Karim has built a life of service. He recognizes now that to continue to effect meaningful change, he needs to be inside the machine. Hillsboro is at a crossroads: its future will either serve big businesses and their lobbies, or the members of this community already working hard to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. He knows which side he is on.
Join the Fight
Karim enlisted in the Marine Corps at seventeen, in the wake of 9/11, driven by a sense of duty and a deep desire to serve his country at a moment of need. He served multiple disaster relief operations across Southeast Asia while stationed in Japan, putting his body to work for people who had lost everything to floods and storms. It was a different kind of soldiering than he had imagined, and it shaped him.
But he couldn't shake the fact that he had never been to war. After leaving the Marines, he was embedded with special forces in Afghanistan, watching the war up close from the unique vantage of their special operations missions: helping stand up the Afghan government and local police force, and continuing the combat mission against the Taliban. He came home carrying what anyone carries after seeing that: the weight of promises made in good faith, by people too young to know those promises were never the government's to keep. He watched the US leave Afghanistan the same way it had left so many others, abruptly, with enormous human cost to the people who had trusted us most.
Government can work for you, it just chooses not to. I will hold our government accountable to the people. I keep my promises.
After graduating from Columbia University thanks to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, Karim joined Teach For America and taught in Title I schools: first remedial English for 10th graders over the summer, then a self-contained 5th grade class of children cast off as "problem students."
His class mantra: "Play the game. Learn the rules. Play to win. Change the game." Those kids are still in his heart.
What he learned in those classrooms wasn't just teaching technique. It was how deliberately underfunded and undervalued public schools serving low-income students are, while politicians write blank checks for prisons and over-staffed police forces. He watched teachers do the impossible with the inadequate.
He knows these kids because he was one of them. He grew up in poverty, went to underfunded schools, and ultimately dropped out to work full time. After the Marines, the GI Bill helped him change that. Every kid deserves that same chance, without having to pick up a rifle.
After the US withdrew from Afghanistan, Karim and his wife Kiley sponsored a family of Afghan refugees: an interpreter who had worked alongside US forces during the war, whose cooperation had put his family's lives in danger. They opened their home, helped the family navigate permanent housing and work, walked them through the neighborhood and the country's laws and customs, broke bread together.
That family found their footing. They are part of this community now. The Afghan family was not the only one; Karim and Kiley have opened their home to refugees from other countries as well, including a family fleeing violence and political upheaval in Kenya. He had repeated the promises our government made to people like them, watched that government abdicate its responsibility and abandon them, and when the burden fell to him, he was unwilling to become another person who broke those promises.
"The diversity and resilience that immigrant communities bring to the American fabric is not a talking point. It is people. People I know and whom I've watched build their lives from nothing in a country that makes it needlessly hard for them."
When immigration agents came to his neighborhood to take a hardworking father of three, Karim and his wife boxed their van in with their own vehicles. Karim walked straight up to the window and pressed them — agents who had been lying, claiming to be Hillsboro PD — until they showed their real documentation. Neighbors flooded the street. The agents fled. Afterward, Karim's team organized to walk impacted neighborhood children to school each morning and patrolled the streets to make sure they wouldn't come back.
Karim and Kiley own and operate The 649, a local bar in Aloha, built to run on their values. Pro-worker: a guaranteed living wage in line with the MIT Living Wage Calculator for Washington County, health and dental premiums covered, a 5% retirement match, and benefits that start within a month of hire. Pro-community: they have donated tens of thousands of dollars to local organizations and individuals, and to national and global causes they believe in. Their front yard at home has a free community fridge and pantry, stocked in partnership with local organizations and churches, open to anyone who needs food.
During the pandemic, Karim and his team started a free weekly soup program out of the bar for neighbors without housing. When the pandemic ended, the need hadn't. The program is still running today.
They use the platform they have. Karim personally walks with unhoused residents, people in mental health crisis, and those the system has written off. He shows up. He de-escalates. He does not wait for it to be someone else's job.
Every position Karim holds is rooted in something he has lived, built, or stood in front of.
Built a thriving bar on a simple premise: take care of your people. A guaranteed living wage, 80% of health and dental premiums covered, paid time off, a 5% retirement match, and benefits from day one. Living wages are a choice. He made it.
Tens of thousands of dollars donated to local organizations and individuals, and to national and global causes. A free weekly soup program for unhoused neighbors. A community fridge and pantry in his front yard, open to anyone. He shows up on his own time, every week.
Sponsored Afghan and Kenyan refugee families, opening his home and helping them build new lives here. When immigration agents came to his neighborhood and lied about who they were, Karim and his wife put their bodies in the way — and drove them out before they could take their neighbors.
A high school dropout who earned his GED, used the Post-9/11 GI Bill to get to community college, and graduated from Columbia University. Then went back and taught the kids the system had given up on. He knows what it costs when we fail students, and what it means when we don't.
What is Democratic Socialism?
Karim's democratic socialism isn't academic. He learned it in the Marine Corps.
The military gave him, and every other Marine, sustenance, housing, and work that accorded with their skills and talents. It offered a path to education through the GI Bill. It put homeownership within reach through the VA loan. It provided healthcare through base facilities and the VA. The government, when it decides to, can give people a fighting chance to reach their potential rather than having them spend every day just figuring out how they'll survive the next one.
That is all democratic socialism is: the belief that a government capable of doing this for its military can and should do it for everyone. A foundation, not a handout. The same foundation that gave Karim the platform to build everything else he has built.
You call yourself a pragmatist. What does that mean?
It means the goal is to actually help people. Karim is willing to work with anyone, across party lines and across community differences, if the outcome is better for the people of Hillsboro. He is interested in what works: better schools, safer streets, livable wages, accountable government. Those aren't left or right ideas. They're just what people need.
Why are you running for City Council?
Because the distance between what our institutions promise and what they actually deliver for working people is where Karim has spent his entire life, and he is tired of watching them screw it up from the outside. He has seen what government looks like when it fails: in Afghanistan, in Title I schools, in the faces of people living on the streets of Hillsboro, and in the families stretching every dollar just to keep food on the table for their kids. He wants to be the person inside the institution who fights to close that gap.
Does your campaign take corporate PAC money?
No. This campaign is funded by individuals: neighbors, community members, and people who believe Hillsboro deserves a representative who can't be bought. If you want to help, you can contribute at any amount. The average contribution matters more than the largest one.
How can I get involved?
Show up. Knock doors. Put up a yard sign. Chip in what you can. Talk to your neighbors. This campaign wins through people power — the same way every campaign worth winning does. Head back to the home page to sign up, volunteer, or contribute.
Karim has never waited for someone else to do it. This campaign is no different.