Former social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh fell short to her opponent, Evanston, Ill. Mayor and former state legislator Daniel Biss, in the crowded Democratic primary to represent a deep-blue Chicago area House district.
The 26-year-old, who once worked for left-wing group Media Matters for America, won 25.6% of the vote, lagging behind Biss who received 29.6%, with 90% of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press. Since Illinois’ Ninth District is heavily Democratic — with Vice President Kamala Harris winning it by 37 percentage points in 2024 — Biss is effectively a lock to win the November general election to represent the seat in Washington.
Biss will succeed Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, 81, who is retiring at the end of the congressional term after representing the seat since January 1999, taking office just over two months before Abughazaleh was born.
Abughazaleh ran a hard-left campaign touting her staunch opposition to the Trump administration, support for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and her belief that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
While considered the underdog, she experienced a surge of momentum in the final stretch, with a rise in polls as well as last-minute endorsements from far-left Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan in the final two days before the Tuesday primary. Tlaib, like Abughazaleh, is of Palestinian descent.
A poll from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling (PPP), released a week before the primary, showed Abughazaleh was only four points behind Biss, an improvement of three points from the previous month. The PPP poll showed that while the 26-year-old female led among men by eight points, she polled a distant third among women, behind Biss and Fine.
A grand jury indicted Abughazaleh along with five others in October 2025 after they allegedly blocked law enforcement vehicles outside an ICE facility the previous month. That month, she abruptly left an interview with journalist Tara Palmeri when Palmeri confronted the candidate with video footage of the incident.
Like Abughazaleh, the victorious Biss also took left-wing policy positions during his campaign, specifically regarding his opposition to ICE.
“We’ve been doing everything we can to protect our residents from before Donald Trump took office, passing strong sanctuary laws to make sure our police are not cooperating with federal civil immigration enforcement,” the Evanston mayor told CNN in September 2025.
Biss received the endorsements of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC and Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
A former mathematics professor, Biss has served as mayor of Evanston, a relatively affluent suburb of Chicago with a population just shy of 80,000, since 2021 and also served in both houses of the Illinois State Legislature for the combined previous eight years. He ran for governor of Illinois in 2018, coming in a distant second in the Democratic primary to now-Gov. JB Pritzker.
Biss, who is Jewish and has family members living in Israel, criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for its handling of the war in Gaza. The Ninth District is widely considered the most Jewish congressional district in the state of Illinois. It has been represented by a Jewish Democrat — either Schakowsky or her predecessor Sidney Yates — for more than 60 years.
Had she won, Abughazaleh, who will turn 27 on March 24, would have become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, beating the previous record held by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by approximately two years.
During her stint at Media Matters, Abughazaleh claimed she watched Tucker Carlson, who then had a show on Fox News, for her job. She achieved prominence for creating video clips of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” from an ostensibly left-wing angle. At the time, she had written in her biographies on various social media platforms, “I watch Tucker Carlson so you don’t have to.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Kat Abughazaleh)
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