RYAN OTTIGNON: It’s Illinois’ primary Election Day Tuesday, and people around the country are watching the battle to represent the sprawling 9th Congressional District. But what exactly should you be looking for on and after race night? And who’s actually voting in this three-county district?
Over the last few days, I talked to nine journalists and analysts who have been covering the seat to figure that out.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Ryan Ottignon. Welcome to The Open Seat, a limited edition podcast series exploring the once-in-a-generation race to represent Evanston and surrounding municipalities in Congress.
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RYAN OTTIGNON: Let’s start with the 9th District as a whole. It covers much of the Far North Side of Chicago, bounded in the south by Buena Park. It also includes Cook County suburbs like Evanston, Skokie and Glenview, plus a gerrymandered stretch of Lake County and the entirety of Algonquin Township in McHenry County.
Recent polling commissioned by the Evanston RoundTable indicates that two out of 15 Democratic candidates are within the margin of error for first place — Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and progressive content creator Kat Abughazaleh — though third-place State Sen. Laura Fine (D-Glenview) has historically also been considered a front-runner.
These candidates have vied for their voter share in a myriad of ways. Perhaps most quantifiable is their fight for geography, including Chicago’s wards and suburban municipalities.
We’ll start in the westernmost suburbs of Lake and McHenry Counties. Russell Lissau of the Daily Herald, a newspaper that serves the area, told me that this western half of the district has been largely ignored.
RUSSELL LISSAU: I see very few 9th District campaign signs out where I live in Arlington Heights. I haven’t heard of much door-to-door campaigning out this way, you know, in northwestern Cook County and Lake County and certainly in that bit of McHenry. The candidates seem to be very much focused on what has been the historical core of the 9th District.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Compared to this core of Chicago and inner suburbs like Evanston, the outer suburbs have trended more conservative, and have been a stated target of Laura Fine.
It’s a difficult crowd to pull, Lissau said, having only been a part of the 9th District since a 2021 redistricting.
RUSSELL LISSAU: Out here, there are a lot of people who — they might live in the 9th now, but they still consider themselves 10th District people, because for 20 years, parts of the suburbs were the 10th District.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Evanston Now’s Matthew Eadie noted that Fine has, in part, appealed to this voter base by holding rallies with figures from the 10th District.
MATTHEW EADIE: She is campaigning with (U.S. Rep.) Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), who is obviously the congressman from the 10th District, and he used to represent a large portion of what’s now the 9th District. And so I think what she’s saying is like, ‘Yeah, the districts were redrawn, but this has a lot of voters, a lot of suburban voters who are also highly engaged.’ I think she’s targeting them for sure.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Still, the area has not been of much stated interest to the other front-runners. The reason appears strategic: Only about 10% of Democratic primary voters live in Lake and McHenry Counties, according to estimates from three analysts I talked to.
One of those analysts goes by his first name, Cole, for safety reasons, and is an Uptown resident who created illinoisforecast.com. Based on a number of factors, including geographic information, his model predicts that Biss will win most of the precincts west of Glenview instead.
COLE: I think some people see him as a moderate, I think some people see him as a progressive, and he’s doing well enough within both those lanes that I think that could be strong Biss territory, particularly as Fine plummets in the polls.
RYAN OTTIGNON: One western precinct in Cole’s model flips toward Abughazaleh, too, which he attributed to occasional progressive pockets in more moderate townships.
Where are these voters coming from? It’s unclear. But Matthew Eadie noted that it could boil down to Abughazaleh’s nonestablishment messaging.
MATTHEW EADIE: I do think that there’s something to be said about the fact that she is a little bit of an unknown. She’s presenting herself as this more like populist, left-wing outsider. And for voters who maybe aren’t in Cook County and don’t really align themselves with the politics of Cook County historically, maybe there’s some voters there who are looking at this and saying, ‘I don’t want somebody who’s the machine-endorsed candidate, even if they’re the progressive machine-endorsed candidate.’
RYAN OTTIGNON: Further east, though, the messaging is about as establishment as you can get. That’s Glenview, Laura Fine’s home turf.
The moderate is generally considered popular in the suburb, but so is the ever-recognizable Biss, her main competition there.
A surface-level glance shows that Fine rather than Biss bagged endorsements from local Democratic parties in both Glenview’s Northfield Township and Maine Township just south. But POLITICO reporter and Illinois Playbook author Shia Kapos told me that it’s doubtful they’ll amount to much voter movement.
SHIA KAPOS: Part of me thinks it’s interesting to insiders, the people who really follow it closely. But I think generally endorsements don’t matter. Maybe if there are a lot of people in a race — like some of these races, there are 15 and 13 people in different congressional district races — maybe you decide, ‘I’m going to vote for, you know, Daniel Biss because (U.S.) Sen. Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed him.’ But generally I don’t think people are doing that.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Zenith Research founding partner Adam Carlson told me that Glenview will likely only hold about 7% of the voter share, so a win in Glenview for Fine wouldn’t amount to much on its own. But political strategist Frank Calabrese noted it’s a solid gauge for her success in engaging the critical suburban vote.
FRANK CALABRESE: Northfield Township — if she’s not doing great there, and if Daniel Biss is doing pretty well there, or Kat (Abughazaleh), I would say, ‘Well, Laura Fine’s not going to win.’
