Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston, Ill., won the Democratic nomination for a congressional district that includes northern suburbs of Chicago, The Associated Press said on Tuesday, emerging from a turbulent and crowded contest that focused heavily on disagreements over Israel.
Mr. Biss, a former state senator who has been Evanston’s mayor since 2021, was an early front-runner in the race in the Ninth District to replace Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat who is retiring after nearly three decades in office.
Mr. Biss faced competition from more than a dozen contenders, including Kat Abughazaleh, a content creator and former researcher for a left-wing media organization, and Laura Fine, a state senator.
Mr. Biss won endorsements from Senators Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; the Illinois attorney general, Kwame Raoul; and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
He is favored to win the general election in November against the Republican nominee.
The Ninth District is a heavily gerrymandered district that stretches from the lakefront of the Far North Side of Chicago through the college town of Evanston to the city’s northwest suburbs, and its voters are generally liberal and highly educated. With a significant Jewish population in the district, campaign donations tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization, and the candidates’ positions on Israel dominated the race.
In the final days of the campaign, candidates scrambled to distinguish themselves amid a flood of cash from groups tied to AIPAC. Super PACs with links to AIPAC spent at least $20 million in several primary contests in Illinois, trying to bolster candidates they deemed pro-Israel.
Mr. Biss, who is Jewish and the grandson of Holocaust survivors, was the subject of negative ads and mailers from those groups, in a rare instance of AIPAC involving itself in a race with two Jewish candidates. Mr. Biss occupied a middle ground in his position on Israel, falling short of calling Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas a genocide, but saying that he opposed unconditional aid to Israel from the United States.
Ms. Fine, 59, who is also Jewish, staked out a more conservative position, saying that she does not believe aid should be conditional. Super PACs with ties to AIPAC spent millions in support of Ms. Fine’s candidacy.
Ms. Abughazaleh, another front-runner in the race, said that Israel’s conduct in Gaza amounted to a genocide and argued for an end to U.S. military support for Israel. A Palestinian American, Ms. Abughazaleh was endorsed by Track AIPAC, a group opposed to the Israel lobby.
Voters said that they were also convinced by Mr. Biss’s experience as an elected official and legislator, and by his vocal opposition to the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Illinois. Last fall, Mr. Biss regularly confronted ICE agents at an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Ill., and in Evanston.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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