In 2022, Nida Allam lost to Valerie Foushee by nine points in the Democratic primary for a Triangle-area congressional seat. Allam waited four years to challenge Foushee again for the same seat—and came up short again, but only by less than one point.
Even with that loss, Allam believes that she successfully pushed Foushee to take stronger stances against a proposed Wake County data center and against money from the pro-Israel lobby, which defined the 2022 election, when Allam was massively outspent by pro-Israel and pro-crypto groups that backed Foushee.
This year, in an effort to combat that, Allam got early financial backing from national groups like David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve and the squad-adjacent Justice Democrats.
Foushee and Allam ultimately benefited from roughly equal amounts of outside spending, making the election the most expensive Democratic congressional primary in state history (though Allam continues to point out that none of her funding came from corporate PACs, while Foushee’s biggest supporter this cycle was the AI company Anthropic).
Those national groups are now hard at work in other elections across the country, and Allam says that she hopes the close margin in her race “pushes the needle” to let Democratic incumbents know they need to be delivering for working families if they want to be reelected.
Two weeks after the election, we spoke with Allam about her loss, her campaign’s accomplishments, and her political future. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INDY: First could you just tell me about election night? I was at the party but how did it all go down for you?
ALLAM: We knew, with early voting, that we were going to be behind. What we did notice was that the margin between us was a lot smaller than it was in [2022] after early voting, which was a really positive sign. Wake County was obviously the last to come in, and that was the real test of the race. Everyone was like, we have an idea of where Orange, Durham, Chatham, will go. And so I’m glad to have won both Durham and Wake County, but also, the fact that we closed the gap and brought it even closer in Orange County. The proudest thing for me was, the increase in turnout among people under the age of 40. We were also tracking [Asian American and Pacific Islander] voters, I haven’t checked the final canvass results, but AAPI turnout across the district was up 150% from 2022, Muslim voter turnout was up. All of these demographics that were really important for me, not just for winning, but also to bring more people into our political systems to see themselves represented, I’m really proud that we were able to accomplish that, and I think it also sends a message to the Democratic establishment and candidates all across that these are not voters you can take for granted, that if you give them a reason to believe that voting makes a difference for them, that they can have a champion for their communities, that they’ll turn out. And my goal is to keep those communities engaged.
You mentioned the turnout. And from 2022, you narrowed the gap from nine points to barely one point—
Less than one point!
Less than one point. Tell me about the accomplishments of this campaign?
Well, I mean, the fact that we ran an 82 day campaign, everyone kind of thought we were crazy, I remember even hearing from establishment or machine type folks, they weren’t even worried about us, they were like, oh, she’s launching in December, there’s no way that they’re going to be able to raise the money, knock the doors, do the work that they need to. But the fact that we made over 90,000 phone calls, knocked over 9,000 doors, I ended up raising over $1 million, with the average contribution of $55, because that shows the strength and power of a grassroots campaign.
Do you feel like you learned anything from the campaign?
I mean, yes, a lot of things. I think what was really great for me was to see the hope that so many people had. But at the same time, younger progressives have stayed home because we’re getting the same thing over and over and over again.
We did the phone banking, the door knocking, but we also tried to do things that weren’t traditional campaigning. I went out to boba with some of the Duke students. We had 15, 20, Duke students come by and just talk about, what are issues that they’re organizing on campus … And [how to] bring that organizing outside of campus, because Duke is that bubble. Those small conversations led to students going back to their different civic engagement clubs, their Muslim Student Association, all the different clubs that they’re part of, to energize and bring that momentum for their friends to vote. And I think we really take for granted relational organizing when it comes to politics, for example, with the [AAPI] Western Wake community we did a lot of WhatsApp organizing because, I know that’s where I know my family’s WhatsApp chat is, the masjids communicate through there. So we learned a lot from that of, like, what messages really resonated with people.
Do you wish you’d done anything differently in the campaign?
I wish we had more forums. I wish there were more opportunities for folks to see the difference between the two of us. I support a Green New Deal, I support Medicare for all. I support the United States cutting off its endless funding of wars. And how we achieve those things, and how we advocate for those things, is very different between us. We’re talking about going up against an authoritarian extremist in the White House. This isn’t a Trojan horse opportunity, you can’t just sneak our way in and somehow get Republicans to change. When families are suffering—the largest number of federal funding cuts, people lost their jobs, people lost their health insurance—and we’re funding genocide and invasions into Venezuela and Iran over helping our community members. Those aren’t fights you could take quietly, and that doesn’t make me a show horse. That makes me someone who sees the power that a safe blue seat has and looks at it that we need to wield it, because it’s just a waste if we’re not. I can’t look my neighbors in the eye and tell them “well, we have so much power in this seat, but we’re not going to utilize it, because we need to stay under the radar.”
It’s your job as the challenger to convince people to buck the status quo of the incumbent. But we had some reader notes from people who were interested in you as a candidate, but then said they were turned off by your campaign’s negative messaging on Foushee. Do you think that hurt your campaign? And I’ll add there were certainly negative attacks from Foushee’s camp towards you.