RYAN OTTIGNON: Across the primary northern Cook County suburbs, which Glenview forms the western edge of, Biss’ potential success against candidates like Fine could come down to name recognition — a factor that will likely play an outsized role in this race, Alex Harrison of the Evanston RoundTable told me.
ALEX HARRISON: His greatest advantage is that he has a lot of name recognition built in everywhere from his 2018 gubernatorial run, and I think that that’s what gave him the front-runner status early. And it’s not been something that anyone has quite been able to take out from under him yet.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Biss also won the ballot lottery, appearing before all other candidates on voter forms. Such ample recognition carries east into Skokie, Evanston and Wilmette, some of the most packed municipalities in terms of competition between well-polling candidates — and the places where name recognition could be a negative trait for Biss.
For instance, Biss’ connections to the controversial Ryan Field project in Evanston’s typically moderate 7th Ward could sway already-skeptical north Evanston and Wilmette voters toward other candidates, including former FBI hostage negotiator Phil Andrew, a Wilmette native.
And Laura Fine’s campaign has occasionally sought to connect Biss to controversial administrative actions within Evanston/Skokie School District 65, which could cause similar sways, including toward Skokie school board member Bushra Amiwala.
Joe Coughlin of The Record North Shore, which covers regional communities including Wilmette and Skokie, told me that both Andrew and Amiwala can expect to pick up votes from their respective communities.
It’s unlikely, however, that such issues alone will amount to any substantial eating into Biss’ vote share, Alex Harrison told me.
ALEX HARRISON: I think that there’s also a risk of overreading it. Biss didn’t need those voters in north Evanston to win mayoral re-election, and I don’t think he will necessarily need them again in order to win this one, especially when the electorate is so much larger than just Evanston now.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Evanston and surrounding suburbs also hold key populations for opposing front-runners. Skokie has one of the highest Assyrian American populations in the country, with key community organizations like Assyrian American PAC and Vote Assyrian that have endorsed Laura Fine. And Kat Abughazaleh’s campaign rests on the backbone of the youth vote — targeting, in part, Northwestern students.
For Abughazaleh, it’s a tough electorate to draw, Harrison indicated.
ALEX HARRISON: The problem with Northwestern in particular is that it is a very wealthy private school that largely draws in students from out of state. You know, I can tell you from my time at Northwestern not too long ago — you know, I’m from out of state and I was one of the only people that I knew at Northwestern who did register to vote in Illinois.
And so I think that there’s actually a pretty limited pool of votes that Kat could gain from Northwestern, unless she were to energize people enough to change their voter registration to Illinois, which is pretty easy. And as far as any race that you would want to do it for is concerned, this is a pretty good one.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Abughazaleh’s base can primarily be found in Chicago. Like Northwestern, she’s also targeted Loyola University in campaign materials. The Loyola Phoenix’s Ava Witherite told me Amiwala also visited the Chicago campus, which straddles the 48th and 49th Wards.
Among progressive voters, Abughazaleh competes for much of Chicago’s Far North Side — which Cole, Frank Calabrese and Adam Carlson agreed will hold an estimated 40% of the 9th District’s votes. Her primary competitors are State Sen. Mike Simmons (D-Chicago), and to a lesser extent, State Rep. Hoan Huynh (D-Chicago).
Fourth-place Simmons is perhaps the biggest threat, Cole said.
COLE: That has a large overlap with his current Senate district. He lives in the 49th. A lot of his base is there, so I think Simmons could be a real issue for her, especially if he is surging, which he is indicating on social media that he is, but we’ll see. That could be a liability for her in Chicago.
RYAN OTTIGNON: In some affluent lakefront precincts, Cole also noted Biss is providing a rather competitive challenge. But perhaps the biggest problem for Abughazaleh’s dominance of Chicago and its massive vote share is the 50th Ward and west Rogers Park, which has a significant Orthodox Jewish population that trends more moderate.
50th Ward Democratic committeeman Bruce Leon dropped out of the race and endorsed Phil Andrew, though Frank Calabrese told me the Orthodox community remains divided, with a lean toward Laura Fine.
FRANK CALABRESE: I’m close to some rabbis in that community, and I was trying to see if Phil Andrew has a lot of support in that community. He has some, but the rabbis are expecting the Orthodox Jewish community to vote for Laura Fine.
RYAN OTTIGNON: With Biss popular in Evanston just north, and Abughazaleh popular to the east, the 50th Ward — especially its easternmost precincts — is an area that multiple journalists and analysts told me they will be watching to gauge how each of the three front-runners are doing.
Zooming out, we’re watching over a packed bellwether primary in one of the most politically engaged districts in the country. Multiple people I talked to predicted the winner would take victory with 30%, 25% or even a little over 20% of the vote. Each front-runner has their base, and, as Russell Lissau told me, it’s “everybody spoiling it for everybody else.”
In short: It’s hectic.
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RYAN OTTIGNON: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Ryan Ottignon. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Open Seat. This episode was reported and produced by me, Ryan Ottignon.
The Audio Editor is Ruby Dowling. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Yong-Yu Huang, Femi Horrall and Jonah McClure. The Editor in Chief is Emily Lichty.
Our theme music is “Revolution” by Xennial, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
Follow us on X and Instagram @thedailynu.
Email: [email protected]
Bluesky: @ryaninevanston.bsky.social
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— The Open Seat: Cats for Kat campus fellows discuss Kat Abughazaleh’s student mobilization group
— ‘Abughamentum’ making ground against Biss, 9th District poll indicates
