‘What if we didn’t suck?’ the leftist influencer who wants to campaign for Congress differently

Kat Abughazaleh has been critical of what she describes as Democrats' lack of vision and says the party has lost touch with many of its voters, especially young people

Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive TikTok star, wants to do campaigns differently. So the very online candidate for a solid blue congressional seat in Illinois is channeling her energy into in-person events.

The entry fee for her campaign's kickoff event was a box of tampons or pads to be donated to The Period Collective, a Chicago-based nonprofit that distributes free menstrual products to low-income communities in the area. The debut was such a success, she said, they filled her campaign manager's SUV with donations. (I want him to get pulled over so bad," Abughazaleh quipped in a video for her YouTube series How to Run for Congress.) It's part of her pledge to disrupt politics as usual and run a campaign centered on mutual aid and community organizing instead of a candidate-centered vanity project" that relies on expensive TV ads and grifty" fundraising texts.