When we last spoke with 26-year-old journalist, researcher, and TikTok creator Kat Abughazaleh, she was a political newcomer opening her campaign office's doors for the first time. Now, the congressional candidate is just three months away from her primary—and she's currently tied for first place in the polls.
We sat down with Kat to talk about how the Broadview ICE protests became a flashpoint in the race, her reaction to being indicted by the Trump Administration, and how she thinks livestreaming will change campaign finance forever.
We sat down with Kat to talk about how the Broadview ICE protests became a flashpoint in the race, her reaction to being indicted by the Trump Administration, and how she thinks livestreaming will change campaign finance forever.
DISCLAIMER: This article is not an endorsement of the Kat Abughazaleh campaign and was produced independently by the Powder Blue Team
In his landmark work Amusing Ourselves to Death, the celebrated media theorist and culture critic Neil Postman takes aim at a curious boogeyman: presidential debates.
The author travels back in time to 1858, three years before the start of the Civil War. One could certainly argue that the political backdrop during this period registers as the most explosive in our country’s history, as hostility and mistrust corroded American society at a furious pace.
And yet, a closer analysis of that year’s senate race in Illinois finds that the incumbent — Stephen Douglas — and his challenger — a rising politician named Abraham Lincoln — did not sacrifice decorum in favor of unchecked belligerence. Rather, their dueling visions for the country’s future played out in amphitheater-like settings across seven of Illinois’ then-nine congressional districts.
At each stop, Douglas and Lincoln would share the stage for over seven hours. Neither of them brought notes; some of their sweeping individual orations (on abolition, and equality) lasted over two hours apiece.
But it wasn’t just the politicians who came prepared. Save for intermissions, audience members — themselves from all walks of life — would pay rapt attention across those seven hours, hanging on every word. They’d even cheer, or jeer, along, akin to a contemporary football game.
Postman published Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985. He levied much of his criticism towards the rise of twenty-four-seven cable television, observing how a well-read populace made for a more informed and healthier society than a culture consumed with watching constant entertainment.
Forty years after Postman’s critique — and one hundred and sixty six years after Lincoln and Douglas barnstormed across Illinois — a televised presidential debate saw one candidate falsely amplify a social media rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.
That candidate won all seven swing states, securing the presidency by eighty-six electoral votes.
Though I’ve walked by this fifties-styled diner a handful of times — and admired its old-school, script aesthetic from afar — this is my first time actually eating here. I’d always assumed it was a local joint, growing alongside the skyscrapers next door as this city became the American Midwest’s financial hub.
As it turns out, that narrative is partially true. Yes, The Original Pancake House is now a staple in Chicago’s affluent Gold Coast neighborhood, since the restaurant first opened its doors here just over fifty years ago. But the original Original Pancake House was founded in Portland, Oregon, way back in 1953.
The same diner menu has remained largely intact. Tall, laminated pages display a delicious variety of ways to pair carbs, eggs, and breakfast meats. Yet the bounty of options don’t seem to intimidate twenty-six-year-old journalist, political creator, and congressional hopeful Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, who meets me for breakfast — and quickly orders a short stack of chocolate chip pancakes.
“I’m still a little kid at heart,” she jokes.
If your opinion of Kat were to be formed by the commentators, analysts, and television presenters who make up our modern punditariat, it would probably sound something like this:
And
Kat Abughazaleh is running to represent the Ninth District of Illinois, where, if elected, she’ll head to DC as the youngest congresswoman ever.
I found Kat’s story fascinating for a number of reasons. For one, it’s developing right in our backyard. And while I won’t claim to be an expert on local politics in the Ninth District, I actually lived there for four years, from 2017 to 2021.
Another reason: Politicians have been leveraging social media to fuel their campaigns for nearly two decades now. “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed…Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand,” The New York Times wrote in 2008, shortly after Obama rode a then-novel concept (organizing supporters via Facebook and Twitter) all the way to the White House.
Yet Kat isn’t a sitting politician, tweeting as a means of communication with her constituents. No, she’s a career creator, someone whose résumé hinges on the very videos she’s uploaded and reports she’s shared online. Should Kat win, her journey could produce a completely new playbook for young people to run for office.