Our first ad that we ran was a former Foushee voter from 2022 who said, ‘I voted for Foushee in [2022], I respect her work. And now, when we’re in the face of authoritarianism and with ICE and CBP attacking and kidnapping our neighbors, like, we need different.’ And our second ad with Bernie was about hope and taking on the billionaire class and taking on Trump. And there were ads that went out that talked about votes that were taken, funding that was received, and I think voters should hear about that. And I think it’s important for voters to know that there’s a difference between funding coming from working class progressive organizations like Leaders We Deserve that has hundreds of thousands of donors who are giving like $5, $6, versus Super PACs that have six donors that give like $1 million, $2 million at a time. As a voter, I find it insulting to my intelligence, to the intelligence of this district to say that it’s not going to influence [politicians]. If it’s not, then reject it. I said I’m not going to accept a cent from corporate PACs or these right wing billionaires, but our incumbent couldn’t even make that commitment.
Ultimately over $4.5 million was spent in this election between two progressives with different values and priorities, but that’s a solid chunk of money that could go to those places that you’re talking about where maybe Democrats could improve their message. How do we get out of that? What’s the future of that? Are we just going to be sitting here in two more years having spent $5 million on one of the safest blue seats?
We have a politically flawed electoral system because of Citizens United and unfortunately elections need money and as progressives, we have a choice to make. How are we going to work within this broken system? Are we going to go and align ourselves with the same corporate PACs that we claim we’re fighting against? And that are funding Trump and putting him into office? Or are we going to build up political power of working class people through organizations like Leaders We Deserve, Justice Democrats, all those. These are resources that we could definitely be using all across North Carolina to flip state legislative seats and that’s been something that I’ve been passionate about since I became a commissioner because I saw how hard it was when I first ran. I raised $55,000, I was 26 years old. None of my friends had money. My friends were giving me $20, $30 and then we built up and were able to raise that. And after that election, I was like, I want to use these connections and resources now to help more people. And we did that after 2022, we actually formalized it into Brighter Future PAC.
In 2024, I sent mail for candidates in Granville County, Person County, Chatham County. I’ve helped candidates who are running for Lenoir Town Council. The only way we’re going to take back control in states like North Carolina is if we’re building up the bench. And that means supporting state legislature candidates that are trying to flip, but I want to start even a step before that of school board, city council, county commission candidates. One of the things I wanted to do as a member of Congress, and I’m still going to do it, is [use] the safe blue seat power that you have, you can be fundraising and building up your resources to help these downballot candidates.
What advice would you have for Valerie Foushee now that she’s going into her third term?
I’d say don’t ignore the over 60,000 residents in this district who asked for something different. Our neighbors are hurting right now, and we need leaders and champions who are gonna put up a fight, not just behind the scenes. Our immigrant communities are terrified still from the ICE raids. I’m fearful of sending my daughter, my three year old, out into the world in a hijab, and I know now, as I’ve gotten older, I realized that’s the fear my parents had for me and my sisters.
Now, in the age of social media, it’s so much easier for people to spread hate, like the number of threatening voicemails I have on my county devices … When ICE was doing their raids, [Durham police] had to put a security detail on mine and [city council member Javiera Caballero]’s houses because the threats had been so significant online.
The advice I’d have for her is, the challenges and like the push that she sees, and that I ran on, is not out of any sort of place of animosity. It’s about how we should be doing better when our communities are hurting. Like, this isn’t normal times. This is one of the darkest moments in our country’s history, and the decisions and the way that we act right now is going to have ramifications for my three-year-old, my one-and-a-half-year-old.
You have two more years on your county commission term. Obviously, in the short term, you all have a budget to figure out. But what’s next for you, what’s in 2028, or beyond that?
Even now not having won, we still built up so many resources and volunteers, of people who are excited, and I want to shift and push that momentum into getting Anita Earls elected in November, getting our volunteers who are from all across the country, who are phone banking, to make phone calls for Anita Earls, Roy Cooper for the U.S. Senate, and then helping candidates like Winn Decker and county commission and school board candidates. I don’t see this race and these results as a loss, because this was never about me. It was always about working families. If we want working class people to come out and vote for the Democratic nominee, we have to be putting up that fight from now and not just showing up in 2028 knocking on their doors.
I hear that your energy is going into these elections now. I think readers would be annoyed if I didn’t double down and ask have you thought about 2028 or what’s next?
Allah had already written that this race was going to be less than 1% and this was what the results were going to be. And so now it’s up to me, am I going to take these results and wallow in it and stop putting up a fight? Or am I gonna see these results and say, “OK, maybe there was something that was gonna cause harm to me, cause harm to my family, if I was in DC. Maybe there’s something at the county that I’m going to be able to accomplish that’s going to help so many more people’s lives.”
And I wish I had a crystal ball to know what’s coming in 2028 but I don’t. I don’t know who’s going to be on the presidential ticket, I don’t know, with Republicans, what our maps are even going to look like, what mine and my husband’s job, life is gonna be like, our kids, my parents. All of these things play a factor. And I hope that in these two years that the Democratic Party will win the majority [in Congress]. And then the true test to Democrats is going to be, what are they going to do with the majority?
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