U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston), a stalwart of Illinois Democratic politics and a progressive voice on Capitol Hill since the late 1990s, announced Monday she will not seek a 15th term as representative for Illinois’ 9th District, drawing the curtain on a congressional tenure that has spanned over a quarter century.
The announcement came during her annual Ultimate Women’s Power Lunch, a Chicago fundraiser she has hosted since 2001.
“To be an organizer, to be a fighter, that will never end,” Schakowsky said. “But I have made the decision that I am not going to seek reelection.”
In front of a packed ballroom at the Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk, Schakowsky said that while her congressional career would soon come to an end, she would continue to “be a badass.”
Her decision follows weeks of speculation about her political future, sparked in part by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) late April announcement that he will not seek another term. Though Schakowsky did not directly tie her decision to Durbin’s, the timing marks a generational shift within the state’s Democratic establishment.
When Schakowsky was first elected to Congress in 1998, she became one of just 58 women serving in the House of Representatives and one of two representing Illinois.
“Now the men’s club delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives will have a woman’s voice,” Schakowsky told the Chicago Tribune in March 1998 after she defeated then-state Sen. Howard Carroll and future Gov. JB Pritzker in a three-way primary for the seat’s Democratic bid.
A speaker at Monday’s event, Pritzker joked about losing that race ahead of Schakowsky’s announcement.
“I feel like I’m at ‘Politicians Anonymous,’” Pritzker said. “I’m JB Pritzker, and I lost to Jan Schakowsky. And now I’m a Jan fan.”
He added that Schakowsky taught him the best lesson in politics: “how to accept defeat when the best woman for the job wins.”
Following seven years as a member of Illinois’ General Assembly, Schakowsky all but secured her ticket to Washington with her primary victory, given the district had not sent a Republican to Congress since 1947. But that promising precipice was neither the start nor the finish of a career that became synonymous with grassroots organizing and liberal advocacy.
In fact, Schakowsky’s record of championing those she believed needed her help began long before she entered the political arena.
As a sophomore at Sullivan High School in Rogers Park, Schakowsky organized students to visit a classmate she hardly knew when he was hospitalized for an extended period.
Daniel Joseph, a former bus service supervisor with the Chicago Transit Authority and one-time Evanston business owner, attended high school with Schakowsky, but missed out on large portions of the experience as he underwent treatment for ulcerative colitis.
“Everyone knows her as Congresswoman Schakowsky,” Joseph said. “But when I met her, she was just Janice Danoff.”
Though he admits he didn’t know her well at the time, Joseph said he remembers Schakowsky caring about the same issues she would later work to address in Congress, including elderly care and health policy.
While their paths didn’t cross much immediately after high school, Joseph said he never forgot the kindness Schakowsky showed him, a gesture that stayed with him for decades. It also prompted him to pitch in to her campaign when he heard Schakowsky had won the Democratic primary in 1998.
“I was on the periphery, but she brought me back in,” Joseph said.
Contributing to some of the campaign’s “grunt work,” Joseph said he distributed flyers and posters to encourage residents to vote for his former classmate.
Ahead of that year’s general election, Joseph introduced Schakowsky to Randy Neufeld, then the head of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, who was advocating for policies to protect and support cyclists.
A biking enthusiast himself, Joseph helped operate the Turin Bicycle Co-Op on Davis Street in the 1970s, and used cycling as a means of regaining strength after having his large intestine removed.
During Schakowsky’s election night watch party at Evanston’s Holiday Inn on Sherman Avenue, Joseph told The Daily in 1998 that the newly elected congresswoman had made him an unusual campaign promise: that she would learn to ride a bike “effectively.”
Now, almost three decades later, he clarified that while she technically knew how to ride, “she was never confident about it.”
Schakowsky told The Daily on Monday that she never improved her biking abilities as she promised Joseph nearly 27 years ago, but now that she’s retiring and no longer drives, she said it’s “the perfect time” to try.
While Schakowsky’s two-wheeled performances may have left something to be desired, her connection with Joseph mirrored the relationships she would go on to build with residents throughout Illinois’ 9th District and beyond, as she pedaled forward policies aimed at improving affordability and quality of life.
Jonathan Samuels, a longtime Schakowsky staffer who went on to serve in former President Barack Obama’s administration, joined her campaign around the same time Joseph began volunteering. Unlike the bike seller-turned-CTA-operative, Samuels quickly made getting Schakowsky elected a full-time mission.
“She gave me my career, my professional life and each thing that happened to me along the way,” Samuels said.
Samuels first encountered Schakowsky in the fall of 1997 while volunteering with the YMCA during a march against gun violence that began on Lake Street and ended at Fountain Square.
Somewhere along the route, Schakowsky approached the recent college graduate and asked what cause the children he was marching with were promoting.
By the time they reached the end of the march, she had urged Samuels to join her team. When he told her he’d stop by the campaign office “sometime,” she suggested he come by immediately. And he did.
“The rest is history,” Samuels said.