But the final reason I was compelled to tell this story is that Kat isn’t from Chicago. She moved here in 2024…and doesn’t even reside in the Ninth District (while uncommon, as it turns out, you actually don’t have to live in the district you’re running to represent).
Another reason: Politicians have been leveraging social media to fuel their campaigns for nearly two decades now. “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed…Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand,” The New York Times wrote in 2008, shortly after Obama rode a then-novel concept (organizing supporters via Facebook and Twitter) all the way to the White House.
Yet Kat isn’t a sitting politician, tweeting as a means of communication with her constituents. No, she’s a career creator, someone whose résumé hinges on the very videos she’s uploaded and reports she’s shared online. Should Kat win, her journey could produce a completely new playbook for young people to run for office.
But the final reason I was compelled to tell this story is that Kat isn’t from Chicago. She moved here in 2024…and doesn’t even reside in the Ninth District (while uncommon, as it turns out, you actually don’t have to live in the district you’re running to represent).
When she announced her campaign to take on the incumbent, Jan Schakowsky — a popular progressive congresswoman who, at eighty years old, has held the seat since 1999 — there was real pushback. Many residents view her as an outsider.
“How can she credibly claim to be the best candidate to represent a district she’s never lived in?” one Chicagoan wrote to me on Reddit.
“What specifically does she bring to the table for this district other than being internet famous?” another user commented.
Kat, for her part, appears understanding of the criticism, even jokingly referring to herself as a “carpetbagger.” But she’s also steadfast in her campaign’s purpose.
“Some people have gotten mad at me just for the audacity of running, and that feels wrong in a real democracy,” she tells me, in between bites of chocolate chip pancakes. “I want to win because I want to make a difference. But even just by running, we’re making a difference.”
Over the last three months, I spoke with Chicago voters, business owners, and Kat herself, documenting the rising politico’s campaign in its early stages. By virtue of this publication’s unique focus, I was curious to explore the creator angle in all of this, sure. But I also sought to find an answer for an entirely different question:
“How can she credibly claim to be the best candidate to represent a district she’s never lived in?” one Chicagoan wrote to me on Reddit.
“What specifically does she bring to the table for this district other than being internet famous?” another user commented.
Kat, for her part, appears understanding of the criticism, even jokingly referring to herself as a “carpetbagger.” But she’s also steadfast in her campaign’s purpose.
“Some people have gotten mad at me just for the audacity of running, and that feels wrong in a real democracy,” she tells me, in between bites of chocolate chip pancakes. “I want to win because I want to make a difference. But even just by running, we’re making a difference.”
Over the last three months, I spoke with Chicago voters, business owners, and Kat herself, documenting the rising politico’s campaign in its early stages. By virtue of this publication’s unique focus, I was curious to explore the creator angle in all of this, sure. But I also sought to find an answer for an entirely different question:
What does Kat Abughazaleh say about America?
PART I:
“IS THIS FOR REAL?”
On March 24, 2025, Rolling Stone ran a story with this headline: “‘We Are In An Emergency’: Progressive TikTok Star Launches Bid to Unseat Old-Guard Dem.”
Soon, the news was everywhere. “I kept seeing it trending on Twitter,” one Ninth District resident told me over the phone.
Coverage began to roll out from there. The Washington Post wondered if Kat could make the jump “from YouTube to Congress.” The Guardian said that her pitch “had struck a chord,” noting she raised more than $300,000 in her first week since announcing. GQ quipped that while Kat has never held office, “she does have a constituency: around 250,000 followers on both X and TikTok.”
With a larger magnifying glass on Kat’s campaign, increased scrutiny followed. And like many, I was surprised to learn Kat was from the Sun Belt — not the Midwest. So I began reaching out to voters in the Ninth District. How did they feel about her buzzy campaign in its early stages?
Had they even heard of her?
Garrett lives in Evanston, a suburb directly north of Chicago. He hadn’t come across Kat — until he registered to vote in the Evanston mayoral election. When researching local candidates, Garrett decided to read up on Kat a little closer.
