Legislative Questionnaire – 2026 Revision
Candidate Info
Candidate Name: Melissa Chaudhry
Position Sought: Congress
Are you an incumbent for this position? Non-incumbent
Home Legislative District: 33rd
Are you a Democrat? Yes
Have you ever been a member of another party?
Campaign Info
Campaign Manager or Point of Contact: Melissa Chaudhry
Mailing Address: 6727 Martin Luther King Jr Way S, Suite M, #1117
Phone: 2062712240
Email: hello@votemelissa4congress.com
List social media sites:
Part I – Candidate Background
1. Please briefly describe your qualifications, education, employment, community and civic activity, union affiliation, prior political activity, and other relevant experience. What makes you the best candidate for this position or office? If possible, give practical examples.
I am a community organizer, nonprofit developer, constitutional advocate, and the wife and daughter of disabled American veterans. I hold a background in regenerative agriculture, land stewardship, and community resilience on four continents, and I have spent my professional life strengthening civic institutions and organizations that serve genuine human needs.
In 2024, I ran for this seat as a first-time candidate in a fully grassroots campaign — no corporate PAC money, no foreign backing, no war-profiteer donations — and earned nearly 100,000 votes in the general election. I also authored a book, Service and Sacrifice, documenting my family's 124-day fight against the federal government after my husband, a decorated disabled Army veteran, was wrongfully detained by ICE. We fought the Attorney General of the United States in federal court. We won.
I have been a union member at every workplace that offered one. I have served as Secretary of the County Democratic Party. I have deep roots in immigrant and refugee communities, communities of color, faith communities, human services organizations, and veterans groups across South King County.
The 31st LD Democrats endorsed me in 2024, and I have not forgotten what that meant. You saw a meaningful Representative who you believed would truly “move the needle,” “make change,” and “resonate with so very many people,” someone who was “aspirational” and led with the conviction that “peace is the way.” You saw a pregnant mother who brought the whole family to the meeting, and before supporting me, you rescinded your endorsement of someone who couldn’t even be bothered to fill out your questionnaire.
What makes me the best candidate? I am not for sale. I have already proven I can fight the federal government and win. I speak plainly, I keep my word, and my political goals are entirely shaped by the conviction that government's job is to make sure all people can live with dignity, safety, and opportunity.
2. What prompted you to run for this office?
Our district deserves meaningful Representation – someone who shares the lived experience of our generation, understands the problems we face, and has spent my life learning what it takes to build solutions.
It’s a matter of personal moral integrity that I fight to evict Adam Smith from that seat, nothing personal. The needs of our district should not be for sale to the highest bidder, as the incumbent has made it.
He has been in office for longer than half of us in this district have been alive — including me. His biggest donor is a foreign interest that siphons our tax money to give their people free healthcare — and commit genocide with impunity. After that comes a long line of defense contractors and companies that profit when war expands and our sons and daughters are sent to die for private profit — and the greed of that same foreign interest. He demeaned and degraded the Constitutional, First Amendment rights of college students and community members speaking up for peace and justice – calling them “left wing fascists” when we had a real fascist on his way to the White House, rising on the tide of Democratic division and disdain. He has made himself comfortable while this district's families struggle with housing costs, healthcare costs, and the daily fear that comes from living under a regime that has made cruelty a governing strategy.
I ran in 2024 because I believed the district deserved better. I ran while pregnant, earned nearly 100,000 votes, and learned everything I need to know about what this race takes. I'm running again in 2026 because the stakes are higher, the danger is closer, and our children’s future is not abstract to me. It has names. It has faces. It is personal.
I also believe that this is a winnable race. The district has outgrown Adam Smith; people everywhere know it. Last cycle, legislative district after legislative district rescinded their endorsement of my opponent and gave their support to me: and I am a much stronger, more capable candidate now than I was two years ago.
3. What are your campaign’s most important priorities (three to five)? How do your priorities align with this position?
My campaign is built on three pillars: Care. Courage. The Constitution. Within that frame, my top priorities are:
Care — Affordable housing people can actually afford. Healthcare that does not bankrupt families. Economic support for working people, immigrants, veterans, and families with young children. Job training and skill development for an AI-disrupted future. Investment in local food systems, clean energy, and community infrastructure.
