In his fifth and final State of the City address on June 23, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss at long last quelled the question that has preoccupied City Council members and residents alike for months — he will resign from office Oct. 18.
That will free him up for his likely next step of heading to Washington, D.C. and also trigger a special election in April so that Evanstonians can vote to choose the leader who will fill out his mayoral term.
Following Biss’ March 17 victory in the Democratic primary for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, he will face Republican challenger John Elleson, who won the GOP primary, in the Nov. 3 general election. However, Biss’ path to a seat in Congress is all but certain given the district’s heavily blue makeup.
But roughly three years remain on Biss’ mayoral term in Evanston, and the timing of his resignation was set to determine whether or not his “acting mayor” successor will serve until the end of his term in 2029 or just until April 2027, when a special election would be held.
Biss has previously alluded to his intentions to resign in time to trigger such an election, but said at the time he couldn’t “make a final determination” about the official date before the publication of the 2027 Illinois State Board of Elections calendar.
But with that calendar now made public, Biss moved to formalize what has long been anticipated.
“It is with gratitude [and] a feeling of bittersweetness, that I announce today that I will be resigning from the office of mayor as of Oct. 18, 2026,” Biss said to a crowd of supporters Tuesday at Evanston SPACE.
“The purpose of that resignation is to be absolutely certain that it is early enough to trigger a special election that will occur next spring,” he said.
According to the election calendar, petitions for mayoral candidacy for the special election would need to be filed between Oct. 19 and 26, but would ultimately depend on the mayoral seat becoming vacant by that time.
“My purpose in picking that date is to minimize the amount of time that the people of Evanston have a mayor who they didn’t choose in an election, and I think that principle of democracy serves us well,” Biss said.
If he does go on to win the Congressional seat in the general election this November, he said it will be “an honor to serve” and represent the district.
But should he lose? “I’m not going anywhere, anyhow,” Biss voiced to the crowd.
“You can count on me to be in the fight, working day in, day out with all of you to build a better Evanston, to build a better region, to build a better world,” he said.
“I am confident to my core, based on what I have seen these last five years, that though things in this town are sometimes challenging, that our best days are ahead.”
He continued the half-hour address by recounting the city’s accomplishments over the last five years, including the creation and activation of Evanston’s C.A.R.E. team in 2024, which sends behavioral health specialists in lieu of police to mental health-related emergency calls.
Hailed as another accomplishment was Evanston’s Reparations Program, a first-in-the-nation initiative providing $25,000 payments to Black residents who experienced housing discrimination in the city between 1919 and 1969, and their direct descendants.
That effort has come under fire since its launch in 2021, with a 2024 lawsuit from a conservative group challenging the constitutionality of the program’s use of race as a requirement for awarding payments to residents.
In recent days, the U.S. Department of Justice has also gotten involved, filing a motion to intervene in the suit and alleging that the program also violates the U.S. Fair Housing Act.
Addressing the lawsuit in his speech as a “politically motivated” effort that “frustrates” the city, Biss clarified that it doesn’t change Evanston’s “commitment to telling the truth about our past.”
“It doesn’t change our moral responsibility to act in the present and future based upon what we know about that truth….that mission is more important than who happens to sit in the White House or the Department of Justice. That mission is core to who we are, not only as a city, but who we are as a human people,” he said.
While Evanston has “a lot of work left to do,” to meet its overarching goals, Biss said he was most proud of the work it has already accomplished, particularly in the passing of Envision Evanston 2045 in January, a comprehensive guide designed to lead the city’s zoning and housing policies for the next 20 years.
“[It’s]a complex project that, at its heart, says a couple really simple things,” Biss declared.
Not only does the city need to “have housing in Evanston that makes room for people to be in Evanston,” but it needs to be “affordable for people who are here and affordable for people who want to come,” he said.
Biss told Pioneer Press following his speech that he hopes to make “as much progress as possible” on the plan from now until his October resignation. “That’s absolutely critical,” he said.
He added that his primary goal for his last few months in office includes facilitating a “quick transition” to onboarding for the city’s next leader that’s “as smooth as possible.”
Who that next leader will be in the interim remains up in the air.
City Council voted in recent days to reject a proposal to raise the requirement for electing an acting mayor to a two-thirds majority vote. The vote will remain at a simple majority of five votes of the nine-alderman Council.
When probed on Tuesday whether he plans to run for the mayoral seat, Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma, 4th, told Pioneer Press his “preference would be to find somebody else” who he could “support and get behind.”
“My efforts have been focused on recruiting a candidate to run to replace Mayor Biss and be the permanent mayor starting next April,” Nieuwsma said. “I’m not ruling myself out completely.”
Per the 2027 Illinois State Board of Elections calendar, the special election will be held Tuesday, April 6, 2027. Whoever is elected will serve out the remainder of Biss’ term until 2029.
