Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive influencer and former Media Matters staffer, recently announced her candidacy for Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, challenging long-time incumbent Rep. Jan Schakowsky.
Abughazaleh is part of a new generation of internet-native political candidates who hope to use their online influence to get their message out and shed light on the democratic process.
She spoke to Passionfruit about the growing frustration among younger voters towards political leaders, how she plans to challenge the status quo of political campaigning, and what she thinks the Democratic party needs to do to win back the internet.
Kat Abughazaleh, the Passionfruit Interview
What made you want to run for Congress?
Democrats need to grow a f*cking spine, I know how these people think and how to beat them, and it starts with using media that normal people actually watch.
I got tired of waiting around for someone else to make the changes I wanted to see. It’s comforting to think that some hero or perfect candidate is going to come into every district and save the day during the next election, but that’s just not true. We are what we’ve got.
You’ve got a big online following across TikTok and YouTube. What were you doing before running?
I was a researcher at Media Matters. I watched Fox News every night. My specialty was Tucker Carlson. After a couple of years, I decided to start explaining right-wing narratives and what was happening on Fox and in the far-right sphere on TikTok and YouTube.
Those caught on and I’ve gained hundreds of 1000s of followers since. Elon Musk sued Media Matters for their reporting last year, the costs mounted, and I got laid off. Since then, I’ve worked as a contributor at Mother Jones and Zeteo, and now I’m running for Congress.
How did your time in the media inform your campaign and how it’s run? What did you learn trying to translate your reporting on right-wing extremism into online spaces?
One of the things that’s really frustrated me over the past few years is how political parties, but in particular the Democratic party, failed to update how they communicate with voters. Social media is not some new thing that’s just for youngins.
Your mom probably uses TikTok. Your dad is on Facebook. These are not exclusive to young people, this is how most voters communicate now.
One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, with the Democratic Party’s strategy is how they view social media as a whole. They see it as this machine where you put [content] in and get approval out on the other side. That’s just not how it works.
People are looking for connection and sincerity. Especially since 2020, as the pandemic is killing millions and our rights are being stripped away, people are just really desperate for connection.
I’m not trying to run every single message through 10 consultants. I’m not trying to sanitize everything I say to make sure that no one gets offended. I say what I believe. And that resonates with people because they want to be spoken to like people and not products to be manipulated.
Most of our campaign is focused on the ground game, and the digital strategy is just another way to get to know me and coordinate the rest of the campaign.
There’s this idea that the Democrats have a messaging problem, but a lot of the disconnect seems to come down to policy. Where do you see yourself breaking from the Democratic establishment in terms of policies?
One of the biggest problems with the Democratic Party right now is its insistence that we’re still in 1992 and we’re not. It’s 2025, and we can’t just keep using a single playbook, which is why we keep losing. In 2016 and in 2024, Democrats moved to the right and tried to appeal more to the right and less to our own base, and it hasn’t worked either time.
I have no interest in abandoning vulnerable populations. I have no interest in throwing trans people under the bus. I have no interest in taking corporate cash or bending to Elon Musk’s will, and I certainly have no interest in just folding on any of Trump’s authoritarian agenda.
The vast majority of Democratic voters feel the exact same way. But, for some reason, Democratic leadership, and a large part of the elected party, doesn’t seem willing to represent voters.
Platform dynamics play such a role in the emergence of narratives online. In recent years, much of social media has become weighted to the right. How do you plan to get your message out in an ecosystem that’s so skewed in one direction?
I’m going to go pretty much anywhere that doesn’t actively try to cause harm to other people. It’s frustrating, because some sites are purposely weighted this way. Twitter is weighted to give Elon Musk’s account, and a bunch of other right-wing accounts, hundreds of times more views than left-wing or nonpolitical accounts.
I think the strength of my content is its authenticity, as overused as that word can be. I’ve talked to a lot of formerly right-wing people that were de-radicalized by my content because I tried to present it in a way that is educational and frames our world with a basic benchmark for human rights. I talk about this more as the ruling class vs the working class as opposed to left-right tribalism.
I grew up conservative, so I understand what propaganda can do. That’s a strength because I know how to communicate in a way that will resonate with people who might not think they agree with me.
The Democratic Party has tried to do a lot with influencers in recent cycles. How are you thinking about the media landscape? Are you partnering with any influencers or podcasters? Do you have an influencer strategy?
As one of the credential creators at the DNC, it became very clear to me that anyone who wasn’t willing to immediately go with the Democratic party line, even if it was to just ask questions to try to get more information, [was not welcome]. There were mass protests going on about Gaza outside the DNC, and anyone who wanted to even ask any questions about that was denied access.
As a Palestinian person, my requests to talk to surrogates were never sent, even though I was told they were. That’s why the Democratic Party struggles to have any effective machine. Republicans, their most famous mouthpieces, are criticizing the party all the time.
I’m not saying that we should have a bunch of Charlie Kirks, but if you’re not willing to listen to any criticism, if you’re not willing to talk to any creators that are anything less than manufactured, then people will turn away from you.
I like talking about issues, and I’m glad to go on podcasts and things like that, but because this campaign is really focused on the ground. I’m trying to use social media as a way to complement that, as opposed to being the focus of it.
The MAHA movement has been such a successful recruiting tool for the right online, especially since Covid hit in 2020. It’s funneled a lot of liberals into the MAGA ecosystem. How do you plan to combat this?
I have a Qanon uncle who believes this shit. I talked to an Uber driver the other day who said my narcolepsy can be cured by grounding. It’s so easy to wish for easy fixes, but a lot of times they’re not there. The big thing about our campaign is we’re trying to help meet people’s material needs.
It’s a very mutual aid and direct action-focused campaign from gathering donations to cutting checks to mobilizing volunteers. Illinois has a pretty good public health program, but if we were meeting people’s material needs and we were investing in education, universal pre-K, maternal care, all these systemic issues, [the MAHA movement] would have a lot fewer targets.
So far, we haven’t had a content creator be elected in the House or Senate. If elected, what are some issues that you’d like to address in Congress that affect creators specifically?
There needs to be more viable ways for content creators and all gig workers to be able to easily access healthcare. Another thing that I really care about is AI regulation. Platforms need to implement some type of system that allows you to give or revoke permission for them to use your content to train AI.
These platforms are basically plagiarism machines when they’re using people’s work without permission for AI, and I think there should be legal regulations about that.
Do you have a digital or social team helping you? How do you get all of your content out?
My content team is just me. I write my own posts, I make my own videos, I film them, I script them, and edit them myself. I’m the one who posts them, and I’m the one who gets the weird DMs!
