The pro-Israel group spent $7.5 million in a losing effort.
Kevin Robillard at HuffPost:
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss won a Democratic primary to represent parts of Chicago and its suburbs, beating back attacks from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a closely watched race.
Biss emerged from a crowded field, with his stiffest competition coming from researcher Kat Abughazaleh and state Sen. Laura Fine, AIPACâs preferred candidate. The pro-Israel lobbying group spent more than $7.5 million in the race, attacking Biss and Abughazaleh while boosting Fine.
In IL-09, while I would rather have Kat Abughazaleh winning here, Evanston Mayor and 2018 Gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss is a decent option to fill the grand shoes left by retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D).
I am happy that AIPAC got the black eye here, as their preferred candidate Laura Fine got 3rd, and the aforementioned Biss and Abughazaleh finished top 2.
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Kat Abughazaleh lost. What she built is what the Democratic Party is missing.
Parker Molloy at The Present Age:
Kat Abughazaleh lost her race for Congress last night. She came in second in a 16-person Democratic primary for Illinoisâ 9th Congressional District, trailing Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss by roughly 4,000 votes. Sheâs 26. Sheâd never run for anything before. She moved to the district a year ago. And she came closer to winning than anyone expected when she announced.
I need to get something out of the way up front: Kat is my friend. We both worked at Media Matters. I wrote about her campaign once before, back in April 2025, shortly after she announced. I wanted her to win. I posted about supporting her on social media. But I made a deliberate decision early on to keep a wall up between that and what I published here at TPA. I didnât want to spend the campaign writing cheerleader pieces about my friendâs congressional run. So I waited to see how things played out before weighing in again. Things have now played out.
I also want to be honest about what this loss was and what it wasnât. Biss is a good candidate. Heâs progressive. Heâs the well-liked, twice-elected mayor of Evanston, a former state senator who I personally voted for over JB Pritzker in the 2018 gubernatorial primary. He has solid positions on LGBTQ issues, on immigration, on economic policy. He had Jan Schakowskyâs endorsement, Elizabeth Warrenâs endorsement, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Once Biss entered the race, I remember thinking that this was going to be a real challenge for Kat. It was. Heâll be a fine member of Congress, a fitting successor to Schakowsky.
If youâre a pundit looking to spin this as evidence that Kat was too far left, or that her positions on some specific issue doomed her, Iâd encourage you to consider that the urge to say those things probably has more to do with your own politics than with what actually happened in this race. She lost to a progressive with deep local roots and years of institutional support. Thatâs a different story than the one some people are eager to tell.
My friend Katelyn Burns wrote a great piece today on how Kat ran her campaign: the Twitch fundraising, the mutual aid, the AIPAC spending, the indictment. Iâd recommend reading it. I want to write about something slightly different. I want to write about what Katâs campaign meant, and why Democrats across the country should be paying attention to it right now.
Something to vote for
That April 2025 piece I mentioned was about a CNN interview where host Jim Sciutto tried to get Kat to agree that support for trans people had cost Democrats the 2024 election. She didnât take the bait. âAbsolutely not,â she said. âDemocrats deciding that trans people are the reason they lost the election in 2024 â itâs ridiculous. Itâs offensive.â And then she said the thing that stuck with me for the entire year that followed: âA far bigger issue is that we arenât giving people something to vote for.â
I think about that line a lot. Democrats have spent the last several years agonizing over which voters theyâre losing and which positions they should abandon to win them back. Should they distance themselves from trans people? From Palestinians? The premise of this conversation is that the partyâs problem is ideological, that it stands for too much, and the fix is to stand for less.
Katâs campaign was a rejection of that premise. She spent a year trying to build the thing she told CNN was missing: a campaign that actually gave people something to vote for. Her slogan was âWhat if we didnât suck?â and itâs funny, but itâs also a real question that most Democratic campaigns donât bother trying to answer.
Her platform tied everything together under what she called âbasic existenceâ: housing, healthcare, climate, LGBTQ rights, economic justice, all treated as the same fight. âIâm so sick of treating all these issues like theyâre separate,â she told The Advocate in January. âEvery person deserves to afford housing, groceries, and health care, with money left over. Weâre the richest country on Earth â thereâs no reason we canât.â
Every person. Thatâs the part I want to sit with for a second. Trans people, yes. But also Trump voters. Republicans. People of every race and religion and background. The vision Kat was offering wasnât about carving the electorate into pieces and deciding which ones to fight for. It was the radical (apparently) idea that a better world is possible for everyone, and that a political party should be in the business of trying to build one.
[...]
The thing she didnât do
I wrote in that April 2025 piece about Katâs refusal to accept the premise that trans people cost Democrats the election. What I didnât know then was whether sheâd hold that line for an entire campaign, under real pressure, with real money being spent against her. She did.
