Did Illinois Dems Just Rebuke Wokeness? | The American Spectator

Daniel Biss is not my kind of politician, and if you’re reading The American Spectator, he likely isn’t yours either. The mayor of Evanston, Illinois, Biss ran for the Democratic nomination in the state’s 9th congressional district. On Tuesday, March 17, he was declared the winner of the state’s Democratic primary, having received a 29.5 percent plurality over a splintered field. It would have been an entirely unremarkable result if it weren’t for one thing: a 2018-style #MeToo drive-by that attempted to derail his campaign at the last minute.

Biss would probably disavow the thesis of this article, and likely The American Spectator as a whole. A longtime Democrat, he served as an advisor to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, as well as a member of the Illinois State House and State Senate. He was a decidedly left-wing legislator: ChicagoPride.com called him a “marriage equality hero.” He would later seek the Democratic nomination for Illinois governor in 2018; he was backed by MoveOn, Planned Parenthood Action, and the Bernie Sanders-inspired OurRevolution. He finished second behind JB Pritzker, who went on to win the election and serves as Illinois’s governor to this day. Biss would later make a comeback by winning the mayoralty of Evanston and, now, the Illinois 9th congressional district. His run this year was supported by, among others, Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The race also included state Sen. Laura Fine, a relative moderate who was backed by AIPAC; she finished in third with just over 20 percent of the vote. Biss’s main competition was the somehow even further left, Kat Abughazaleh. A social media influencer and former employee of Media Matters for America, whose purpose is to try to get conservative organizations like The American Spectator shut down, Abughazaleh garnered endorsements from far-left Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. She was also indicted for her alleged role in obstructing law enforcement during a protest at an ICE facility in Chicago; she has denied wrongdoing and called the indictment a “political prosecution” and an “attack on all of our First Amendment rights.” Abughazaleh finished second, with 26 percent of the vote. (RELATED: Democrats Embarrass Themselves Imitating Trump)

To some, it looked like the race might have been upended by an eleventh-hour #MeToo allegation. First posted on the far-left social media platform Bluesky on March 16, the day before the primary, Professor Megan Watchpress alleged that she had a romantic relationship with Biss in 2004. She had been a student of his, and after the semester ended, he reached out to her, and they went on a couple of dates. She was 20 years old at the time, while Biss was 26. Watchpress herself said that “It took becoming a professor myself to realize the implications — what it means to be attracted to someone who categorically has less power than you,” before coming to believe that the relationship had been “inappropriate.”

Biss acknowledged the relationship in a statement to The Daily Northwestern, where a campaign spokesman said in part that “[a]fter the course ended, Daniel and Dr. Wachspress went on a handful of dates over the course of a few weeks. Daniel realized then, as he does now, that it was ill-advised, and he ended it.”

To summarize: over 20 years ago, Biss had a consensual romantic relationship with an adult woman, who was no longer his student, that never escalated beyond “making out,” that he later broke off on his own volition.

At risk of stating the obvious… who cares? Was Biss’s decision wise? As he himself admitted, perhaps not. Still, a 26-year-old dating a 20-year-old, while unusual, is not especially scandalous, especially since it happened so long ago. While there were doubtless many accused during the height of the #MeToo movement who were guilty of serious wrongdoing, it quite clearly devolved into a sort of moral panic. Certainly, it is no kindness to genuine victims of sexual misconduct to dilute its gravity. That even Democrats are now looking askance at these sorts of allegations should be seen as encouraging.

Like the rest of Illinois’s congressional seats, the 9th district is horrifically gerrymandered in a way that offends aesthetics and partisan fairness in equal measure. Snaking through Evanston and Skokie in Cook County, it extends out in a narrow corridor through Lake and McHenry counties. 

As the district backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over President Donald Trump by a 67 percent to 31 percent margin, Biss should have little difficulty in defeating the Republican candidate, pastor John Elleson, come November. 

What sort of representative Elleson would be is difficult to ascertain; his website is extremely barebones, as you’d expect in a lopsided seat like this. Given his choice of party, though, I would bet he’d be much more likely to deliver for conservatives than the alternative. Biss has bad political opinions, and I hope he doesn’t win the general election. That said, it’s not entirely a cold comfort that he was not rejected by Democratic primary voters for frivolous nonsense.

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