Evanston Mayor Biss tops crowded Democratic primary for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District

Standing before a crowd of approximately 200 supporters inside Evanston’s Double Clutch Brewing Company on Tuesday night, the city’s mayor reintroduced himself.

“My name is Daniel Biss and I’m proud to be standing before you as the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Ninth District of Illinois,” he said, grinning.

And with that, the room erupted in cheers. 

Biss, 48, maintained his lead in the polls to win the Democratic primary for Illinois’ Ninth District over at least 14 other candidates, including top challengers Kat Abughazaleh and State Sen. Laura Fine (9th). 

Biss won 29.4% of the vote (or 35,642 votes) to secure the nomination to replace U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic congresswoman who spent more than 26 consecutive years in the seat before she announced last year she would not seek reelection. 

“This race had everything,” Biss said. “It had fundamental questions about who we are going to be as a Democratic party. Are we going to concede in advance, or are we going to fight? Are we going to double down on our progressive values, or are we going to shrink away from protecting the most vulnerable?”

“Tonight, the voters spoke clearly: We are going to stand up, we’re going to fight, we will not back down, and we will fight for the progressive values that are the values not only of this district but of this whole country.” 

With 26.1% of the ballots reporting, Abughazaleh trailed narrowly behind Biss by just 3,937 votes as of Wednesday morning, according to The New York Times. Fine finished third with at least 20.3% of the reported votes.

Biss will now face off against John Elleson, the winner of the district’s Republican primary, in the upcoming midterm election on Nov. 3. 

Before becoming Evanston’s mayor in 2021, Biss was elected to both Illinois State House’s 17th District and Illinois State Senate, in 2010 and 2012, respectively. In the race for Congress, he won endorsements from Schakowsky, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others.

“I am thrilled and I think you can see from the speech that he made how sincere he is to care for people, to do the job that needs to be done,” Schakowsky said after Biss finished his remarks. “I was so proud of him and so excited that he’s now going to be taking my place.”

Like Abughazaleh and Fine, Biss signaled support during the campaign for impeaching President Donald Trump and addressing rising costs, the Evanston Roundtable reported. 

He made headlines last year after confronting Greg Bovino, the then-commander of  U.S. Immigration and Custom and Enforcement, outside a gas station in Evanston, as reported by WTTW.

Elleson, 63, a pastor from Arlington Heights, secured the Republican nomination over the three other Republican candidates: Paul Friedman, Rocio Cleveland and Dongbo Mark Su. 

The other 12 Democratic candidates on the ballot for Illinois’ Ninth District were Justin Ford, Mike Simmons, Bushra Amiwala, Patricia A. Brown, Jeff Cohen, Phil Andrew, Nick Pyati, Kat Sam Polan, Bethany Johnson, Howard Rosenblum, Hoan Huynh and Mark Arnold Fredrickson. 

Biss thanked the many other candidates for running in this “pivotal moment to try to heal our country,” called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s apparent attempts to “buy this seat,” and congratulated Abughazaleh, Fine and Simmons by name. 

“The work isn’t over,” Abughazaleh said after conceding. “There are progressives all over the country who are taking a chance just like we did, and we have to help them win no matter how hard it is, we have to send a message to this administration and anyone who enables it.”

In her concession offering, Fine expressed confidence in Biss.

“I have every confidence that Daniel will be a champion for our community and continue the fight against Trump,” Fine said in a statement posted on social media.

‘The right person’

Illinois’ 9th Congressional District boasts a population of about 746,000 people, according to the 2020 U.S. Census, and covers 167 miles over parts of Cook, Lake and McHenry counties.

The district’s southern edge starts in north Chicago before it stretches up over communities like Evanston, Wilmette and Skokie and extends northwest over Niles, Glenview, parts of Prospect Heights, Buffalo Grove, Wauconda, Cary and Algonquin. 

Skokie, which boasts a population of 67,824 people, according to the 2020 Census, carries about 9% of the district’s total potential vote share. 

On stage on Tuesday, Biss asserted it was time for congress to assert its power over the Trump Administration and the “wealthy that have a stranglehold on the politics of America.”

“When this campaign started I didn’t know what teargas smelled like. When this campaign started I had never seen my neighbors abducted, dissenters beaten up on the street, I had never seen kids scared of their own federal government,” Biss said. 

He appeared emotional as he ended his speech with a story of visiting Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood on Mexican Independence Day last year, and how, amid tensions over a federal immigration action, a smiling young girl handed him a bracelet. 

