She’s a lefty 26-year-old internet star. Her primary opponent is 80 and has held office since 1999. Inside a race for Congress that could help revive a doddering Democratic Party.
Kat Abughazaleh leans over her campaign manager’s shoulder as they review a video from her live appearance on CNN Max the night before. “I want to see if I rolled my eyes,” she says, eyes locked on the screen. “I feel like I did.”
It’s late March, less than a week after Abughazaleh, 26, announced her run for Congress in Illinois’s Ninth District—a safe blue seat currently held by longtime incumbent Jan Schakowsky (who is, at 80, more than three times Abughazaleh’s age). Abughazaleh has never held office, but she does have a constituency: around 250,000 followers on both X and TikTok, where she has tracked Fox News misinformation, spoofed conservative “comedians,” and critiqued Republicans and Democrats alike (millions more have come across her viral videos and posts in their feeds). Now, though, she’s testing what it means to translate that internet influence and persona into a real campaign and, ultimately, policy.
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