That matters to me personally. Iâm trans. Iâve watched a lot of politicians over the years decide, after a bad election, that my rights are an acceptable bargaining chip. They donât usually say it that bluntly. They say âmessagingâ or âprioritizationâ or âmeeting voters where they are.â The result is the same: they back away, and people like me get the message. Kat told The Advocate that attacks on queer and trans people follow a pattern: âThis is what every authoritarian regime does. They go after visible minorities, queer folks, and Jews.â She said it in January, months into the campaign, when softening the position might have bought her a few points in the suburbs. She didnât soften it. She didnât treat it as a liability to be managed. She treated it as part of the same fight as everything else on her platform, because it is.
A well-written piece by Parker Molloy on her fellow former Media Matters For America colleague Kat Abughazalehâs run for IL-09 and close 2nd place finish.
Abughazaleh, even though she came within a few percentage points of defeating Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and beat out several prominent names such as Laura Fine and Mike Simmons for runner-up spot, brought dynamism to the race and bringing mutual aid to the fore. The Democratic Party needs more people like her.
If you predicted that Abughazaleh would finish second and come within a few percentage points of defeating a giant in Biss a year ago, it wouldâve been dismissed as far-fetched fantasy.
See Also:
Everything Is Horrible (Noah Berlatsky): The Illinois Primaries Could Have Been Worse
Our preview gives the lay of the land in every major race
Jeff Singer at The Downballot:
The 2026 primary season continues Tuesday as voters in Illinois pick candidates for state and federal offices, including in several Democratic contests that have drawn attention far outside the Land of Lincoln.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin announced last April that he would not seek a sixth term representing this reliably blue state, leading to an expensive and unpredictable three-way battle between Rep. Robin Kelly, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton.
The decisions by Kelly and Krishnamoorthi to run statewide in turn set off packed primaries for the House districts they are giving up. There are similarly busy races underway to replace Democratic Reps. Danny Davis and Jan Schakowsky, who are both retiring after close to three decades in Congress.
The primaries for these four Democratic-friendly districts, all of which are located in or around Chicago, have been defined by massive outlays from third-party interests. Organizations affiliated with the hawkish pro-Israel group AIPAC, the AI industry, and the crypto sector have been responsible for most of the over $30 million in outside spending thatâs been deployed across these four House races.
These well-heeled groups arenât just interested in using their resources to promote their favored candidates and undermine contenders theyâre hoping to keep out of Congress. Some candidates who have struggled to gain support have been the involuntary beneficiaries of positive ads that are in fact aimed at diverting votes away from a stronger rival.
Many of these PACs have also deployed misleading ads attacking vocal progressives as insufficiently liberal while simultaneously portraying centrists as progressive warriors. Semaforâs Dave Weigel dubbed this approach âbizarro-world branding.â
âWhat hasnât changed is that these PACs run on what their strategists believe will play with Democratic primary voters, not what their funders want to achieve,â he wrote. âAs a result, watching TV in Chicago makes you feel like a cordyceps fungus has taken over the Democratic Party â imitating its messaging to destroy it, just as the parasite does in the wild.â
Below, youâll find our guide to these five races. Weâre also shining a spotlight on the Democratic primary for president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, where four-term incumbent Toni Preckwinkle is fighting to remain the leader of Americaâs second-most populous county.
Today, we have several big primaries in Illinois. The Downballot (of which I am a paid subscriber of) has excellent coverage of the big-ticket races.
Hoping and praying for Stratton, Peters, Ford, Ahmed, Abu (or Biss), Hall, Davis, and Kim wins today.
The progressive TikTok star is running for Congress in a Democratic district that hasnât had a competitive primary in decades.
Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone:
Illinois 9th District has only been represented by two people since 1965, and there hasnât been a competitive primary since the race Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, the districtâs current representative, won in November 1998. âI wouldnât be born for another four months,â deadpans Kat Abughazaleh, the TikTok-famous political commentator now running to represent the district.Â
Abughazaleh is transparent about the fact that she is not what anyone thinks of as shoe-in for Congress: a 26-year-old narcoleptic freelance social media creator who doesnât live in the district and has only lived in the state for less than a year, challenging a Democratic Party leader who has represented this part of Illinois for more than a quarter of a century.Â
Thatâs kind of the point: She is a normal person â with a rental lease she canât break before itâs up, financial pressure bearing down on her, and prescription medication that she needs to function properly and that has been challenging to obtain since Elon Musk went after her employer, and she and many of her colleagues were laid off.Â
And when she looks to Congress, not only does she not see enough people who are concerned with the practical day-to-day challenges she and so many of the people she knows are struggling with â the costs of housing, health care, groceries, transportation â she also doesnât see anyone confronting with any level of seriousness the peril of our current moment, two months into Donald Trumpâs second term.Â
âWe are in an emergency,â Abughazaleh says. âRight now, the answer to authoritarianism isnât to be quiet. Itâs not matching pink outfits at a state address. Itâs not throwing trans people under the bus. Itâs not refusing to look at the party at all and see where it could be better. The answer is to very publicly, very loudly, very boldly, stand up. The only way to fight fascism, and this has been proven over and over and over again, is loudly, proudly, and every single day.â
Abughazaleh may be young, but she is a wildly successful, incisive communicator who is stepping up at a time when it is clear that the party is in desperate need of new messengers. And she is popular on the social media platforms where sitting Democratsâ posts are continually flopping, ridiculed for their tone deafness.Â
The day after the 2024 presidential election, Abughazaleh thought she would wake up with an irrepressible urge to flee the country. Instead, she says, it was the opposite: âI woke up and thought, âYouâre gonna have to drag me out by my dead bodyâ âŚÂ I just got really angry, and I thought about running at that moment, but I was like, âNo, Iâm sure Democrats will do something,â and then they havenât â and itâs just been not only disappointing, but scary to watch.â
Schakowsky, currently representing the district, âhas had a pretty great track record on her voting,â Abughazaleh admits. But she is also 80 years old, and hasnât had a competitive primary in decades. âSheâs been a good congresswoman, but I want to be better.â
[...]
Abughazaleh was born in Texas and raised as a Republican â really Republican. Her maternal grandmother, Taffy Goldsmith, was such a legendary GOP operative that when she died, the flag at Texas state capitol was flown at half mast. (Abughazaleh inherited the mink coat Goldsmith wore to Nixonâs inauguration.) Her father is a Palestinian immigrant. Both her parents, she says, were Reagan Republicans whose relationship with the party has ruptured since Trump took it over.
Abughazalehâs own political views took shape at college in Washington, D.C. She studied at George Washington University, and went to work at Media Matters after graduation, where she was employed until 2024, after Musk sued the organization, and she and 11 others got laid off.Â
The day the news broke, Musk tweeted âKarma is realâ and his coterie of sycophants, including Libs of TikTok, piled on. Abughazaleh says it was one of the worst days of her life. The saga didnât end there, either â Abughazaleh was deposed as part of Muskâs lawsuit against Media Matters, questioned on video for seven hours. (The lawsuit is ongoing.)
After she was laid off from Media Matters, Abughazaleh did freelance video production with Mother Jones and Zeteo, but she is stepping away from work with both outlets during her campaign. âItâs terrifying⌠I donât have health insurance, I have no income coming in, and am using GoodRx like my life depends on it â because it kind of does.âÂ
Progressive social media influencer and former MMFA journalist Kat Abughazaleh (Kat Abu) is running for a US House seat in #IL09, currently occupied by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D).
Kat Abughazaleh, an activist running for Congress in Illinois, turned her campaign office into a mutual aid hub.
Jessica Washington at The Intercept:
Nearly $7 billion couldnât keep President Donald Trump from returning to the White House and Republicans from controlling the House and Senate.
âIt made me physically nauseous,â said Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, reflecting on the massive sums Democrats raised and spent on the 2024 presidential election, âthinking about how many people could be fed, or how many clinics could be funded, or how much student debt could be paid off.â
So after Abughazaleh announced her candidacy for a highly competitive primary in March, she transformed her campaign headquarters in Rogers Park â a lower-income neighborhood in Chicagoâs North Sideâ into a mutual aid hub.
Situated at the front of her 9th Congressional District campaign office are rows of basics like diapers and winter clothes to medical supplies like Narcan. âWeâve also had people bring in stuff like nail polish,â said Abughazaleh, adding, âeveryone deserves good things.â Anyone is welcome to come off the street, she explained, without checking for income or immigration status.
In addition to offering supplies while the office is open, the campaign also helps stock a community fridge available any time of day and hosts drives to collect specific supplies. A request for tampons for Chicagoâs Period Collective, for example, resulted in a massive outpouring of support. âWe ended up getting over 5,600, and my campaign managerâs car was just filled with tampons,â said Abughazaleh through laughter. âI wanted him to get pulled over so bad.â
The point here is to âshowâ the campaignâs values through providing for the community, rather than simply telling people why they should vote for her, said Abughazaleh.
[âI canât think of anything that would have made me be a Democrat faster ⌠than people showing their values rather than just saying them.â]
âI grew up Republican,â she said, âand I canât think of anything that would have made me be a Democrat faster â especially if it were today, when people have lost all faith in the political system â than people showing their values rather than just saying them.â
Abughazaleh faces off against a competitive field to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. As of early November, 21 candidates had filed to run in Illinoisâs 9th Congressional District â including a whopping 17 Democrats and four Republicans. The Democratic primary race will be held in March.
