CHICAGO — Following his win in the crowded Democratic primary to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss took victory laps around the big-money interests that sought to sink him and acknowledged he still had loose ends in his day job leading the city.

“As I’ve come to learn, this is a big district that stretches from Wrigleyville to McHenry County, and I plan to continue being available and accessible and listening, and building out coalitions across the district, not only to be successful in November but to govern effectively thereafter,” Biss said as he greeted people at the Davis “L” stop in Evanston on Wednesday afternoon.

With 95% of the estimated vote tallied, Biss had 29.5%; progressive commentator Kat Abughazaleh received 26% with her insurgent, unconventional campaign; and state Sen. Laura Fine, who benefited from millions of dollars in spending from groups that appeared to be tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had 20.3%, according to results from The Associated Press. No other candidate out of the diverse field cracked 10% of the estimated vote, according to the AP.

“AIPAC found out the hard way,” Biss said, referring to the pro-Israel lobbying group in his speech late Tuesday declaring victory. “The 9th District is not for sale.”

Biss is expected to face Republican John Elleson, who brands himself as a “compassionate conservative with common sense,” in November’s general election.

Still, in the deep-blue district, the March 17 primary was all but certain to determine its next member of Congress.

“I’m still the mayor of Evanston, a job that I take very seriously,” Biss said Wednesday. “We have unfinished business, especially around housing and zoning, work that I’m focused on making sure we see through.”

Schakowsky, a stalwart progressive who endorsed Biss, became a national voice on abortion rights, consumer protection and opposition to the Iraq War.

The longtime congresswoman was among Biss’ supporters at his election night party on Tuesday.

“I’m ready for this,” she said at the party. “You know, I’ve been in Congress for a long time, and I think it is time for me to turn it over to someone as ready for this job as Daniel. I’m a happy person.”

Narrowly, the race between the three leaders was a fight over who had the most solid grounding among a pair of established local officials in core suburban parts of the district and a young, newly established Chicagoan looking to push the conversation to the left.

President Donald Trump’s agenda, including his aggressive immigration enforcement in the Chicago region, has loomed over the race. While candidates’ visions for how to best resist Immigration and Customs Enforcement differ, the leading candidates have said the agency can’t continue in its current form.

But throughout the race, the most heated exchanges centered not on policy differences but on money — most prominently, the role of donors aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and PACs that appear to be aligned with the group, both of which had primarily benefited Fine’s campaign.

It was an especially prominent question in a district that has had Jewish representation for nearly the past eight decades.

While Fine led the field in terms of outside spending in her favor, Biss received the backing of groups aligned with pro-science candidates and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old newcomer to the district who has become arguably the strongest fundraiser this cycle in the entire Chicago region, was hit with ads against her by a group that she has also accused of having ties to AIPAC.

Electing Abughazaleh would have represented not only a progressive vote in Congress but a dramatic change in the district.

“This is the start and not the end,” she said to supporters late Tuesday. “We will continue to come back and every single loss like this one just makes the path easier for the next person who takes the same chance. We are not done and I am not going anywhere.”

Having never held public office, she has embraced an unconventional political approach as she sought to channel the energy of younger voters impatient with incrementalism.

Abughazaleh was also dealing with a different kind of political challenge: Trump’s Department of Justice indicted her, accusing her of conspiring to impede immigration agents during protest activity at the federal immigration processing center in west suburban Broadview. A jury trial in the case is scheduled to start in late May. She has cast the charges as political retaliation and an attack on free speech.

Biss made the case in interviews and across the campaign trail that he’s a progressive who can work both inside and outside government. He’s a former assistant math professor at the University of Chicago and previously ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018 against JB Pritzker.

“When this campaign started, I didn’t know what tear gas smelled like. When this campaign started, I had never seen my neighbors abducted, dissenters beaten up on the street. Never seen kids scared of their own federal government. Never seen a whole community paralyzed because they heard their government was going to be in town that day with their masks and their guns and their helicopters and their SUVs and their thuggery,” Biss said in his speech Tuesday. “But we’ve all lived through that trauma now, and I think it’s changed all of us. I know it’s changed me.”

The response to Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts, he said, “paints a picture for what kind of movement we need to build on every issue going forward.”

Biss held his election night watch party at Double Clutch Brewing in Evanston, where St. Patrick’s Day revelers gathered on one side on Tuesday night and Biss supporters and campaign workers gathered in a private event space.

It’s about a mile away from Lorraine H. Morton City Hall, where Biss is in his second term.

Fine in a social media post late Tuesday thanked supporters and said she had “every confidence that Daniel will be a champion for our community.”

“I know this is not easy for any of us, but we are going to have to come together,” she said.

Pressed about the outside spending in her favor throughout the campaign, Fine called for overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and on a debate stage described herself as a “punching bag” for rivals unable to assail her legislative work.

Abughazaleh’s campaign HQ on Tuesday was at a crowded LGBTQ+ arcade bar in Andersonville where neon lights flickered over vintage game cabinets. Supporters refreshed their vote totals between rounds of Ms. Pac-Man as Doja Cat blasted from the overhead speakers. Clusters of them flashed silver campaign stickers and embraced while screens of results flashed before them.

Addressing a packed room of supporters who continued to cheer “we love you, Kat,” Abughazaleh said: “The work isn’t over.”

“There are progressives all over the country who are taking a chance just like we did, and we have to help them win,” she said. “No matter how hard it is.”

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(Chicago Tribune’s Andrew Carter and Claire Murphy contributed reporting. Olander and Carter reported from Evanston.)

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