After a year working for her campaign in Evanston, Schakowsky invited Samuels to join her Washington staff.
He agreed, but said he would only stay for one year as he had long dreamed of attending graduate school and becoming an environmental lawyer.
Samuels would ultimately stay on Schakowsky’s staff for eight years.
While he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he decided to abandon his law school aspirations in favor of an extended congressional stint, he said from the moment he entered Schakowsky’s first office in Washington, he didn’t consider leaving.
One of his favorite aspects of working for Schakowsky, Samuels said, was that as a representative from an electorally “safe” district, she had more freedom to support emerging candidates who advanced progressive causes.
Samuels eventually rose to become Schakowsky’s deputy chief of staff, but took multiple leaves of absence during his time with her office — including one to work on Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign.
He saw parallels between Obama’s rise and Schakowsky’s. Like her, the future president won a three-way Democratic primary in which he was an underdog on paper.
Samuels recalled early conversations with Schakowsky as she weighed which candidate to support in that 2004 Senate race. Once she made her decision, he said, she was “all-in.”
Obama repeatedly called Schakowsky’s endorsement “the most important he ever got,” Samuels said.
He also recalled a moment early in Obama’s career when Schakowsky expressed her belief in his potential at the highest level. During a sit-in-style protest in February 2004 — organized to push former President George W. Bush to address the rebellion in Haiti — Schakowsky joined members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the White House, wearing an Obama pin.
When Bush looked puzzled, she told him, “It says Obama.”
And when the president said he didn’t know who that was, Samuels said Schakowsky replied: “You will.”
“Her support of him had an impact on his trajectory and on an incredible outcome for the country,” Samuels said.
But Schakowsky’s work with Obama didn’t end upon his election to the Senate. Years later, when he introduced one of the most sweeping, career-defining reforms of his presidency in the Affordable Care Act, Schakowsky became one of its chief proponents.
A staunch ally of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Schakowsky had previously been named a chief deputy whip in December 2006. That role positioned her to help marshal support for the landmark bill within the Democratic caucus.
Just as she had corralled her classmates to visit Joseph in the hospital decades earlier, Schakowsky’s organizational prowess helped thrust the ACA across the finish line.
“Passing the Affordable Care Act was nothing short of a Herculean effort,” Samuels said. “It really took all hands on deck.”
She even added a few provisions of her own, one of which aimed at improving transparency in nursing homes.
While it’s always been at the forefront of her policy work, improving healthcare is not the only progressive issue Schakowsky left an imprint upon.
A leading voice in consumer advocacy, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ equality and other megalithic topics in the human rights conversation, Schakowsky’s priorities have been far-reaching as she sought to appease a wide-ranging constituency.
“She takes so much pride in and celebrates the rich diversity of the district,” Samuels said. “It’s such a badge of honor for her.”
During her Monday announcement, Schakowsky joked that some of the best work of her career took place at Evanston’s Jewel Osco, where she could talk to her constituents one-on-one about the issues they cared about.
Samuels added that procuring an excellent staff within the district has always been one of Schakowsky’s priorities.
Ra Joy served as Schakowsky’s suburban director and grants coordinator between 2001 and 2007, a post that he said helped springboard his own career trajectory as he learned more about grassroots organizing.
“Having the opportunity to work for Jan is like wanting to learn more about kung fu and having a chance to study with Bruce Lee,” Joy said.
The same advocacy Joy was thrilled to be a part of did, at times, lead Schakowsky to conflict with the law. She was briefly arrested during an immigration-related protest in 2013, and again after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion established under Roe v. Wade.
She referred to her second arrest as “good trouble,” echoing the late civil rights leader U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.
Schakowsky has also been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. Like many progressive Democrats, she skipped both of his inaugurations, his first State of the Union address in 2018 and, most recently, his joint-address to Congress in protest.
“I refuse to normalize President Donald Trump and his loathsome language and actions,” she wrote in a 2018 statement, explaining her decision to recuse herself from the State of the Union. “The American people have been subjected to a year of racist, erratic, and divisive behavior from their Commander in Chief, and I refuse to accept that as the new normal.”
During his first term, Schakowsky helped host several local events aimed at resisting the Trump administration’s reforms.
At one event in 2016, just weeks after Trump’s election, Schakowsky and now-Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss told residents that important work could still be done locally, despite the gridlock in Washington.
The two have continued working closely in recent years, and Schakowsky endorsed Biss during the launch of his second mayoral campaign in January.
Biss, now seen as a potential candidate to succeed Schakowsky, told The Daily ahead of her announcement that he hoped she would run again, calling her an “extraordinary” leader for Evanston and the nation.
Schakowsky did not endorse any potential candidate to fill her seat following the end of her term.
“While I will miss serving the people of the 9th District in an elected capacity, I am not going anywhere,” Schakowsky said in a statement following her announcement. “For the remainder of my term, and beyond, I vow to continue taking every opportunity possible to fight for my community and my country.”
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