Last year, when Kat Abughazaleh worked as an extremist researcher and video producer from media affairs, Elon Musk personally accepted X’s chiment to celebrate her misfortune.
“Karma is real,” Musk explain.
But as Abughazaleh said in her video announced on Monday Activity For Congress, she is not afraid to stand on Musk, especially when Impact on the federal government upgrade.
Instead, the 26-year-old looks at the Illinois District Ninth. The current representative, 80-year-old Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was first elected to Congress, even before Abughazaleh was born.
“I have ideas that I want to push, and I have a big idea. [social media] Platform,” Abughazaleh told TechCrunch. “I don’t feel like I want to wait for someone to do something right now when I can do something now. ”
Abughazaleh has built her online audience through her work at Media Matters, where she is known for making videos to decode Fox News’ rhetoric and inaccuracy. But when musk Prosecuting media issues In an article on how X placed ads with Nazi professional content, increasing legal fees led to nonprofits abandoning abughazaleh and twelve.
Now, she is an independent social media creator who has accumulated over 500,000 followers across platforms for her progressive political content, and Her biggest listener (222,000 followers) on Tiktok.
“There is absolutely no reason to make money for housing, groceries and health care,” she said in the campaign announcement. “Families should have free parenting, social security should be expanded, and our inalienable rights should not depend on who’s power.”
Abughazaleh didn’t expect her running with Musk to be associated with the wider public. But ten months after Musk celebrated her layoffs, 30,000 federal employees Now know the feeling of losing a job due to a billionaire’s plot.
“Many people in the news field, especially in this kind of disinformation, have gone through a trial period, or have practiced, which is a drought in what Trump and Musk have done to the rest of the country,” she said.
“We know what will happen…we are not satisfied with ourselves right, but it also means we have tools to fight back and know what is going on and know how to handle it.”
Tickets become political candidates
Although young people have historically tended to be liberals, Z often voters move Last year’s election was more conservative. Abughazaleh believes this is the product of the poor outreach of the Democrats.
“I think the big problem with Democrats is their digital strategy, and people like me and young people have better understanding [of the internet]She said. “This is what we grew up with.”
Some critics might think her age is a double-edged sword, as her young sword is enough to have a long online footprint. But Abughazaleh is not worried. Just like her Write A skeptic about X, “I hope you enjoyed my high school one-way fan blog and photos of cats.”
In Trump’s time – the president actually owns a social media platform, he keeps posting, showing personality online is no longer a taboo.
“We have a president who is always posting his ideas,” she said. “I think we can be like when we were 13.”
Given her history in Musk, she does not intend to focus X in her digital strategy. Most important are other social media platforms, Abughazaleh is prioritizing the blues 154,000 followers.
For example, on Monday, she posted an hour and a half campaign announcement at Bluesky before moving to other platforms.
“I really like Bruinsky’s policy on a lot of things,” she said. “They are hiring more hosts and there aren’t hosts in many other places, or are firing hosts.”
For example, Overhauled its content review policy In January, its third-party fact-checking program ended.
Bruinsky has grown to over 33 million users, even former President Barack Obama Joined the platform On the weekend. But its population is still relatively small compared to long-term social giants such as Instagram or X.
Anyway, Abughazaleh’s strategy has proven to be successful so far. In the first seven hours of the campaign, she raised $100,000, with an average donation of $45.
“We have already received the most donations from the social media we have received from Bluesky,” Abughazaleh told TechCrunch.
Abughazaleh is also passionate about Bruinsky’s open source nature. She is trying to echo this transparency on her YouTube channel, and she plans to share videos that document her campaign experience.
“I’ve been really transparent about how to run for office because I feel like it’s a black hole and it seems to be more difficult than it should,” she said.
Even if she doesn’t win a seat in Congress, she hopes her ability to open up to the process will inspire other Gen Z candidates to run for.
“If the sport went as planned, I would be the youngest woman to be elected to Congress,” she said. “But I think it would be cool if we had another candidate come in and be younger than me.”
