PERSON: Daniel Biss

City of Evanston

Mayor

Daniel Kálmán Biss (born August 27, 1977) is an American mathematician and politician serving as mayor of Evanston, Illinois. He is a former member of both the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate.

Prior to pursuing a political career, Biss was an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago from 2002 to 2008.

A member of the Democratic Party, Biss began his political career by running unsuccessfully as his party’s nominee for the 17th district seat in the Illinois House of Representatives in 2008. Biss was successful in 2010 at his second attempt at running for the Illinois House of Representatives, representing its 17th district from 2011 to 2013. In 2012, Biss was elected to the Illinois Senate, and represented its 9th district from 2013 through 2019. Biss unsuccessfully ran as a candidate in the Democratic primary for Governor of Illinois in the 2018 election. In 2021, he won the election for mayor of Evanston in the city’s consolidated primary.

In 2025, he announced his candidacy for Illinois’s 9th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives, seeking to succeed retiring Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky in the 2026 midterm election.

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