For nearly eight decades, Illinois’ 9th Congressional District has been a Democratic stronghold with an almost unbroken tradition of Jewish representation — a political lineage stretching back to the aftermath of World War II and shaped by generations of voters clustered around historically Jewish suburbs and neighborhoods.
That history now collides with a changing district and a crowded, high-stakes Democratic Party field vying to succeed longtime U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who will retire after 28 years in Congress. The 15-candidate primary race has become a proxy battle involving party divisions, faith, identity and foreign policy, testing whether old assumptions about who represents the district — and how — still apply.
Once anchored more squarely by neighborhoods such as West Rogers Park and suburbs such as Evanston and Skokie, the district has been redrawn to extend from Chicago’s North Side to far-flung suburbs such as Crystal Lake, along with its core on the North Shore. And while Jewish voters remain influential, demographic shifts and generational change have altered the district’s once-reliable politics.
At the center of that tension are two Jewish candidates, state Sen. Laura Fine and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who lead the field in terms of campaign cash entering 2026. Their rivalry has drawn national attention in part because of the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and broader divisions within the Democratic Party over U.S. support for Israel.
Fine has emerged as the candidate most visibly benefiting from donors aligned with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that has notably backed both Republicans and Democrats. Biss, meanwhile, has the endorsement of the more liberal pro-Israel organization J Street and he’s publicly criticized AIPAC’s influence in Democratic primaries.
The issue has become a fault line in a race that also includes candidates whose backgrounds would mark a sharp departure from the district’s past. Among them are Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old newcomer to Illinois who is Palestinian and has frequently criticized AIPAC and Israel’s actions; former FBI agent Phil Andrew; Gen Z Skokie school board member Bushra Amiwala; state Rep. Hoan Huynh of Chicago; and state Sen. Mike Simmons of Chicago, each of whom would bring wider-ranging faith and life experiences to the seat. Another Jewish candidate, economist Jeff Cohen, has primarily self-funded.
“It’s been a Jewish Democratic stronghold for a very long time, for decades,” said Steve Sheffey, who writes a newsletter called Steve Sheffey’s Pro-Israel Political Update and supports Biss. Still, he added later: “I’m not sure that means it’s a Jewish seat.”
The district’s history helps explain why the question resonates so deeply.
Sidney Yates, first elected in 1948, represented the area for nearly half a century, and Schakowsky later did so for decades. In the transition between them, the leading contenders were all Jewish, including now-Gov. JB Pritzker, who lost to Schakowsky in the 1998 Democratic primary.
“Before Sid Yates came in, it was never considered a Jewish district,” said Don Rose, a longtime Chicago-area political activist. “It was a Democratic district.”
Over time, the presence of a large Jewish population — and the memory of antisemitic violence — shaped the area’s political identity. Skokie was thrust into national attention in the late 1970s when neo-Nazis proposed marching there, a town where about half the residents were Jewish and many were Holocaust survivors. In 1993, a synagogue in West Rogers Park was burned. In 1999, a white supremacist carried out a shooting spree that began near the southern border of the district, targeting Jews, Black people and Asian Americans. More recently, the area has experienced waves of antisemitic vandalism.
Those memories have taken on renewed urgency since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, which has reshaped political debate across the country — particularly among Democrats — over antisemitism, Palestinian rights and U.S. military aid.
In the 9th District, those debates are no longer abstract.
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Candidates for the Illinois 9th Congressional District seat, from left, Phil Andrew, Jeff Cohen, Kat Abughazaleh, Bushra Amiwala, Laura Fine and Daniel Biss, participate in a public forum at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Evanston on Feb. 4, 2026. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
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Candidates for the Illinois 9th Congressional District seat, from left, Phil Andrew, Jeff Cohen, Kat Abughazaleh, Bushra Amiwala, Laura Fine and Daniel Biss, participate in a public forum at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Evanston on Feb. 4, 2026. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
In interviews, each candidate in the top half of the pack argued that their individual life experience, in many cases including their faith, best positioned them to carry on the legacy of inclusive representation in the district.
“In my career, I focus on conspiracy theories, right-wing extremism, deradicalization, and one thing I try to stress is that pretty much every single conspiracy theory is rooted in antisemitism,” said Abughazaleh, who trailed only Fine in money raised last quarter. “I think it is impossible to truly combat antisemitism without recognizing that historical context, and I have devoted my career to fighting it for that very reason.”
Andrew, the former FBI agent, noted he had worked on securing communities against antisemitic violence in his role running a security consulting firm. Simmons said he could “meet the moment” amid an “onslaught of fascism in our country.” And Amiwala, the Skokie school board member, said that having a representative of faith in general “is on brand and in line” with the community’s expectations.
“I don’t think my values are any different as a Muslim candidate than values that a Jewish candidate would hold. Our faith teaches us the same concepts of justice, of integrity, of honesty,” Amiwala said.
Ald. Debra Silverstein, 50th, the sole Jewish member of Chicago’s City Council, said in an interview with the Tribune that she’s endorsing Fine.
“She is a very strong person with regard to the Jewish community,” Silverstein said. The seat “has been held by a Jewish person for a very, very long time, and I feel very strongly that it should remain that way,” she said.
While the U.S. Census doesn’t track religion, other reports show the district has a relatively large Jewish population that has shifted somewhat in recent years.
Nearly 12% of people living in the 9th District in 2024 were Jewish, according to a survey supported by the nonprofit Jewish Electorate Institute, a proportion comparable to the 10th Congressional District, which has been represented by U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, who is Jewish, for most of the past 13 years.