“We need more young people in Congress,” he told me. “But we also can’t just let anyone walk in off the street. Résumés matter.”
I started following Kat’s journey when she worked at Media Matters, a journalistic organization that reports on “conservative misinformation” in the news media. She took a job with the DC-based nonprofit after graduating from George Washington University in 2020, and quickly rose the ranks from researcher to senior video producer. Compilations of her explaining how Fox News hosts warped the truth grew her personal following on TikTok and YouTube; her timely reactions and clips would often go viral on Twitter (for several years, her bio read “I watch Tucker Carlson so you don’t have to” across platforms).
Still, just two weeks after that headline ran in Rolling Stone, I’m here at the Pancake House to deliver Garrett’s question. “Why do you think you have the résumé required for the job?” I ask Kat.
Her case is based in the moment. “I don’t want to be in Congress my whole life,” she tells me, sharing how she vows to serve no more than five terms if elected. Kat moved to Chicago by chance in 2024 after her partner, Ben Collins, became CEO of The Onion publisher Global Tetrahedron. In her words, by Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, “I just kept sitting around waiting and waiting, and they didn’t do anything.”
The they in question? The Democratic Party.
“Right now…my expertise is in anti-authoritarianism, anti-fascism,” Kat tells me. “My education is in atrocity and extremism, and my track record in my career is pissing off the far right. You know — the people that are now in charge of our government.”
She argues that there is a need for lawyers, businesspeople, and civic politicians to represent the American populace on Capitol Hill. But a diversity of experiences has never been more essential, either.
“A lot of our leaders, especially the older ones…it’s not their fault, but they aren’t as technologically literate with new media in the ways that a lot of younger people are,” she continues. “They’re not fighting back [online]. I can do that.”
Throughout February and March, Kat sprinted to form a team, including twenty-five-year-old campaign manager Sam Weinberg (they were introduced by a mutual friend, and hit it off after a night of playing games at a barcade). They quickly built out their political platform, mostly focusing on national issues such as climate change, cost of living, and electoral process reform. And in an announcement video posted across her channels, she rolled out her campaign slogan: “What If We Didn’t Suck?”
The video has over fourteen million views across platforms. “I’m pretty good at getting attention,” she jokes.
PART II:
“IS THIS INTENTIONAL?”
It’s now May 6, and I’m hopping on the Red Line up to Rogers Park, the northernmost neighborhood in Chicago.
Kat is opening her campaign offices here, one of the three Windy City neighborhoods in the Ninth District (the rest are in the suburbs). She posted a flyer the night before, inviting local residents to pop out and join her team as they painted the walls and decorated the office’s interior. Shua is tagging along to help film; we’re the only ones present as the campaign opens its office doors to the public for the first time, and we’re welcomed in shortly thereafter.
Even if this election’s Democratic primary is nearly a year away, the first big domino of the race has fallen. Yesterday, the current representative, Jan Schakowsky, announced that she would not seek reelection. Overnight, the Ninth District has become wide open for the taking, for just the second time since 1965.
Two more dominos would soon follow. State Senator Laura Fine acted quickly, announcing a bid for Schakowsky’s seat earlier this morning. And Evanston mayor Daniel Biss — who won reelection to his position in April — winds up entering the fray, just nine days later.
As Kat vacuums the floors and her team sets up shop, I ask for her thoughts on the race now that it’s flipped on its head. “It’s getting competitive now, huh?” she replies, smiling.
My first impression of her new homebase is that it emulates exactly what you think the run-and-gun operation of a Gen Z politician would look like. Someone turns on a Bluetooth speaker; “Electric Feel” by MGMT slowly seeps into the space. The couches in the front, we’re told, were picked up on Facebook marketplace over the weekend.
Sam, the campaign manager, runs out the door, saying he needs to pick something up at Costco. In the interim, new team member Ethan Henderson — a recent University of Georgia grad who volunteered as a campus organizer for the Kamala Harris campaign in 2024 — shows off the official Kat for Illinois Discord server, which features channels for everything from community events to sports debate.
