Daniel Biss stepped down as Evanston’s mayor Sunday, Oct. 18, ending more than five years in office as the city continues its reparations program and a citywide zoning rewrite.
Biss, 49, resigned at 11:59 p.m., according to a city announcement. Ald. Clare Kelly of the 1st Ward took over as mayor pro tem Monday, Oct. 19. The City Council will vote on an acting mayor at its Monday, Oct. 26, meeting, after Kelly canceled a special meeting Biss had called for Oct. 19.
Voters will pick a permanent replacement in a special election. The primary is set for Feb. 23, 2027, with a runoff on April 6, 2027. Several candidates are running, including former alders, City Clerk Stephanie Mendoza and a former opponent of Biss, Evanston Now reported.
Biss, Evanston's 22nd mayor, is hoping to be in Washington by January. He won the Democratic primary for Illinois' 9th Congressional District in March with 29.4% of the vote, topping at least 14 other candidates, according to The Record North Shore. He faces Republican John Elleson of Arlington Heights on Tuesday, Nov. 3, in a district Rep. Jan Schakowsky won by 37 percentage points in 2024.
He timed his resignation to trigger the special election, he said during a June 23 State of the City Address at Evanston SPACE, so the city would spend as little time as possible with a mayor voters did not choose, The Daily Northwestern reported.
At his final council meeting Monday, Oct. 12, alders unanimously passed a resolution honoring Biss. City Manager Luke Stowe presented him with a ceremonial gavel and plaque. Alds. Krissie Harris (2nd), Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th), Bobby Burns (5th) and Juan Geracaris (9th) each offered personal thanks, Evanston Now reported.
Mendoza called Biss's 2022 appointment of Geracaris to the council meaningful to Evanston's Latino community. "I think you opened the doors of possibility for a community that I think felt that maybe, sitting up here, was not for them, and I'm glad that you did that," Mendoza said at the meeting.
Kelly, who has publicly clashed with Biss on major issues, kept her remarks brief. She wished him luck representing the 9th Congressional District, then presented the formal resolution and posed for photos.
In a Thursday, Oct. 15, interview with Evanston Now, Biss reflected on the ambiguity of a job that pays just over $25,000 but carries full-time expectations. Evanston operates under a council-manager form of government, with the city manager running day-to-day operations. Biss, a former state legislator and gubernatorial candidate, took a more activist approach, making his policy views well known.
He identified housing, fiscal pressures and federal tensions as the top challenges facing his successor. An ongoing zoning rewrite, the Envision Evanston 2045 plan and the city's reparations program all remain unfinished. The U.S. Department of Justice moved in June to join a lawsuit challenging the reparations initiative, which distributes up to $25,000 to Black residents who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969 or their direct descendants.
"I feel incredibly proud of all that we've done these last five and a half years and I'm also cognizant of the fact we've set in motion a lot of things, which will take years to see through," Biss told Evanston Now on Thursday, Oct. 15. "There's a lot of really significant ongoing work to bring the current projects to successful resolutions that the next mayor is going to be engaged in."
The city said the leadership transition will not disrupt municipal operations. The acting mayor vote is set for Oct. 26.
