The Bizarre Campaign of Melissa Chaudhry

Em Smith

In Washington’s 9th Congressional District, there is a class battle taking place. 

On one side is Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, a major recipient of AIPAC money, and a naked representative of the capitalist class. On the other side is Kshama Sawant, an independent socialist calling for free healthcare for all, national rent control, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel.

Then, there’s Melissa Chaudhry.

Chaudhry’s campaign is a strange thing to behold. She brands herself as a “Constitutional Democrat” and a “patriot.” She has no campaign infrastructure to speak of, but she does have TikTok: in just the last month, she’s posted more than 120 selfie-style videos, averaging more than four videos per day. Each video ends with her tagline: “Care. Courage. The Constitution.”

Chaudhry is running as a Democrat, but she told a local newspaper that she has “secret” plans to switch to the Green Party if elected (shh!). She claims to support LGBTQ rights, but she told The Stranger that she doesn’t want to talk about it, because all that gay stuff would turn off conservative Muslim supporters. She claims to be a “fighter” but told a room of Democrats that they shouldn’t worry too much about that, because she’s a “team player.”

Chaudhry ran for Congress in 2024, on a platform that resembled mashed potatoes. She didn’t call for free healthcare, free childcare, or ending U.S. military aid to Israel. Instead, she called for “practical policies for all,” “economic growth,” and “pro-human, pro-economy environmental adaptation measures.” What would those measures be? No one knows — including Chaudhry.

Chaudhry’s 2024 campaign was built out of Elmer’s glue and popsicle sticks. During all of 2024, she received donations from only 167 people. She spent $100,000 in the election. A third of it went to text messages, and a third of it went to yard signs, which she mostly stapled on telephone poles around the district. She had no full-time staff. By comparison, Kshama’s campaign this year has raised more than $600,000 from more than 6,000 donors.

The real question for workers is this: whose interests does Melissa Chaudhry represent?

Among Chaudhry’s 167 campaign donors in 2024 was Carl Haglund, a notorious slumlord in Seattle. Haglund became so famous for jacking up rents on his run-down properties that Seattle renters fought to pass a law named after him (introduced by then-councilmember Kshama Sawant) to stop the practice. Another of Chaudhry’s 2024 donors was Muhannad Malas, a managing partner at IRA Capital, a $4 billion real estate and venture capital firm, which owns 10 million square feet of property across 30 states. The rest of her donors were an amalgam of lawyers, middle managers, and non-profit staff, including the CEO of a meditation center in California.

In the end, Chaudhry’s campaign serves the interests of landlords like Carl Haglund, capitalists like Muhannad Malas, and middle-class Democrats who would rather see a pro-genocide Democrat like Adam Smith in Congress than a socialist like Kshama Sawant. These forces are trying to prop up Chaudhry’s ramshackle campaign long enough to split the left vote and stop Kshama from advancing to the November election.

Chaudhry’s campaign is as incoherent as her social base. But she is clear on one point: she’s against revolution. 

“We are not here to abandon America,” she said in a recent post. “We’re here to reclaim it, repair it, and rebuild. You do not abandon a Democratic, Constitutional Republic because it has been corrupted. You repair it, because the thing underneath the corruption is worth saving. That is what this campaign is about. Not revolution.”

There is nothing worth saving about U.S. capitalism or imperialism. It has overstayed its welcome. A vote for Kshama is a step towards a workers’ party that can begin to challenge it. A vote for Chaudhry is a vote for the status quo, and more weird TikTok videos.