I don’t know how many of you are aware that, after a campaign is over, the candidate basically owns their donations. They have to be used according to FEC regulations, but former candidates can donate to other candidates, expense things, etc. So, if you’re Kat Abughazaleh, who raised a lot of money and probably has some on hand (the final report isn’t out, but she had almost $400K cash on hand at last report), you could just hold on to that and basically run a PAC, rewarding the candidates you like. Or you could sit on the cash and use it in your next federal race.

Well, no surprise, she’s not doing that, as she explains in this video:

I encourage you to watch the whole thing, but the tl;dr is that she’s keeping her campaign office open in Chicago, she’s still going to do community aid, and she’s starting a non-profit that will try to assist other progressive candidates in the upper midwest. She also has some stats that I want to look at in a later post, but her claim is that she brought out Gen Z to vote for her, and also won both the Chicago part of her district (the most blue) and the McHenry County part (the most conservative, though that’s relative).

She rightly points out that the way that most campaigns are run are that they’re set up and then, poof, they disappear immediately after the election. She’s trying something different. My normie wife was touched by her first campaign effort, collection and distribution of menstrual products. It’s the obvious counter to the cyncism of people who hear “I will fight for you” all day from politicians, and see them doing nothing. She did something.

The other aspect of this that I like is that she’s clearly in it for the long haul. And, I’m afraid it’s going to be a long haul. She’s got the right attitude. And, as Kay would say, no whining. There’s certainly none of that on display here.

I’ll probably drop a few bucks into her new initiative, Kapow.Works and keep watching it.