Schakowsky's First Potential Competitive Election in 28 Years
Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston) in 2016. (Photo: Associated Press)
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Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston) hasn’t had a serious primary or general election challenger since she won the Democratic nomination for the seat in 1998.
But Schakowsky’s re-election chances could land squarely in the middle of the simmering liberal Israel/Palestinian conflict as a 26-year-old social media influencer announced a primary challenge to the longtime incumbent Monday.
Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive social media personality with over 200,000 followers on TikTok, worked for the progressive media group “Media Matters” before being laid off after a lawsuit from top Donald Trump advisor Elon Musk sued the organization for defamation and drained the group of financial resources.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling our country piece by piece, and so many Democrats seem content to just sit back and let ‘em,” she said in her announcement video. “So I say it’s time to drop the excuses and grow a f‑‑‑ing spine.”
Abughazaleh announced Monday night she had raised over $100,000 in her first day in the race.
Top Democrats we spoke to Monday said the only key difference on policy between Abughazaleh and Schakowsky, who is a progressive, would likely be on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Abughazaleh says she is Palestinian and Schakowsky is Jewish.
“We really don’t need this fight to upend all of the good Illinois Democrats are doing,” one top Democratic strategist strategist said Monday. “Making Evanston the center of the Israel and Hamas war doesn’t help anyone.”
A spokesperson for Schakowsky’s campaign couldn’t be reached, but Schakowsky hasn’t officially announced her intention to seek re-election in a district that stretches from Chicago’s Uptown and Edgewater neighborhoods and stretches north to Evanston and Glenview and west to Algonquin and Crystal Lake in Lake and McHenry Counties. Democrats have a 19 point advantage in the district.
Schakowsky’s last competitive electoral race was the 1998 primary for the seat, when one of the candidates she defeated for the Democratic nomination was a then 33-year-old tech investor named JB Pritzker.
