Bushra Amiwala (Illinois)
Bushra Amiwala is an at-large member of the Skokie School District 73.5 school board in Illinois. Her current term ends in 2027.
Amiwala (Democratic Party) is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Illinois' 9th Congressional District. She declared candidacy for the Democratic primary scheduled on March 17, 2026.[source]
Amiwala completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Bushra Amiwala was born in Chicago, Illinois. She earned a high school diploma from Niles North High School, a bachelor's degree from DePaul University, and a graduate degree from Northwestern University. Her career experience includes working as a public servant and consultant. Amiwala has been affiliated with the Amiwala Foundation.[1]
Elections
2026
See also: Illinois' 9th Congressional District election, 2026
General election
The primary will occur on March 17, 2026. The general election will occur on November 3, 2026. General election candidates will be added here following the primary.
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Illinois District 9
The following candidates are running in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Illinois District 9 on March 17, 2026.
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 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Miracle Jenkins (D)
- Jan Schakowsky (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Illinois District 9
Rocio Cleveland and Mark Su are running in the Republican primary for U.S. House Illinois District 9 on March 17, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Rocio Cleveland | |
 | Mark Su | |
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
Ballotpedia is gathering information about candidate endorsements. To send us an endorsement, click here.
Campaign themes
2026
Video for Ballotpedia
| Video submitted to Ballotpedia Released June 2, 2025 |
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Bushra Amiwala completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Amiwala's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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That gratitude stayed with me as I grew up in Skokie, attended local schools, and later made history as the youngest elected official in the country, serving seven years on the Skokie School Board. My earliest memories include taking the Yellow Line from Skokie to Rogers Park to volunteer at A Just Harvest as a teenager, building connections that have lasted more than a decade. After graduating from Niles West, I earned my bachelor’s at DePaul and MBA at Northwestern, right here in IL-09. This district shaped me—from Rogers Park to Evanston, Skokie to Glenview—not as dots on a map, but as communities I’ve worked, served, and led. My values—integrity, compassion, and collective uplift—come from lived experience, not abstraction. I stepped into leadership not for a spotlight, but to close the gap between what my community deserved and what they were getting.
Public service to me means showing up when no one’s watching, bridging divides, and leading with empathy. Leadership is about proximity to pain and responsibility to hope—rooted in community and courageous enough to disrupt the status quo.- Making sure our taxpayer dollars don’t kill people. Our taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund humanitarian crises. The numbers of lives lost in Israel's assault on Gaza is unaccountable—because entire families, entire blocks, have been wiped off the map. Our government and property taxes paid for it. The violence abroad has also wreaked devastation at home. While billions of dollars are funneled into the war effort, people in Illinois are struggling with unaffordable healthcare, medical debt, underfunded schools, food insecurity, housing instability and ballooning student loans. These are not separate issues—they are intertwined. In Congress, I will make sure our tax dollars should be building safer lives here, not destroying lives abroad.
- Making education—without debt—accessible for all. The United States spends $850 billion every year on the military while our schools are left scrambling for resources. That isn’t right, and it calls for a massive reallocation of government spending.Our education system should be a pathway to opportunity, not debt. I support making public colleges tuition-free and canceling existing student loan debt. Student debt isn’t just an individual burden—it’s a community crisis holding back working families and suppressing economic mobility. We must cancel the debt. Doing so would inject up to $108 billion into the economy each year and create over a million jobs. It’s an economic imperative and a moral necessity that I will fight for in Washington.
- Ensuring universal access to healthcare. I believe healthcare is a human right, not a privilege. I support a single payer universal healthcare system at the federal level because no one should be uninsured in the most prosperous country on earth. In Congress, I will work to guarantee healthcare for every person in the U.S.—regardless of income, immigration status, employment, or zip code. To me, Medicare for All is not just a political slogan; it is the morally superior, fiscally responsible policy to create the healthcare system Americans need and deserve.
To me, true public service means acting with integrity. That’s the foundation of trust. No one should wonder where I stand or whether I can be swayed by special interests. Public office also demands compassion and courage. Compassion means leading with understanding and recognizing that every perspective—even those I may disagree with—comes from lived experience. I practice radical empathy to weigh the voices of everyone I meet. Courage means disrupting the status quo and taking principled stands, even when unpopular.
I also pride myself on being a bridge-builder. My lived experience has shown me the importance of creating space for people who have been underrepresented and underserved. Building coalitions, listening across differences, and centering the lives most impacted in policymaking are at the heart of my leadership. The best officials put people before power, titles, or prestige. They champion transparency, accountability, and the common good—not just themselves.
Elected officials must develop a nuanced understanding of the policies shaping their districts and work effectively with colleagues. Sometimes that requires reaching across the aisle, and I’m eager to engage in bipartisanship when it leads to the best outcomes. Lawmaking demands more than slogans; it requires digging into data, research, and the history of past legislation to craft solutions with real impact. Our communities deserve representatives who do their homework and fight until they deliver tangible benefits: affordable healthcare, equitable education, and economic security for everyone.
Democracy belongs to all of us. It should not matter how wealthy you are, what connections you have, or what zip code you live in—everyone deserves equal representation. For too long, our political system has privileged the wealthy few at the expense of working families, young people, immigrants, and communities of color. My career has been devoted to changing that, and my legacy will be defined by ensuring all of us are heard and respected.
That’s why I fight for student debt cancellation, tuition-free public college, Medicare for All, and a progressive tax system. These are not abstract ideas—they’re solutions rooted in the lived experiences of families in Illinois’ 9th District, where the gap between the wealthiest and the working poor is the largest in the state. Healthcare is a human right, education should open doors instead of creating lifelong debt, and the economy should serve everyday people—not just corporations or billionaires.
True representation requires compassionate leadership that listens, builds bridges, and uplifts others. As one of the youngest elected officials in the country, and as a Muslim, first-generation American woman, I represent a shift in whose voices are heard in government. My candidacy is not just about me—it’s about expanding who belongs in power and opening doors for future leaders who reflect the communities they serve.
After that, I took a role as a paid canvasser on a campaign. My job was to go door to door and ask registered Republican voters a series of five questions, the first question being: "On a scale of one to ten, how fearful are you of an Islamic Terror Attack on US Soil?" That position lasted only three months, but I learned volumes about the American political landscape during that time.
This is one reason why I support Mental Healthcare for All, to make sure no one in the U.S. goes without the mental health resources they need.
IAIMPACT
Muslim Civic Coalition - Activate
Next Gen Politics National Chapter
Next Gen Politics Illinois
Cook County Latino Dems (15% of IL-9 is Hispanic or Latino)
Alliance of Indians in America
Village of Skokie Trustee Keith Robinson
Morton Grove Trustee Saba Khan
Niles Township Trustee Mahzar Khan
Morton Grove Library Board Member Mohamed Azam
Morton Grove Library Board Member Kim Moldofsky
D219 School Board Member Nour Akhras
D219 School Board President Naema Abraham
Arlington Heights School Board President Anisha Patel
Streamwood Park District President Raees Yawer
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Campaign finance summary
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See also
2026 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on September 9, 2025
