Checking in With Kat Abughazaleh

As regular readers know, I spent 9 American dollars of my own money, which is 167 Mexican Pesos at the current shitty exchange rate (thanks, Trump!), on the Kat Abughazaleh campaign in IL-09. She remains an interesting and vibrant candidate for the open House seat there. Let’s check in:

First, fundraising. She was shooting for $600K last quarter. Her fundraising pitch was that she’d stop asking for money if she hit that number. She didn’t — according to the very useful Downballot Q2 fundraising summary, she raised a very respectable $525K. Year-to-date, she’s raised $904K, spent $235K, and has $667K cash on hand.

Towards the end of June, her fundraising appeals got a little desperate and a little more like “normal” fundraising emails. I think that $600K number was a miscalculation, and there’s been no talk of a Q3 fundraising goal. That’s smart, as far as I’m concerned.

Another event was an endorsement by Ro Khanna, which, I guess, you take what you can get. He seems to have stabilized a bit since his flailing around after Trump was elected. Khanna’s endorsement made a big deal of him not taking any PAC money. That claim is true, but if you look at his OpenSecrets page, he can raise big bucks without PACs because his district is full of rich Silicon Valley types. Also, this:

These “top contributor” charts use the employer of the person making the donation to attribute that donation to a corporation. Khanna got a lot of money from people employed by JStreet PAC, but the PAC itself didn’t give him anything. That’s a bit too clever. Anyway, Khanna is throwing down a marker here, something the real “big name” progressives like AOC have not done (not that I would expect them to).

Finally, petition season is happening in Illinois, and Abughazaleh is making the most of it. She’s having contests, giving away prizes (like she’ll cook a three course meal) and other fun events like a flyer contest. This is being organized via her Discord, and in person. Here’s her pitch:

This is definitely worth watching, because she’s trying to make her campaign fun, a community event.

Joe’s post the other day on voter education made the good point that our potential voters know very little about the workings of Congress. Much of the work of candidates like Abughazaleh and officeholders like AOC is to turn their social media posts into education moments. AOC will regularly do an hour-long livestream on Instagram explaining some issue of the day. Abughazaleh’s emails explain the petition process very clearly, and also express the danger of being an insurgent candidate in a machine district like IL-09 — she’s going to need to turn in pristine petitions that have far more signatures that strictly needed, since the county clerks involved are members of the machine that doesn’t want her elected.

Frankly, I’d love to see her win the primary for no other reason than to see another media freakout, and also to see Rahm Emmanuel pout.