Why it Matters

Rep. Jan Schakowsky's retirement after 26 years in Congress has turned the Illinois 9th Congressional District 2026 race into one of the most expensive — and contentious — House primaries in the country. Seventeen Democrats and four Republicans have filed to run, but the real battle is being waged in the Democratic primary, where roughly $11 million has flooded in and outside groups are spending millions more.

The Jan Schakowsky retirement, announced May 5, 2025, opened a seat she had held since 1999. Rated solid Democratic by both The Cook Political Report and Inside Elections, the IL-9 congressional race is functionally decided in the March 17, 2026 primary. Schakowsky won her last three general elections by 37 to 42 points. Whoever emerges from the Illinois 2026 primary election will almost certainly head to Washington.

The question isn't which party wins. It's which vision of the Democratic Party — and whose money — prevails.

The Illinois 9th District Democratic Primary: Three Candidates, Three Funding Models

The Illinois 9th District candidates 2026 field has crystallized around three frontrunners, each powered by a starkly different donor base.

Daniel Biss: The Establishment Progressive

Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss has raised $2.54 million, mostly from individual contributions ($2.43 million) with $108,809 from other committees, including J Street PAC. He secured Schakowsky's personal endorsement in January 2026 and leads in a late February PPP poll at 24 percent, with roughly a quarter of voters still undecided.

Biss also benefits from outside spending. The 3.14 Action Fund, a pro-science hybrid PAC, has spent over $158,000 on independent expenditures supporting him through mailers featuring Sen. Elizabeth Warren's endorsement.

His financial profile: disciplined spending, healthy cash-on-hand, and a mix of grassroots and institutional support.

Kat Abughazaleh: The Small-Dollar Juggernaut

The Gen Z journalist and political content creator has raised the most of any candidate: $2.70 million, with nearly all of it — $2.70 million — from individual donors. Her PAC money totals just $2,250. Nearly two-thirds of her individual contributions came from small donors giving less than $200, making her the most grassroots-funded candidate in the race.

The catch: she spent $1.38 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone — more than four times any other candidate — leaving her lagging in cash-on-hand heading into the final stretch. She is backed by Justice Democrats and PAL PAC, progressive groups that have fueled insurgent campaigns nationally.

Laura Fine: The AIPAC-Linked Fundraiser

State Sen. Laura Fine has assembled a competitive war chest, and her FEC filings show she and Biss led in cash-on-hand entering 2026. But it's the outside money that has made her candidacy the most controversial in the Illinois 9th District Democratic primary.

According to The American Prospect, 65 donors who previously gave to AIPAC or its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, have also donated to Fine. AIPAC board president Michael Tuchin hosted a private fundraiser for her at his Los Angeles law office, per The Intercept — despite Fine's public efforts to distance herself from the group.

More significantly, a super PAC called Elect Chicago Women has spent $2.3 million supporting Fine and attacking her opponents, per the Daily Northwestern. The Biss campaign filed an FEC complaint alleging illegal coordination between Fine's campaign and the super PAC, pointing to the timing: Fine's campaign stopped running its own TV ads on Feb. 1, and Elect Chicago Women began airing ads supporting her on Feb. 4.

Fine's campaign has denied the allegations and filed its own FEC complaint against Biss.

Mike Simmons: Running Fourth

State Sen. Mike Simmons — the first openly gay member of the Illinois Senate — trails the top three in both fundraising and polling. His candidacy is rooted in lived experience with poverty and housing insecurity, but breaking through in a 17-candidate field with limited resources has proved difficult.

What Schakowsky Built — and What the District Wants Next

Understanding the money flowing into the Illinois 9th Congressional District 2026 race requires understanding what Schakowsky represented for more than two decades.

Her legislative legacy centered on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where she served as Ranking Member of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee. She championed prescription drug pricing transparency — her Medicare Fair Drug Pricing Act provisions were enacted in 2022 — and led on consumer protection, product safety, and data privacy. In the 119th Congress, she introduced bills on a public health insurance option, medical device recall improvements, and recognition of nurse anesthetists.

Her voting record was a straight line: 449 votes cast in the 119th Congress, zero against her party. Zero cosponsored Republican bills. A missed vote rate of 0.3 percent.

Her fundraising reflected traditional Democratic coalitions. In the 2026 cycle, she received 326 contributions — 84 percent from individual donors, most giving between $50 and $500, supplemented by labor and healthcare PACs including the American Association of Nurse Practitioners PAC and Local 881 United Food and Commercial Workers PAC.

One notable overlap between her legislative and fundraising activity: the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology's CRNA-PAC contributed $35,000 to Schakowsky across four election cycles, including $2,500 in March 2025 — the same year she introduced H.Res.1019 recognizing CRNAs. The AANA spent an estimated $1.4 million on lobbying in 2025 on issues including CRNA recognition.

The Fault Lines: Israel, Identity, and Generational Change in the Illinois 9th Congressional District 2026

The district's demographics explain why this race has attracted so much national money and attention.

IL-9 is highly educated (over 50 percent hold bachelor's degrees), relatively affluent (median household income around $90,087), and genuinely multiracial. According to the Chicago Tribune, roughly 12 percent of the district identified as Jewish in 2024 — a community with an almost unbroken tradition of electing Jewish representatives. But the district's Asian population, at roughly 15 percent, now exceeds the Jewish share, and the Hispanic population stands at about 13 percent.

The Israel-Palestine divide is the sharpest fault line. Biss and Fine are both Jewish; Abughazaleh is the granddaughter of Palestinian Nakba survivors, as reported by Haaretz. The AIPAC-linked spending behind Fine and the progressive PAC support behind Abughazaleh have turned this local primary into a proxy fight over the national Democratic Party's direction on Middle East policy.

As Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th Ward) told the Tribune: "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."

The Bottom Line

The IL-9 congressional race is a case study in how money shapes Democratic primaries in safe blue seats. Three distinct funding models — Biss's institutional-progressive blend, Abughazaleh's small-dollar machine, and Fine's AIPAC-adjacent war chest — are competing not just for a congressional seat, but for the soul of a district navigating demographic change, generational turnover, and the most divisive foreign policy debate in the Democratic Party.

Whoever wins on March 17 will inherit Schakowsky's seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee pipeline and a district that expects its representative to fight.

Access the Legis1 platform for comprehensive political news, data, and insights.