As more congressional Democrats embrace social media, progressive influencers are looking at the party and not loving what they’re seeing.
The disconnect has already inspired at least three liberal content creators to run for office.
“I see the need for more communicators in the Democratic Party. That’s obviously a huge weak point for them,” said Kat Abughazaleh, a content creator with over 200,000 followers on TikTok, who is running for Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s seat in Illinois.
Deja Foxx, who has more than 142,000 followers on TikTok and worked on Kamala Harris’ first presidential campaign in 2019, is running for the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s seat in Arizona. And Isaiah Martin, a TikTok creator with over 300,000 followers on the platform, recently launched a bid in the special election for the late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s seat in Texas.
The 2024 election was a wake-up call to Democrats about the importance of nontraditional media. Donald Trump’s allies have credited his regular appearances on popular podcasts as a factor in his presidential win — namely his ability to expand support among young men.
Since the start of the year, Democrats in Congress have had private meetings about improving their presence on so-called new media. They’ve invited creators to the Capitol to offer advice as part of a revamped push that’s reminiscent of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2019 training session for House Democrats on how to use Twitter.
Abughazaleh is not the first creator ever to run for office, but she is the first one this cycle to mount a challenge against an incumbent that has been in office for over two decades. Schakowsky, 80, has yet to say whether she is running for reelection.
“I am confident that if I run, I will win,” Schakowsky said when asked about Abughazaleh’s challenge.
Abughazaleh told NOTUS her decision to run against Schakowsky was not about “lashing out in revenge,” but about a desire for urgency.
“I’m sick of waiting around for someone to do something, and I have a lot of ideas on how things should be done. So instead of just talking and talking shit, what if I actually did something,” Abughazaleh continued. “That’s really what it boils down to.”
Abughazaleh said she tried consulting Democrats on how to improve their messaging strategy at last year’s Democratic National Convention, where she was one of the over 200 credentialed content creators in attendance. But it didn’t go anywhere, she said.
Creators “were promised access to, you know, try to make this different type of media for the campaign or, you know, try to reach new voters, or things like that, and unless you went exactly with the party line, you didn’t get that access,” Abughazaleh told NOTUS. As a Palestinian American, she said she called on the Democratic Party to more explicitly make outreach to Arab communities.
“They didn’t do it,” she said.
Some influencers, however, are still open to teaching. In a recent closed door meeting, the Future Forum, a caucus comprised of Gen Z and millennial House Democrats, hosted two creators — one of which was the YouTuber Jack Cocchiarella — who gave “kind of a 200-level class since there have been a lot of ‘Social Media 101’ classes post-election,” according to one source who was in the meeting.
The creators, the source said, focused on how right wingers approach social media and advised Democrats to “stop being so careful all the time.”
Democrats’ cautiousness has been a source of angst for creators and political strategists. Annie Wu, a political digital media consultant who works with Democrats in Congress, recently said on X that Democrats “lost big” in 2024 “partially [because] of how behind we *still* are online.”
Martin, who launched his bid for the House in mid-March, became popular on TikTok for debating “Republicans about whatever they had on their mind,” he said, which he sees as a way to “break through” with voters.
“For so long, you know, we have run away from tough questions. We’ve run away from conflict. And I want to show a new run for our party, where we’re afraid of nothing, we go everywhere, we compete with our ideas and run for the future,” Martin told NOTUS.
In their respective races, all three influencers are running from behind.
Abughazaleh, who has been in Illinois for less than a year, is currently campaigning against a longtime incumbent. Even if Schakowsky doesn’t run, Abughazaleh would likely face challenges from candidates with more name recognition in the district. Martin faces prominent opponents, like Harris County, Texas, attorney Christian Menefee. Foxx, too, is in a crowded primary race, which includes Grijalva’s daughter, Adelita Grijalva, who sits on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, and former state Rep. Daniel Hernández Jr.
That said, there’s already a blueprint for online-savvy underdogs winning House races. In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez defeated a 10-term incumbent, former Rep. Joe Crowley, in part because of how her campaign “leveraged media platforms to message on the work that we had already been doing on the ground,” Ocasio-Cortez told NOTUS.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Democratic leadership, told NOTUS that he “could definitely expect a lot of people running for all types of office this next cycle because, of course, people are pissed off.”
“I mean, that’s why I ran for office too,” Frost said. “We’ll see that, not just from influencers, but people who have a lot of different careers that are not the typical way to get into Congress.”
Several Democrats are cautiously welcoming the idea of content creators seeking office.
“I think it’s a good thing that more Americans should be interested in jumping in. Lord knows we need fresh blood. But I also want to emphasize … this isn’t amateur hour for a country. We need folks who are serious about policy, about fixing the serious challenges we have,” said Rep. Sam Liccardo. “We need folks who are serious about getting in here and resolving.”
Rep. Dan Goldman, one of the most social media-savvy Democrats in the House, also said he thought it was “great for democracy that people are becoming engaged in the political process, whether it’s through social media or through other outlets.”
Though he had a word of caution to the candidates: “I think people have to understand that being in elected office is different than being an advocate on the outside,” Goldman said.
—
Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.