Courage — Anti-corruption reform strong enough to break donor control. Accountability for ICE and federal agencies that have continuously operated outside the law. Peace and restraint in foreign policy, including ending any blank checks to genocide.
The Constitution — Due process for everyone. Separation of powers. A government that belongs to We the People, not the highest bidder. Voting rights. Campaign finance reform. A country where the rule of law equally applies to the powerful, and equally protects the vulnerable.
Most of the structural change that affects our future the most, happens at the federal level. Anything to do with the price you pay at the gas pump, our country’s expensive foreign entanglements, campaign finance, voter enfranchisement, military action, and public investment starts and lives most at the federal level. And I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of people in positions of power paying lip service to resistance when the core structures of our country are being actively destroyed from the inside out. Congress *can* take action. The fact that they’re choosing to complain and cry helplessness, instead, tells you everything you need to know about where their priorities are.
4. How did you arrive at these priorities?
Through lived experience, community listening, and the hard work of thinking honestly about what this moment requires.
I’ve lived through family separation at the brutal hands of ICE, with my little daughter pressing her hands to the glass to try to touch her baba’s face. I’ve lived through an abusive marriage in another country that broke me down completely – and I know firsthand just how critical it is to have unconditional and supportive housing, healthcare, mental health support, job training, and access to education, on the other side of that experience. I’ve watched people wade through rivers of garbage, looking for anything to salvage and sell to feed their families. I’ve been there.
And I’ve been in the thick of the solutions. I’ve founded regenerative agriculture projects on multiple continents, in some of the poorest countries. I’ve dived into systems science, regenerative economics, and how to genuinely design an economy and living infrastructure that works *for* people, on a thriving planet, rather than serving extraction, destruction, consumption, and despair – all for private profit. I’ve immersed myself both in the possibilities and in the perils of a declining empire, and I do not take lightly the historic moment that America is in. If there’s anyone who’s genuinely prepared, for twenty years, for the challenge and opportunity of leadership and representation when the crises facing us all converge in one great storm – it’s me.
What’s more, my family has been the victim of an unaccountable federal government blatantly engaging in unconstitutional acts; I know what it costs when due process disappears. I know what it costs when healthcare is inaccessible, when housing is unaffordable, when the people who sent loved ones to war see them discarded on their return. I know what it means to grow food because you know you can trust and rely on what’s close to home. I do oil changes and brake jobs for my family and friends all over the district, because competence is nonnegotiable and working families don’t have money to spare.
Since politics is great medicine for all of us, every great possibility I ever explored, in my work, travel, and studies, points me back to one path. Politics. There is no way to make great change in the world without power, and power is structured politically. In order to serve human dignity at scale, we need to be successful in politics. Personally, If I intend to win elected office and do everything in my power to make the words “liberty and justice for all” mean what they say.
5. What steps are you taking to run a successful campaign?
I am running a fully grassroots campaign. I take zero corporate PAC money, zero from foreign interests, zero from war profiteers — which means I am accountable only to We the People, the way it should be. I am building a robust volunteer infrastructure called the Care Corps, organized around meaningful engagement and community ownership of this campaign. I am investing in digital tools, canvassing, earned media, and direct constituent relationships across all of CD9's geographic diversity — from vibrant South Seattle, to the rural southern communities, to the wealth and prestige of Bellevue and Newcastle.
I also bring the entire network we cultivated last time – the hundreds of volunteers, many thousands of supporters, and nearly 100,000 voters who believed I was the better choice. Last time, I was a first-name candidate with zero name recognition. Now, I am widely known, deeply respected, and my family’s victorious struggle against an unaccountable federal agency gives me a personal fire and a public story that is unmatched.
6. Will you accept donations from large corporations or are you going to be a small donor campaign?
This is a campaign of We the People. I accept zero donations from corporate PACs, defense contractors, AIPAC, or entities whose interests are opposed to the wellbeing of the people of this district. I may accept donations from values-aligned PACs.
7. What is the code of conduct for your campaign?
We treat every person — volunteer, constituent, opponent, reporter — with dignity. We tell the truth. We do not punch down. We do not take money we cannot defend publicly. We hold each other accountable with love and directness. We make decisions based on what is right, not what is politically convenient. We show up where we say we will show up. We fight hard, and we fight clean. I have been shaped by the conviction that how you win matters as much as whether you win. That is the code.
