One of us. Running for all of us.
We are called to form a more perfect Union. Not someday. Now. By us.
Meet Melissa Chaudhry — proven fighter, Constitutional Democrat, community-rooted leader, published author, and public servant, running for Washington's 9th Congressional District. She has worked on five continents: building regenerative food systems, farming and agriculture in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, securing $3.2M in federal funding for permanently affordable housing in King County, researching global human geography for the U.S. Department of State — which was published weekly and circulated to over 4,000 diplomats, decisionmakers, experts, and ambassadors worldwide — and deepening her practice in cooperative economics — the democratic, worker-owned, community-rooted structures that build wealth from the ground up rather than extracting it. She has delivered mail for the USPS. She has sat night shifts in residential treatment with mothers withdrawing from heroin, keeping watch over them and their babies. Across housing, climate, immigration, behavioral health, and workforce development, her work has always asked the same question: what does it actually take to make the American promise of Liberty and Justice for All real, for everyone?
Her mother raised her close to the earth — with responsibility for the country she inherited, compassion for vulnerable neighbors, and the ambition to make the world a better place. Her father is a Navy doctor and global humanitarian who served in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Indonesia, Nepal, and beyond. Her grandfather was a Nazi concentration camp survivor who later died of cancer from his torture scars. She is mother to two small children, and married to Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry — an honorable, decorated, disabled American veteran; firefighter, paramedic, and first responder who built his life in service to this country and this community. He was abducted at his citizenship appointment and illegally detained for 124 days by a weaponized federal government at a private, for-profit detention industrial complex. This can happen to anyone — any political dissident, anyone who speaks truth to power, anyone who stands up for the rights of their neighbors — unless we stand together and fight it now.
Why does the Constitution matter? Because if anyone decides to target you for your political, social, or religious views — the Constitution is what protects you. But it is only as strong as the people who believe in it, and enforce it.
I will fight to protect your rights. No matter who is in power.
Melissa — who is not a lawyer — fought that case for liberty and justice across 4 federal jurisdictions. She won. The federal judge called the detention "flat out wrong." Attorney General Pam Bondi's lawyer apologized in open court — to Zahid directly — for "the mistake."
When you stand up to bullies, they fold.
"I am running because I look at the children of this district and understand that our inaction will become their inheritance."
Melissa is running against an incumbent who has held this seat longer than half the people in this district have been alive — including Melissa — with deep ties to defense contractors, in a district that deserves a representative who cannot be bought, cannot be bullied, and will not bend. She holds a firm commitment: no corporate PAC money. No foreign interests. No donors opposed to the principles of the Republic.
Her Platform →
