I stumbled across the candidacy of Kyah Creekmore, the 24-year-old former Target re-stocker who wants to replace Virginia Foxx in the US House. I was looking at the sample ballot for the 5th Congressional District Democratic primary and noticed that veteran candidate Chuck Hubbard had someone running against him. Kyah Jordan Creekmore.
Who?
I went looking. First, his website, which features some sharp, clear, urgent writing which impressed me (as few home-grown candidate websites do), and then I discovered his YouTube channel and his TikTok and his Instagram, on which he has posted many enhanced talks about what the hell has happened to this country. I made up my mind that this is the kind of intelligence and youth and commitment to working-class needs that I want as a candidate carrying the Democratic banner -- even if it's a hopeless cause against the likes of Virginia Anne Foxx. The message can still live and grow, and I hope Kyah Creekmore has a long life of activist engagement ahead of him.
I talked to Kyah on the phone, and the interview that follows became the result. I've also contributed a modest amount to his campaign. I'm a fan.
Check him out:
https://kyahcreekmore.org/
https://kyahcreekmore.org/
https://www.instagram.com/kyahforcongress
https://www.youtube.com/@KyahCreekmore
https://www.tiktok.com/@kyahforcongress
https://bsky.app/profile/kyahcreekmore.bsky.social
https://x.com/kyahcreekmore
Interview with Kyah Creekmore
Q. How old are you anyway?
I'm 24 years old. For context, I'm literally more than three times younger than Virginia Foxx, who is 82. That contrast matters, because this race is about whether Congress reflects the future or clings to the past.
Q. You talk a lot about economic realities that working-class Americans face every day, and I've heard you say that Democrats lose elections because "we don't have a message that speaks to lived experience." What is your message?
My message is simple: working people have been lied to and extracted from for far too long.
Our entire economic and political system is built by and for the wealthy and corporate interests. There is very little incentive to do right by the American people when there is so much personal and corporate enrichment to be gained instead. Meanwhile, working people are struggling just to survive.
A 22-year-old man named Cole Schmidt recently died because he had to choose between paying rent and buying his inhaler. He chose rent. Five days later, he had a fatal asthma attack. That is not an anomaly. That is the everyday reality for millions of people.
While Americans are dying over basic necessities, our government is distracted by absurd priorities, talking about annexing Greenland or spending trillions on endless military expansion instead of fixing problems here at home. I say enough.
We will take care of our people. We will focus on increasing life expectancy, lowering costs, and restoring dignity to working families. We will redirect massive public resources toward Americans, and we will hold accountable the politicians and corporations that have profited while costing people their lives. We deserve leadership willing to sacrifice comfort to make that happen.
Q. You have a sharp head for analyzing economic realities and a political system that has become warped by privilege. Did you have mentors who helped you realize who you are, helped you find your voice? Or what writers have most influenced your thinking?I did not have traditional political mentors or a formal pathway into politics. Most of what I know, I learned in the last year by relentlessly asking questions about everything I did not have a good answer to.
Once I started taking the idea of running for office seriously, I became obsessive about understanding how systems actually work. Every day, during work and outside of it, I was asking questions, reading, watching long-form video essays and documentaries, digging into history, and connecting past decisions to present outcomes. I used every tool available to me, including modern technology, to interrogate power, economics, and governance.
Bernie Sanders helped early on by giving language to things I already felt about inequality and corporate power. Around the same time, I fell deep into
Hamilton and became fascinated not just with the story, but with Alexander Hamilton himself. I was drawn to how elite writing, persuasion, and systems-level thinking allowed someone from an unlikely background to build structures no one initially believed in. That realization stuck with me. Systems do not change because they are inevitable. They change because someone understands them deeply enough to force a new reality.
My voice was not handed to me by an institution. It came from urgency, pattern recognition, and refusing to accept that suffering is normal or permanent. I learned because I needed to, and because people do not have the luxury of waiting decades for leaders to catch up.
Q. I've heard you say that none of us are "worried enough about this government." What do you mean by that? What I mean is that our government almost never works for everyday people, and that failure has been normalized by design. People have been economically, mentally, and emotionally tapped out so thoroughly that they no longer believe engagement matters. They are taught to think this is just how life is supposed to feel.
Most people do not realize that nearly everything shaping their lives is political. Life does not simply “suck” by accident. Policies were written, often before people were even born, that determined who would struggle, who would thrive, and who would have no realistic way out. Education was stripped of systems literacy. History was whitewashed. Schools were redesigned to produce compliant workers instead of critical thinkers. Misinformation became routine.
At the same time, people are told constantly that there is no money for healthcare, housing, education, or wages, while billions can be sent overseas in an instant. They are brutalized economically and politically, then told to remain calm and grateful. Their rights are legislated away and they are instructed not to be upset. Laws are written to protect corporate profits, not human health or dignity.
Other countries have mass strikes when conditions become unbearable. The United States has not seen a true general strike in decades, not because it would not work, but because people were never taught that it does work. Knowledge is power, and that is exactly why schools are underfunded and teachers are underpaid. When people learn how power actually functions, they stop accepting suffering as inevitable.
So when I say we are not worried enough, I mean we have been conditioned not to be. Democracy only works when people understand the system well enough to demand accountability. My campaign exists to break that conditioning, raise urgency, and remind people that government either works for us, or it does not deserve our consent.
Q. Okay, but it's blunt reality time: You're young, you're inexperienced, you're a first-time candidate trying to break in at a high ballot level -- while the larger crowd of Democrats who vote in primaries in CD 5 don't know you from Adam's cat. And it's just a fact that "native smarts" are not necessarily a golden ticket in these United States. So have you thought through an Act 2 for yourself -- and for us who have become fans -- if you fail this time?Act 2 is not a backup plan. It is part of the same mission.
I have thought seriously about that question, and the truth is that my work does not begin or end with one election.
What first pulled me into politics was not ambition, but curiosity. Through
Hamilton, I realized how compelling and powerful American history actually is, and how intentionally inaccessible it has been made for most people. History is often whitewashed, sanitized, long-winded, or misleading by design. If it is boring, people do not read. If it is misleading, people do not learn. And if people do not learn, power gets to shape the narrative however it wants. What is the story of the fish if it's always told from the eyes of the shark?
That realization changed how I see everything. Our history rarely centers the voices of the oppressed, the working class, or those most harmed by policy decisions. Their pain, resistance, and perspective are erased. Before I fully entered this race, I was already working on a book series that walks through each era of American history in a way that is honest, engaging, and emotionally real, written for people who were never taught to love reading or history. My goal is to help build a model for how history can be taught in a way that creates critical thinkers instead of passive consumers.
Alongside that work, I plan to invest deeply in political education and content creation aimed at young people. Too many young Americans are disengaged not because they do not care, but because they were never given clear, truthful explanations of how power works or how change actually happens. I want to help people connect the past to the present and understand that their frustration is rational and actionable.
So if I lose this race, the work continues. Writing, educating, organizing, and building civic awareness are not consolation prizes. They are how movements are built. Whether through office or outside of it, my goal remains the same: to help this country heal from the damage caused by neglect, misinformation, and intentional ignorance, and to bring people back into democratic life with clarity and purpose.
If I win, I bring that work into Congress.
If I lose, I keep building it until the country catches up.
