THE TR Q&A
Kat Abughazaleh on Losing, Mutual Aid, and What Comes Next
The upstart candidate for the Illinois House fell short on election night, but she may have pioneered a new way of community-based campaigning.
Ana Marie Cox
March 25, 2026
You closed the gap significantly in the final week. What do you think you figured out too late—or did you just leave it all on the field?
I truly feel like we left it all on the field. But with another week, that's another week of dishonest AIPAC ads, or them straight-up advertising for my progressive opponents to split the field. They had to invent new forms of rat fucking because they couldn't win clean. I was talking to my therapist this morning, and I told her it just feels unfair—we never went after anyone's personal life, we didn't do any dirty tricks. She asked if I could go back, would I have done those things? And the honest answer is no. But it doesn't make it suck less.
What's next for you?
We're trying to figure out how to scale the mutual aid model—not just keeping our hub going but offering it as almost a pilot program for voter turnout to candidates across the country, especially at the state and local level.
A lot of people running have already reached out asking for advice on working with 501(c)
(3)s, making events accessible, keeping the barrier to entry low. We want this to be the expectation, not the exception.
A week after the election, I talked with @anamariecox.bsky.social about our race, AIPAC, and how we’re trying to not just keep *our* mutual aid operation going, but make it a nationwide strategy: newrepublic.com/article/2080...