Biss said he’s worn that bracelet every day since and the girl reminded him of how “they can make me scared, but they cannot take away my joy, they cannot take away my pride, they cannot take away my love for my family, my community, my neighborhood and my friends.”

Amanda Myers, of Wilmette, said she began volunteering with Biss’ campaign last year after hearing federal immigration authorities were in her neighborhood, and she trusted Schakowsky’s and Duckworth’s endorsements of him.

“Our community has really come together as a team, and we’re uniting and fighting for the common good for our constituents and I just feel like he’s going to be the right person to look at the diversity of backgrounds, geographies, needs and interests of his constituents,” Myers said. 

Julia Kelso, an Abughazaleh campaign volunteer, stood by her candidate.

“I’m definitely disappointed. I don’t think this will be as good; I don’t think he can do what Kat can do in terms of getting public attention on all of the awful stuff going on in Congress. I think Kat was the person who could do that well,” said Kelso, who attended Abughazaleh’s election-night party in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood on Tuesday.

A heated race over AIPAC influence

The Ninth’s Democratic primary race became heated in part as top contenders pointed fingers over who was supported by AIPAC, the nation’s largest pro-Israel lobbying group that, according to Politico, funneled more than $21 million into Illinois’ four open congressional races. 

Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now, two political action committees with ties to AIPAC, spent at least $10.9 million in the Ninth District, The New York Times reported. 

Standing before his supporters on Tuesday, Biss, who is Jewish, said he was proud of how his campaign handled “the nuance and complexity” of Israel and Palestine. 

“Yes, Israel was a safe haven for my Holocaust survivor grandparents and their 2-year-old daughter, my mother, in 1948,” Biss said. “And at the same time, the oppression of the Palestinian people is an unacceptable stain on the world and on the Jewish people as well.”

“AIPAC found out the hard way. The Ninth District is not for sale,” Biss went on.

In a Feb. 25 debate televised on Fox, a moderator asked Fine what she made of the more than $1 million Elect Chicago Women reportedly spent in support of her campaign.

Fine, who is also Jewish, described the funds as “dark money” for which her campaign did not coordinate with AIPAC, and she alleged Biss had sought AIPAC’s support. 

Biss said he would “never have accepted AIPAC support” and described Fine’s campaign as “bankrolled by AIPAC and MAGA donors.”

“This is the exact type of hypocrisy that people are sick of in politics — over and over again, the lying, the bickering over who likes AIPAC more,” Abughazelah, who was endorsed by Track AIPAC, a group opposed to the lobby, said on Feb. 25. 

Amiwala, another progressive candidate, issued a statement her campaign was aware the Chicago Progressive Partnership, a group apparently funded by AIPAC, had placed an ad supporting her, but she had never engaged with the lobby and it was “using her good name to do toxic work.”

As Punchbowl News reported, the negative view voters have of Israel’s actions in Gaza means AIPAC’s support for candidates like Fine could have proved detrimental to their campaign, even in a community like Illinois’ Ninth District, which has a significant Jewish population. 

Leading up to the race

Of note, Fine won endorsements from Rep. Brad Schneider, the Democratic incumbent seeking reelection for Illinois’ 10th District, and Vote Assyrian, a political group with ties to Skokie, which according to some estimates boasts 20,000 Assyrian people. 

The crowded race of candidates also included locals Amiwala, who currently serves as a member of the Skokie School Board District 73.5 Board of Education, and Andrew, a Wilmette resident, former FBI negotiator and gun-violence survivor.

The race for the district’s Democratic primary narrowed earlier this month with Biss, Abughazaleh and Fine leading in a poll commissioned by the Evanston RoundTable. 

Biss remained in the top ranking with 24% of respondents apparently indicating on March 10 they would vote for him. Abughazaleh led closely behind with 20% of respondents, apparently gaining momentum with a +3% jump compared to when respondents were polled in February.

Fine led with 14% of respondents, Simmons 10%, Andrew 7% and Amiwala 6% while one in six voters were still undecided as of last week, according to the RoundTable. 

Just a day before the election, a woman stated on social media that Biss had an “inappropriate relationship” with her while she was his undergraduate student at the University of Chicago in 2004, the RoundTable reported.  

Biss’s campaign acknowledged in a statement to The Daily Northwestern student newspaper that the two went on a “handful of dates” before Biss “realized then, as he does now, that it was ill-advised, and he ended it.”

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