have a campaign website, and until Arizona Luminaria showed up at her doorstep in late October, and later had a phone conversation with her, a photograph of her was so hard to find online that her own political party accidentally posted an image on social media of the wrong Athena Eastwood.”

Arizona Globe, however, reached out to Ms. Eastwood and found her anything but reluctant to chat. Over the course of a half hour conversation, she was quite willing to answer all questions and address the strange animus her candidacy seems to have provoked among Arizona Democrats.

“In Michigan, Jill Stein got about 200,000 votes. And RFK Jr. also got 200,000 votes. And there’s no pushback about any of that, because again, it didn’t affect the outcome because Trump won by such a large margin.”

[In fact, with 99% of the vote in, Stein got 44,553 votes and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received 26,772. Trump’s margin of victory in the state was a alittle more than 80,000, so although Eastwood’s numbers are off, her point is that the total 71,325 received by Stein and Kennedy wouldn’t have altered the outcome, even if every single one of their voters had gone to Harris.]

“And I happened to be a follower of RFK Jr. in the beginning part of the year, because he was definitely a trailblazer in trying to do the independent party, third party, that approach. I actually am behind him on a lot of his policies and disagree on some others. But I had listened into a couple of get out the vote calls from. And it was really interesting listening to their calls where they were, you know, one-on-one with their supporters. … RFK Jr.’s journey from challenging Biden [as a Democrat], to independent, to then joining Trump over a year and a half process. Many of his supporters, they said some were buying into it that RFK Jr. was focusing on, look, these are the health issues that truly are important to Americans, and I am going to have an opportunity to work on all of this.”

The Globe asked Eastwood to clear up the questions that have arisen among angry Democrats about her name change and “mysterious” background. The Luminaria article notes that “public records show that Eastwood changed the name on her voter registration on Sept. 17, according to voter registration documents. Her previous name was Karen Maria Eastwood, according to court records. Before that, her legal name was Karen Maria Foti.” According to the article, “She legally changed her name to Athena on July 3, according to Pima County Superior Court records.”

So yeah, what’s that about? And what’s with that strong Irish accent?

“I have a photo of my green card from when I was one year old,” Eastwood told Arizona Globe. “I came when I was one. We went back to Ireland when I was nine. From nine to 15, we were back in Ireland, then back to California. I had a California accent, actually. Then because of the political situation, it was Ireland back to California, London, Belfast, Dublin, everywhere. But somehow those early teenage years, yes, the accent got entrenched. And I have lived in the U.S. full time from ’81 — California, ’81 to ’97. Tucson, ’97 till now. In 1984, I was part of the Gary Hart campaign and the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. So, yes, despite my accent, I’m as Yankee Doodle as you can get, in Arizona for almost 30 years.”

“As for the ‘name change,’ Foti is actually my maiden name. On my green card, it says Eastwood, right? So I’ve been Eastwood my whole life. Foti was my married name. After my divorce, I changed it back to my maiden name, which is Eastwood. That article suggested that I’m constantly changing my name.”

As for Karen to Athena, Eastwood offered a very contemporary take.

“That coincided with when I registered as a candidate because I knew, well, ‘Karen’ is a meme. And I thought, ‘OK, what’s the extreme name in the other direction?’ And a symbol of democracy. And it came to me like in the middle of the night at 3 a.m.—Athena. So that’s brilliant.”

When informed that a reporter at the Globe has a daughter named Karen, Ms. Eastwood had one final piece of advice, reflecting the hippie take of a Bay Area kid by way of Northern Ireland. “Karen is  actually a diminutive of Catherine. So it’s Catherine to Katarina, Katrina, Karen. So Karen is actually the nickname of Catherine.”

Maybe so. What seems more certain is that Arizona hasn’t heard the last of this Green Party voice. The more she irritates Democrats, the likelier it is we’ll hear from her again.