Illinois congressional candidate admits ‘ill

Daniel Biss (D), the mayor of Evanston, Ill., who is running for Congress , went on a “handful of dates” with a former student while teaching at the University of Chicago in 2004, his campaign disclosed on Monday just as voters prepared to head to the polls.

The revelation came after Megan Wachspress, a Stanford University lecturer wrote in a post on BlueSky that she had been involved in an “inappropriate romantic relationship” with him when she was an undergraduate.

“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,” she wrote in another post.

“I don’t know if it’s disqualifying, but there are too many women not getting a platform as a result of behavior like this for me not to say something.”
Biss’s campaign confirmed the relationship in a statement to The Daily Northwestern on Monday, noting the 20-year-old Wachspress had been enrolled in a course Biss, who was 26 at the time, taught as a postdoctoral instructor.

“After 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,” a spokesperson said.

Wachspress described her experience with Biss and how the relationship came to be in a post on Substack , writing that she had enrolled in a topology class he taught after switching to a math major.

“My professor’s responses to my emails got longer and longer, topics extending well beyond mathematics; office hours lasted later and later.

Flattered and insecure, I convinced myself it didn’t mean anything – I was a student, after all!

– until the quarter ended, and he emailed to ask if I wanted to meet up, socially,” she recalled.

“After a few very intense evenings, he had second thoughts.

It was wrong to date a student, of course, so we would have to stop making out.

Of course we could still hang out , and so we continued to spend time together in what to any external observer would look like dates, until gradually that stopped, too,” Wachspress continued.

Wachspress said that over time, it “became impossible to avoid confronting what had happened,” especially after she ended up on a Zoom call with Biss years ago.

She said he reached out afterward with a “cryptic email,” and she decided to call him back after a few days.

“He offered an apology, of sorts, and then pivoted to the type of conversation you’d have with a friend with whom you’ve lost touch,” she wrote.

Biss’s campaign did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for further comment.

Wachspress’s allegations emerged on the eve of the Illinois primaries , in which Biss is seeking the Democratic nomination in a race to succeed retiring Democratic Rep.

Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) in Illinois’s 9 th Congressional District.

Biss, who has served as mayor of Evanston since 2021, was leading with 29.9 percent of the vote as of 10 p.m.

EDT, according to Decision Desk HQ .

Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive journalist, was second with 25.5 percent, followed by state Sen.

Laura Fine with 20.2 percent.

Republican John Elleson held a 15-point lead in the GOP primary with an estimated 58 percent of precincts reporting, according to the projections.