CHICAGO — Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss won Tuesday’s Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, dealing a blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a race that had turned into a referendum on the group’s ability to influence the party.
Biss, whose mother is Israeli and whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, has sharply criticized Israel’s war in Gaza — and faced an onslaught of attack ads from a group aligned with AIPAC as a result.
He defeated a crowded field that included social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian American who is a more vocal critic, as well as AIPAC’s preferred candidate, state Sen. Laura Fine. Biss is now favored to win the general election in the heavily Democratic district.
The race had become one of the country’s most closely watched Democratic primaries, in large part because of AIPAC’s involvement in a district whose population is more than 10 percent Jewish and which has had a Jewish representative for more than 60 years.