Part II – Yes or No Questions, please qualify your response if necessary
1. Do you support steps to build a fairer economy through tax reform and progressive taxes as wealth increases?
Yes
A system where billionaires pay lower effective tax rates than nurses and teachers is not a tax policy — it is a redistribution scheme running in the wrong direction. I support progressive income taxes, a meaningful wealth tax, higher capital gains taxes, and closing the carried interest loophole. The wealth generated by this nation's workers and infrastructure should be largely reinvested in that nation, not calcified into an immensely powerful, unaccountable, out-of-touch billionaire crust while American living standards, life expectancy, and birth rates decline.
2. Do you support the right of workers to unionize and bargain, including public employees and excluding the military?
Yes
I have been a union member at every workplace that offered one, including the Postal Service (when I was a mail carrier) and Healthcare Workers (when I worked night shift at a treatment center for addicted moms in recovery with their babies). I support the PRO Act in full, increased NLRB funding, the No Tax Breaks for Union Busting Act, the Striking Workers Healthcare Protection Act, and strong opposition to right-to-work laws. I will vote with the Labor Caucus. I will walk picket lines – and did, with the Boeing Strike in 2024. I believe the labor movement is the most powerful force for shared prosperity this country has ever produced, and I intend to use my office to strengthen it.
3. Do you support robust investment in publicly owned housing/subsidized housing for elderly and low-income individuals/families, and zoning changes to support such housing?
Yes
Absolutely. My strong endorsement from The Stranger in both Primary and General elections in 2024 highlighted my robust, progressive, and practical housing policy as a core reason for their confidence in me. If other countries can achieve zero homelessness by – radical concept – *housing people*, we can too. The federal government already invests truly impressive amounts of money sustaining our “homeownership” model – other models are possible and readily available, including social housing, cooperatives, community land trusts, and publicly owned units. We need a public option for housing, just like we need a public option for every other necessity for dignified life.
Housing should be infrastructure, not an investment vehicle. I support social housing, community land trusts, anti-displacement protections, emergency housing for domestic violence survivors, and zoning reforms that make room for affordable density — including transit-oriented development. I am personally connected to this work through an ongoing $3.2M walkable, ecologically sustainable homeownership project in King County. I also support fully ending the criminalization of homelessness, which punishes poverty and accomplishes nothing.
4. Do you support legislation to address climate change and protect our environment, including the Keep Washington Evergreen Act?
Yes
Legislative action is essential. Sufficient? No; but the precursor to much else.
I support the Keep Washington Evergreen Act and the broader Green New Deal framework — public investment in renewable energy, fully decarbonized utilities, transit that is free at the point of service, and regenerative agriculture systems that strengthen local food security. I also support local food system resilience through USDA small-farm programs and urban agriculture, because supply chain fragility is a climate issue as much as an economic one, and resilience is the best investment.
5. Do you support women’s unrestricted access to reproductive healthcare?
Yes
Reproductive healthcare is healthcare. Full stop. Any restriction on a woman's right to make decisions about her own body is a government intrusion into one of the most intimate, consequential, and constitutionally protected spheres of human life. I support codifying Roe federally, protecting access to contraception, and ensuring that reproductive healthcare — including abortion — is fully covered under any universal healthcare system. With this said, I recognize that in an ideal society, abortion would be safe, legal, and *rare*, because upstream social improvements and investments in family strength, quality relationships, and contraception would make it largely unnecessary — a preferred outcome for many.
6. Do you support achieving a universal, affordable, quality single payer healthcare program?
Yes
My father spent his career in Navy medicine — at one point serving as the top doc, the Chairman of the Department of Medicine, at Naval Hospital Bremerton — and he made it very clear to me from childhood that *everyone* should have healthcare coverage. The military already knows how to do this, and there is no reason the same system of universal, affordable care cannot be implemented more broadly — it’s just a matter of where we, as a nation, choose to invest.
No provider should have to weigh a patient's ability to pay before providing medical care. No patient should have to weigh their finances before seeking care. Every other developed nation has solved this. We can too, if we choose political will over donor appeasement. I support a Medicare for All framework as the long-term goal, with Whole Washington-style state-level approaches as viable near-term steps.