When considered on face value, all of these things might add up to feel a tad amateurish. But something I’ve picked up on since following Kat is how she presents herself — and communicates her message. Her videos don’t feature overproduced thumbnails or fancy transitions. Guest appearances on cable networks such as CNN or MSNBC often play out from her apartment bedroom; earpieces and suits are traded for her podcasting mic setup and semi-formal attire.
I ask Kat if that style of presentation is intentional. She says yes.
“I think that we put our politicians on a pedestal — both in a good and a bad way — and we don’t have to do that,” Kat adds on. “You shouldn’t want to represent people in a mask…I have pant suits, but I wear them when I want to wear them, not because that’s what you ‘have to do.’”
That culture of transparency plays out across her channels. On YouTube, she provides campaign updates to followers from her bedroom, the same way commentary creators might upload a four-hour video essay on your favorite childhood TV show. On Instagram, she shares behind-the-scenes looks at what it means to run for office, including marches she attends, food drives she co-organizes, and…feeding her cats.
Politicians pursuing “relatability” is nothing new — just ask every presidential hopeful who dons a Carhartt jacket the second they step foot in the Midwest. Yet Kat sees the impact of her communication strategy stretching beyond just this election.
At her campaign launch event back in March, “we had two high school students drive from Indiana to tell us that they want to run for office now,” she tells me. “I get very emotional even thinking about that.”
PART III: “IS THIS ALL JUST FOR CONTENT?”
Two weeks pass, and we’re once again making the trek up to Rogers Park , with a photoshoot planned and a slew of questions from Kat’s potential constituents in tow.
For the past several days, I’ve taken some time to speak with residents in the area, all in an effort to better understand their perspective on this congressional race. I approach students on Loyola University’s campus, and walk into small businesses to chat with their owners. At one point, I even chat with a woman who is tending to a community garden.
Interestingly enough, almost nobody I talk to has heard of Kat. They don’t seem to be particularly invested in local politics, either. An undergrad doesn’t vote here; a seamstress doesn’t speak much English, though mentions her main focus is her family; a pawn shop manager declines to chat outright, telling me he “needs to consult his lawyer” first.
Upon striking out in the real world, I take the logical next step in weighing public opinion: I ask Reddit. More specifically, I ask
r/AskChicago. And one hundred thirty-two comments later, I have more than enough queries for Kat (as it turns out, extremely-online Chicagoans are keeping close tabs on this race).
At the office, we conduct the shoot before diving into our Q&A. She clearly has a lot on her mind, and with the race heating up, every day brings a new lunch meeting or media hit with it. But she considers each question thoroughly and answers it closely; it quickly feels like all those hours talking directly into a webcam have paid off.
How does she plan to gain our trust, when many of us see her as an outsider? “I think you should be skeptical of everyone running for office. My campaign is built on showing what we do and not telling, so all I ask is that you just watch me.”
What organizations has she worked with in the district? “For our kickoff event, instead of charging $500 a plate, we actually asked people to bring in boxes of period products and donated those to Chicago’s Period Collective. We actually ended up collecting over 5,600 pads and tampons.”
What do you know about legislative mechanics that would make you a better representative than a state senator or sitting mayor? “Every single member of Congress has a team behind them — someone that helps them craft legislation and find experts. I fully intend to do that to help full in those gaps, because no one’s brain holds all the information in the world.”
The question that stands out to me the most, however, is the sole one I received in person. “Is this person really focused on the issues, or are they just doing it for ‘content?’” Karim, a lifetime resident of Rogers Park and Edgewater, had told me.
“To put it simply, I’m in this to win this,” Kat replies. “I have a track record of fighting the far right. And my big radical vision is that everyone deserves to afford housing, groceries, and healthcare, with money left over to save and spend.”
Throughout all of my conversations with Kat, she makes it clear that she was perfectly happy with her life as a creator. Campaigning for Congress isn’t exactly a lucrative endeavor, either; even as she raises six-figure sums in donations, she says she plans to pay herself a minor salary just so that she can help pay rent.
Still, it’s undeniable that this campaign has boosted her profile, both locally and nationally. That boost has come with backlash — one has to look no further than my post in r/AskChicago to see how sentiment has soured among some locals.
