Trisha Paytas Announces Plan To Run For Congress In 2026

Trisha Paytas has many titles: influencer, singer, podcaster, actor. But this year, she is looking to dive into a pretty big new career, as a politician. Paytas has declared she’s intent on putting a bid in for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in California.

Paytas made her announcement in a Jan. 6 TikTok. “I'm currently Googling how to run for Congress in California 2026,” she said. “The idea of me being representative for the state of California came to me in a dream — in a vision, if you will. It’s so vivid to me.”

Her newfound political ambition is inspired by having her three children in the last three years. “I never thought of myself as a political person until I started having kids and realizing, like, the world could be just so disastrous [and] dystopian for real by the time they get to be adults,” Paytas said. “I was like, ‘Alright Trish, enough just shutting it out, being ignorant.”

She has one core platform to start with, but emphasized that there are several issues she’s hoping to change. “First things first, start in California. My main goal is to make adult work not be legal until you're 25,” Paytas said. “That's one, but I have so many other agendas. Now that I'm looking into, I think that it could be possible.”

While the influencer admitted she’s still very early in this process (“I'm literally just Googling, but that's where it starts; it starts with a Google”), she is already coming up with ideas for how she’d like to run for office. “I really think my slogan for running will just be, ‘California could be good,’” Paytas shared.

For now, it’s a bit of a race against time to see if Paytas can garner the support that she needs to be considered an official candidate for election. “I need to get a move on, because March 6 is the cut-off for signatures,” Paytas noted.