Abughazaleh, a former journalist with a large social media following, is ahead of the pack in conventional fundraising, and hopes that her âexperimentalâ approach to campaigning will help pull her over the finish line. In fact, she thinks the Democratic establishment could learn a thing or two from her.
[...]
Abughazalehâs approach has not been without its detractors. On social media, some people have accused the campaign of attempting to buy votes by offering free food, water, and clothes, in the same place as advertisements for the candidate.
Accusations of âvote buyingâ are a serious risk for candidates implementing strategies like Abughazalehâs, said Jessica Byrd, a political strategist who served as chief of staff for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. âOne accusation of buying votes, and your entire campaign is under a microscope. It slows you down, it makes you less effective, and then you have to spend money to defend yourself,â explained Byrd. âSo it really is a risk.â
Abughazaleh has already faced significant scrutiny in her race. In October, she was indicted along with five other activists on federal conspiracy charges over an Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest. She and her co-defendants are pleading not guilty.
âItâs incredibleâ that the Abughazaleh campaign is going ahead with its mutual aid efforts despite the reputational risks and associated costs, Byrd said. The Abrams campaign instituted a similar strategy in 2022, forming a program to connect Georgians with existing services, from legal support to food assistance. âWe were barely out of COVID, and it was really clear that we couldnât just ask for peopleâs votes,â said Byrd. âWe actually needed to ask how everybody was doing.â
Byrd said she appreciated seeing another campaign focus on how they can help their constituents before coming into office.
More Democratic and left-wing campaigns should consider emulating Kat Abughazalehâs approach: making mutual aid a big part of their campaign.
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Abughazaleh rightly notes that everyone, even undocumented immigrants, deserve health care
[This story is also posted at Daily Kos]
Appearing on CNNâs NewsNight With Abby Phillip last Thursday, former Media Matters for America staffer and IL-09 Democratic Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh torched the networkâs MAGA hack Scott Jennings by forthrightly stating that everyone, even undocumented immigrants, deserve health care.
Abughazaleh is running to replace the retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D).
Transcript, via CNN.com:
JENNINGS: I mean, he obviously has that kind of influence, monetary influence, and it will make, could make a difference in an election. But don't undercount the influence of the president among Republican primary voters, his base. They're all enormously happy with him. He is the unquestioned leader of the party. And what he says still very much goes inside of the Republican party Tent. I believe that will include primaries next year. So --
ABUGHAZALEH: Does it include people who lose their access to Medicaid or the ones that lose their SNAP benefits?
JENNINGS: Illegal aliens, they don't vote anyway. So, I guess it won't matter too much.
ABUGHAZALEH: Are you saying that only undocumented people --
JENNINGS: I'm saying we're going to make sure that no undocumented person --
ABUGHAZALEH: 11 million people are going to lose their healthcare.
JENNINGS: We're going to make sure that illegal aliens and folks who won't get off grandma's couch and try to work are not going to scam the system and we're going to preserve it for the people who need it.
SCHULTZ: They need body work provisions. I think that's something that --
SELLERS: Define it.
ABUGHAZALEH: What if you get sick and you can't work?
SELLERS: Define it. Define able-bodied people.
[âŚ]
ABUGHAZALEH: Everyone deserves healthcare.
JENNINGS: Even illegals?
ABUGHAZALEH: Every single person in the world deserves healthcare.
JENNINGS: Just for the record, as a candidate, you're for illegal aliens getting Medicaid?
ABUGHAZALEH: I think everyone in the world deserves health care.
JENNINGS: That's a yes. That's a yes.
ABUGHAZALEH: I'm such a Democrat.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: I mean, it is a yes.
ABUGHAZALEH: Yeah.
JENNINGS: It's a democratic position. Illegal aliens should get Medicaid.
UNKNOWN: But I mean, I mean -- I don't --
ABUGHAZALEH: That wasn't controversial.
JENNINGS: That wasn't controversial?
(CROSSTALK)
ABUGHAZALEH: -- controversial if a woman died in the hospital because they can't afford it.
From the 06.05.2025 edition of CNNâs NewsNight With Abby Phillip:
Kat Abughazaleh is right: "Everyone deserves health care.â
Abughazaleh made those comments on CNNâs NewsNight With Abby Phillip Thursday night.
MS NOW reporter Brandy Zadrozny reports on the dark money campaign to attack Kat Abughazaleh in the IL-09 congressional race.
A shadowy group called âUnmute Democracyâ was offering online influencers $1,500 to create TikTok and Instagram posts using their talking points. Since they werenât endorsing any specific candidate, it skirts FEC rules on paid advertising.
We really need to dismantle the entire dark money loophole system and transition to publicly funded elections otherwise the corruption just entrenches itself deeper.