The 9th district of Illinois has only been represented by two people since 1965, and there has not been a competitive primary since the race for the Democratic Congress Jan Schakowsky, the current district representative, won in November 1998. “I would not yet be four months”, Deadpans Kat abughazalehThe famous political commentator in Tiktok who now presents himself to represent the district.
Abughazaleh is transparent to the fact that she is not what someone considers as shoo-in for congress: a narcoleptic creator of narcoleptic social media who does not live in the district and who lived in the state only for less than a year, questioning a leader of the Democratic Party who represented this part of the Illinois for more than a quarter of a century.
It is in a way the goal: she is a normal person – with a rental lease that she cannot break before her rise, a financial pressure that is intended for her and the prescription drugs she needs to function properly, which has been difficult to obtain since Elon Musk went after her employer, and she and many of her colleagues were dismissed.
And when she turns to congress, not only does she not see enough people who are concerned about the daily challenges she and so many people with whom she knows is struggling – the costs of housing, health care, grocery store, transport – she also sees that no one confronts the peril of our current moment, two months in Donald Trump’s second mandate.
“We are in case of an emergency,” explains Abughazaleh. “Right now, the response to authoritarianism is not to be silent. This does not correspond to pink outfits to a state address. He does not make people transmitted at all.
Abughazaleh may be young, but she is an incisive communicator who succeeds in a success that intensifies at a time when it is clear that the party desperately needs new messengers. And it is popular on social media platforms where to sit Democrats“The messages are continuously flops, ridiculed for their deafness of the tone.
The day after the 2024 presidential election, Abughazaleh thought that she would wake up with an irrepressible desire to flee the country. Instead, she said, it was the opposite: “I woke up and I thought”You will have to drag me with my corpse ‘… I really got angry, and I thought of running at that time, but I said to myself: “No, I’m sure the Democrats will do something”, and then they did not do it – and it was not only disappointing, but scary to look at. “”
Schakowsky, currently representing the district, “had a very good record on his vote,” admits Abughazaleh. But she is also 80 years old and has not had a competitive primary for decades. “She was a good deputy, but I want to be better.”
(Schakowsky, for its part, adopted the news. ”What makes our community and our country, so brilliant is that we welcome all voices and all ideas,” she said in an email to Roller. “I have always encouraged more participation in the democratic process, and I am happy to see new faces get involved while we oppose the Trump administration. Right now, that’s what I’m focusing on: fighting this Maga Far regime. ”)
Abughazaleh was born in Texas and grew up as republican – really republican. Her maternal grandmother, Taffy Goldsmith, was a legendary GOP agent that when she died, the Texas State Capitol flag was half mast piloted. (Abughazaleh inherited the mantle of Vishm, Goldsmith brought to the inauguration of Nixon.) His father is a Palestinian immigrant. Her two parents, she said, were Republicans Reagan whose relationship with the party has broken since Trump resumed it.
Abughazaleh’s political opinions took shape at the college in Washington, DC, she studied at the University of George Washington and went to work to work The media are important After graduating, where she was employed until 2024, after Musk continued the organization, and she and 11 others were dismissed.
The day the news broke out, Musk tweeted “Karma is real” and his sycophant coterie, including tiktok Libs, stacked. Abughazaleh says it was one of the worst days of his life. The saga did not end there either – Abughazaleh was filed as part of the Musk trial against media issues, interviewed on video for seven hours. (The trial is underway.)
After being dismissed from Media Matters, Abughazaleh did an independent video production with Mother Jones and Zeteo, but she moved away from work with the two points of sale during her campaign. “It’s terrifying … I have no health insurance, I have no income to come and I use Goodrx as my life depends on it – because it is sort of.”
Abughazaleh takes medication for narcolepsy, with which she was diagnosed after being asleep behind the wheel of a car when she was in high school. “I take a medication every morning to stay awake, and 40% of America has a chronic disease,” she said. “This is another part of the campaign: I want to be really open on this subject.”
Version her income and her insurance to stand in the elections, she says: “Are we going to scare, but as, are we going to leave our government to the people who fail us continuously?”
As for her campaign, Abughazaleh says she wants to do things differently. “As idealistic as it may seem, I want to try not to do all the things I hate,” she said.
This does not mean restoration to companies or to bow and scrape the ultra-riche donations. Instead, it provides free public events by working with mutual aid groups and local businesses. Instead of money, all those who attend her first event, she says, will be invited to give a box of buffers to a collective that distributes period products among the shelters and institutions of Chicago. (She is well aware that the Fox News segment is written: “I know – and perhaps, you know, trans men will use them. Oh, scary! »)
It plans to document each stage of the campaign process on all its platforms in the hope of inspiring others, in particular those who are interested in the priority of the Democrats, to present themselves in the elections. “I want my candidates to make candidates for other people, and I want to highlight their applications.”
There is clearly an appetite: Amanda Litman, the executive director of Run for somethingrecently said Roller Since the day of the elections, more than 27,000 people have registered with the organization, a figure which far exceeds the pace of the registrations it saw in 2017 and 2018 and which almost exceeds, during the first three months of this year, the total number of registrations during these years.
“There is no reason why each American cannot afford housing, grocery store, health insurance, public transport (ideally), and then have enough money to save and take your child to the zoo or go to the movies with your friends. There is no reason – we are the richest country in the world,” said Abughazaleh. “The idea that it is unrealistic or idealistic or naive or even called childish, I think it’s sucking.”
Update 3:23 p.m.: This message has been updated to include a declaration from the representative Jan Schakowsky.