Yet after we pack up and leave Kat’s campaign office in late May, I follow along as she quickly becomes a more frequent guest contributor for CNN and MSNBC, typically commenting on topics not directly related to local Chicago politics. And according to the analytics tool Social Blade, she’s gained over fifty thousand YouTube subscribers since announcing her congressional campaign in March — nearly doubling her total count in the two years prior to running for office.
EPILOGUE
A common footnote often left out when discussing the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 is the fact that Congressman Abraham Lincoln didn’t actually win.
No, Stephen Douglas successfully defended his seat, with the Illinois State Legislature voting the incumbent senator back in, 54–46.
Douglas wasn’t just any politician, either. He was one of the architects of “popular sovereignty,” the doctrine that Congress didn’t have the right to determine laws on slavery. It was up to the settlers in each state, he argued. Lincoln, who, as a strict abolitionist, opposed popular sovereignty, was therefore painted as a radical — in Douglas’ telling.
But while Douglas may have won the battle, Lincoln would ultimately win the war. News of the debates stretched far and wide across the nation, and Lincoln began building a reputation as an engrossing speaker. Two years later, in 1860, he ran for the presidency, and won.
For the purposes of this piece, I didn’t find Postman’s commentary on the debates relevant solely because of what they say about our information ecosystem. I also didn’t bring up Lincoln and Douglas because they ran against each other in Illinois (though it was, oddly enough, a fun coincidence).
I brought them up because that Senate race of 1858 occurred during a point in time with massive technological upheaval. Sophisticated railroads had begun popping up across America; messages that formerly took a week to arrive by horse now took mere hours. Another invention, the telegraph, helped zip messages to any city east of the Rockies. At the time of the debates, “Lincoln and Douglas knew they were speaking to the whole nation,” one historian wrote.
And — just like with Jefferson and newspapers, F.D.R. and radio, Kennedy and television, and Obama and Facebook — we’re currently in the midst of another technological evolution, between the increased omnipresence of social media and the rising complexity of artificial intelligence.
Throughout reporting this story, I was never once interested in forming (or sharing) an opinion on whether or not Kat will win her race. According to a poll her team released in late June, she’s currently trailing the Evanston mayor, Daniel Biss, by seven percentage points. With roughly fifty percent of potential voters still undecided, however, it’s truly anybody’s race, and Kat has seven months to make her case to voters and close the gap.
Past this race, though, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the power of the platform Kat is building. On July 2, her campaign shared that they’ve raised over $900,000 across 22,000 donors — essentially, for all intensive purposes, with Kat operating as one-woman marketing team. And while only 700 of those donors actually live in the district she’s running to represent (raising questions around the correlation between Internet reach and actual local outreach) it would be naive to write off Kat’s work over the years — and the bond she’s formed with her audience.
I think back to our conversation at The Original Pancake House, as she discussed her frustration with being labeled as an airheaded “influencer,” a term she says she’s never used to describe herself. “I did a one-hour explainer [video] on white Christian nationalism last year that goes through the entire history of Project 2025, and how to fight back,” she told me then. “And, like, you can call that whatever you want, but I have gotten so many emails from people that were actively de-radicalized by that — not to mention all the ones who found it educational.”
“If you want to call it ‘influencing,’ by all means, go for it,” she adds. “I just care that the work matters.”
I don’t believe our culture is beyond repair. I’m not sure if I’d vote for Kat if I lived in District Nine, either. And as a writer, the existential doom when considering a future of illiteracy is, quite simply, really frightening.
But complacency is not an answer. A phrase that has stuck with me in recent years is “the media you consume becomes your reality,” and these days, there are too many people falling down rabbit holes from which there may be no way out.
And what I believe Kat Abughazaleh says about America is that these highly influential technological tools at our disposal aren’t solely wielded to win elections. No, they’re a legitimate form of expression, and communication, and we’d be foolish to pretend otherwise.
“My mom uses TikTok,” Kat told me. “Your mom uses Facebook. My dad watches YouTube all the time — I showed up organically on his algorithm once, and he was so hyped about it.”
“We’re long past where this is, like, a fun little hobby to me,” she concluded, as she finished up her chocolate chip pancakes.
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