7. Do you support laws regulating the purchase, ownership, and carrying of firearms?
Yes
When I was 14, my junior high school endured fourteen bomb threats in one month. When I was 17, it was discovered that one of my classmates, who was in my same band class, had guns in his locker and a plan to pull the fire alarm and snipe at us as we evacuated out to the field. I have been fortunate enough not to directly suffer the impacts of gun violence, but the fear alone is scarring. We are doing an incredible disservice and an irreparable harm to all of our children by not taking strong action to protect them and prevent violence from reaching their young minds — and innocent selves.
I support universal background checks, red flag laws, safe storage requirements, and restrictions on weapons of war in civilian hands. These measures are constitutional, popular, and long overdue. I will not be intimidated by the gun lobby, and I will not pretend that mass shootings are an acceptable cost of doing business in America.
8. Do you support the separation of church and state?
Yes
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the freedom thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” I just typed those words from memory, because I memorized them when I was eleven years old — the only student in my class to do so. The Constitution is the glue that holds us together, and I stand by those words in all their force, two hundred and fifty years later.
What’s more, I am a person of deep faith — and my faith is precisely why I understand that no single religious tradition should hold power over a pluralistic democracy. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause is one of the most important protections in the Constitution, for believers and non-believers alike. I oppose religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws. The law applies to everyone equally, and government governs for everyone.
9. Do you support due process for everyone including undocumented immigrants?
Yes
This is personal. My husband, a decorated disabled Army veteran with full documentation, was wrongfully detained by ICE for 124 days in conditions far worse than actual prison for actual criminals. Our children were 2-1/2 and 8 months old at the time. Our family separated, our hearts in shambles, we fought the federal government in court, in four different jurisdictions, for months, against Attorney General Pam Bondi herself. We won. I know from the inside what it means when due process disappears — for citizens, for veterans, for immigrants. Due process is not a privilege of citizenship. It is the architecture of a free society. I will fight for it for everyone.
10. Do you support accountabilty for ICE activities?
Yes
We are vocally pro-accountability for ICE — and pro-constitutional immigration enforcement, which are not the same thing. A professional, lawful immigration enforcement apparatus that respects due process is legitimate governance. An unaccountable paramilitary operation that disappears people, separates families, kills civilians, ignores court orders, and operates as a tool of political terror is not. I will lead congressional oversight hearings on ICE abuse of authority, with subpoena power and binding recommendations for structural reform. I also oppose federal contracts between DHS/ICE and Palantir, whose data-harvesting infrastructure turns immigrant vulnerability into a profit center.
11. Do you support Keep Washington Working Act?
Yes
The Keep Washington Working Act protects Washington's workers and families from the weaponization of local law enforcement for federal immigration enforcement purposes. It is constitutional, humane, and consistent with the basic principle that state and local resources should serve state and local communities. I support it fully — my husband was deeply involved in its passage — and will advocate for similar protections at the federal level.
Part III – Free Response. Briefly answer the following questions.
1. What steps do you think need to be taken to improve voter turnout and increase voter trust in our election process?
Voter turnout rises when people believe their vote matters and when the act of voting is genuinely accessible. I support automatic voter registration, same-day registration including on election day, making election day a federal holiday, and expanding early voting. Washington's vote-by-mail system is a national model and should be protected and exported.
Voter trust requires transparency and accountability. I oppose the SAVE Act — a blatant attempt to suppress women voters — and I support restoring the full strength of the Voting Rights Act — specifically the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I stand against any effort to introduce voter ID requirements or other measures that function as modern-day poll taxes. I also support ranked-choice voting and proportional representation as structural improvements that make every vote count more and reduce polarization.
Most importantly: people trust elections when the officials running them are honest, the systems are auditable, and their own concerns are taken seriously rather than dismissed. I will fight for all of the above, and I will use my platform to speak plainly about the difference between election integrity and election suppression.
2. What safety, law, or justice reforms are you currently in favor of, and how will you work to implement them?
I believe safety is built upstream. The most effective crime prevention strategy ever devised is a community that takes care of its people — housing, healthcare, mental health support, addiction services, living wages. These are not luxury programs. They are public safety infrastructure.
