Meet Daniel
Daniel Biss is a dad, husband, mathematician, and a longtime community leader.
As a legislator in the Illinois House and Senate, and now as mayor of Evanston, Daniel has delivered pragmatic progressive solutions covering a wide range of issues.
He has the proven record of not just fighting the important fights, but winning. He will do the same as our champion in Congress.
He has built coalitions and brought people together to solve problems that have gone unaddressed for too long. As a legislator, that includes passing protections for LGBTQ+ youth, enacting major abortion rights legislation, providing retirement savings options to hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans who otherwise wouldn’t have access, and strengthening technology privacy requirements to protect civil liberties.
As mayor, Daniel has gone up against money and entrenched power to enact desperately-needed campaign finance reform and pass a first-in-the-state Healthy Buildings Ordinance to curb carbon emissions. While others talk about reform, Daniel worked with police and community leaders to create the Crisis Alternative Response Evanston (C.A.R.E.) program, a non-police response to low-risk service calls, where social workers and others have already answered more than 1,500 calls dealing with mental health emergencies and other needs that have helped Evanston achieve a record decline in violent crime.
And Daniel continues to stand up to Donald Trump on immigration, preserving access to abortion, expanding mental health services, and more.
Daniel grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, and moved to Chicago to join the University of Chicago’s mathematics faculty after completing his Bachelor’s degree at Harvard University and his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was first drawn to activism at the age of 25, speaking out to oppose the Iraq War and organizing support for progressive candidates and ideas. Through that work, Daniel became more engaged with the critical issues facing Illinois, leading him to run for state legislature.
After serving in both the Illinois House and Senate, Daniel was elected mayor of Evanston in 2021. His wife, Karin, is a former Peace Corps volunteer and a professor at National Louis University. They live in Evanston with their two children, Arya and Sparrow.
The Mayor leads the city government. In some cities the mayor runs city departments, proposes the budget, and appoints department heads. In others a hired city manager runs daily operations, and the mayor leads the city council and represents the city.