According to a separate report, the Jewish United Fund’s 2020 Jewish Chicago population study, a cluster of near north suburbs, including Skokie and Evanston, was the only region in the Chicago area that saw a decline in the number of Jewish households in the 2010s. Much of that area has long been a core part of the district, though it does not neatly map onto the district’s boundary lines.
About 6 in 10 district residents are white, and 15% identify as Asian, the largest racial minority in the area. More than a quarter of the district’s residents were born outside the United States, and nearly 15% are Hispanic or Latino, according to estimates in the 2024 American Community Survey.
Nevertheless, the district’s deep Jewish history resonates.
Joshua Shanes, a professor at the University of California at Davis who has written about modern Jewish politics and religion and lives in Skokie, said the competition between Biss and Fine is part of a larger discussion about “what does it mean to be a Jewish representative? What does it mean to represent Jewish interests?”
“In this climate, having AIPAC be behind you is not going to be good for the politics. It’s good in Rogers Park, and it’s good in parts of Skokie. It’s not good in other parts of Skokie, and it’s certainly not good in Evanston,” said Shanes, who said he will support Biss. Taking a stand for Israel or Palestinians in the war in Gaza has become both a political litmus test and a policy position with real implications for how money is spent, he noted.
Late last month, U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, the Republican head of the House Education & the Workforce Committee, asked Biss to address the city’s decision not to ask Evanston police to clear the Northwestern student protests for Gaza in 2024, linking the move to “antisemitic activity on college campuses in Evanston.”
Biss also, responding to a report in the publication Jewish Insider, said he “never sought — and would never accept” AIPAC’s support for his campaign. He believes in Israel’s right to exist, recognizing a Palestinian state and halting some weapons sales to Israel, he wrote in a Substack blog post.
Fine, for her part, said at a forum last month that she believes in a two-state solution but not in “tying Israel’s hands right now.”
While she has said she hasn’t sought their endorsement, AIPAC has sent fundraising messages in support of Fine. Last quarter, she received hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors who had previously donated to AIPAC or its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, according to an analysis of contribution data.
Biss, a former assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, is backed by the 314 Action Fund, a fundraising committee that works to elect Democrats with science backgrounds. That group previously received at least $1 million from the United Democracy Project in 2024. The Biss campaign declined to respond to an inquiry about the connection between the fundraising groups.
Also last month, Bruce Leon, a politically moderate former candidate in the race who is Orthodox Jewish, took his name off the ballot after what he described as pressure from AIPAC to consolidate support behind Fine. Leon then declined to back Fine and endorsed Andrew, who is not Jewish.
At a forum in a church basement in Evanston on Wednesday, Biss criticized Fine over the support she has received from donors aligned with AIPAC, drawing applause from parts of the audience.
“AIPAC and their candidate, Laura Fine, have made clear through their behavior that they think the voters don’t like AIPAC. They’ve done everything they can to hide the fact that AIPAC is supporting Laura, even to the point of being disingenuous about it,” Biss said in a separate interview. “And that matches my experience in the community, not that it’s unanimous, but that the great majority of people disagree with AIPAC’s hardline position.”
Last week, a newly formed super PAC, Elect Chicago Women, started airing television ads for Fine and for Melissa Bean, a candidate in the mostly northwest-suburban 8th Congressional District. Biss’ campaign in a statement said the group was “suspected to be backed” by AIPAC.
There’s no public evidence proving or disproving the Biss campaign’s suggestion. The organization didn’t return an emailed request for comment and repeated phone calls to a number filed with the Federal Election Commission led to a busy signal. AIPAC itself didn’t return a request for comment, and Martin Ritter, a Chicago-based leader of the organization, declined to comment.
“I did not know about those ads until somebody told me about them this morning,” Fine said after the Wednesday forum. She said she did not know the name of the group behind them. “It’s very odd to all of a sudden see an ad when you don’t know where it came from, as a candidate.”
The new Fine ad makes no mention of Israel, though that’s not necessarily a marker that they weren’t a product of the pro-Israel group. In New Jersey, the super PAC affiliated with AIPAC ran ads attacking a candidate in last week’s Democratic congressional primary without ever mentioning Israel.
Asked directly whether she’d acknowledge the appearance of AIPAC’s support as an organization, Fine said, “I’ve been very honest and upfront to the fact that many people who have donated to AIPAC have also donated to my campaign. I’m a Jewish woman who supports the safety and security of Israel, so that’s not — it’s not surprising to me.” In a previous interview, she said she believed “people are giving AIPAC too much power” in saying the group is influencing the race.
Some candidates also pointed to larger demographic changes in recent decades.
“This congressional district is really considered the Ellis Island of the Midwest,” Huynh said. “We’re very intentional in terms of making sure we meet folks where they’re at.”
Ald. Silverstein said she would be “very concerned if it wasn’t a Jewish seat.”
“Because the makeup of this district has a very large Jewish community that’s nuanced, I think it’s important that we have a Jewish representative that understands our needs firsthand,” Silverstein said.
Carol Ronen, who is part of state party leadership as a representative for the 9th Congressional District on the Democratic State Central Committee, also said she’s endorsing Fine, calling her a “natural and normal extension of the kind of politics that Jan brought to the district.”
Schakowsky herself has endorsed Biss.
“It’s a big subset of the district, but so are lots of people,” Cohen, the economist, said. “What it means to be Jewish in this district is all over the map. That is clear from this fight.”
“There cannot be one Jewish vote anymore,” he said.
Olivia Olander
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