Concretely, I support: investment in mobile crisis response teams as alternatives to police response for mental health emergencies; community policing models that include genuine neighborhood leadership; anti-bias and de-escalation training as requirements for law enforcement; civilian oversight with real authority; ending cash bail; restoring voting rights for returning citizens; decriminalizing drug use and investing in treatment and recovery housing; and fully funding post-incarceration rehabilitation programs, including job training, housing, and living stipends.
On mass incarceration: it is the modern form of slavery. It is driven by racism and sustained by private profit. I will use my platform and my vote to shrink the prison population, oppose for-profit prisons, and support every meaningful effort to end the criminalization of poverty.
I will pursue these priorities through legislation, through congressional oversight, through my public voice, and through the relationships I have built and am building with community organizations, public defenders, and directly impacted communities across CD9.
3. What legislative reforms do you support to achieve greater equity and inclusion for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ individuals in our communities?
I support the full suite of federal civil rights protections that have been under sustained attack: the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, and federal funding; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act; reparations legislation as a starting point for honestly addressing the generational wealth theft of slavery and Jim Crow; federal recognition of the Duwamish Tribe; and explicit non-discrimination protections for transgender people in every area of law.
I support ending all discriminatory immigration policies — including CARRP, which functions as discriminatory and harmful profiling of Muslim and Arab communities — and I support removing structural barriers to economic participation, including streamlining international credential recognition, expanding language access in public services, and investing in culturally competent healthcare and social services.
LGBTQIA+ people deserve full access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That means protection from violence, equal access to healthcare including gender-affirming care, protection from workplace and housing discrimination, and the full support of federal law. I will fight against bigotry in all its forms, and I will not trade these commitments for political convenience.
4. What are some obstacles inherent in proposed legislative solutions to climate change? How would you approach those obstacles in order to best overcome or minimize any negative effects?
The major obstacles are three: political capture by fossil fuel interests, the just-transition challenge for workers and communities currently dependent on carbon-intensive industries, and the tendency of market-based mechanisms — carbon pricing, cap and trade — to substitute financial complexity for actual emissions reductions while disproportionately burdening working families.
My approach: I support direct public investment in renewable energy infrastructure — not just tax credits, but government construction of clean energy generation and a nationally integrated grid — creating a “public option” for electricity against which the private sector must compete. This creates union jobs, drives down energy costs for ratepayers, and doesn't rely on the goodwill of markets. I support a just transition that treats workers in fossil fuel communities as the priority, not an afterthought — real wage replacement, trades training, community investment, and locally controlled transition processes. And I believe local food systems, regenerative agriculture, and community land stewardship are undervalued pieces of climate resilience that also strengthen rural and working-class communities.
The deepest obstacle is political will, and that is a function of who is in office and who they work for. I take nothing from fossil fuel interests. That is the precondition for everything else.
5. Do you think public schools are adequately funded? If not, what minimum requirements should be met in an adequately funded public school system? What specific forms of taxation would you support to attain that funding?
No. Public schools are not adequately funded — in Washington State or nationally — and the funding disparities between wealthy and low-income districts are a structural injustice that reproduces inequality generation by generation.
At minimum, every public school should be able to guarantee: safe, well-maintained facilities; qualified, fairly compensated teachers with manageable class sizes; access to counselors, nurses, and mental health support; robust special education services; and free or deeply subsidized meals for every student. No child should be able to look around their classroom and see evidence that their community is valued less than another's.
At the federal level, I support significantly increasing the federal contribution to K-12 education and tying that funding to equity metrics, not just enrollment counts. I support eliminating the school-to-prison pipeline by redirecting funding away from School Resource Officers and toward counselors, restorative justice programs, and student support. While I support school creativity and the right of families and communities to choose their own beneficial approaches to educating their children, I oppose the expansion of charter schools that drain public funding without public accountability.
To fund this: progressive income and wealth taxation, closing corporate tax loopholes, and redirecting a meaningful portion of the defense budget toward domestic investment. The United States spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined. We are not underfunded as a nation. We are misspending what we have.
By typing my name below, I declare under penalty of perjury the foregoing is true and correct.
Printed Name: Melissa Chaudhry
Date: 04/01/2026
