Thomas Fisher (Illinois)
Thomas Fisher (Democratic Party) is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Illinois' 7th Congressional District. He declared candidacy for the Democratic primary scheduled on March 17, 2026.[source]
Fisher completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Thomas Fisher was born in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1996 and an M.D. from the University of Chicago in 2001. His career experience includes working as a doctor.[1]
Elections
2026
See also: Illinois' 7th Congressional District election, 2026
General election
The primary will occur on March 17, 2026. The general election will occur on November 3, 2026. Additional general election candidates will be added here following the primary.
General election for U.S. House Illinois District 7
Tekita Martinez, Nathan Billips, and Anita Rao are running in the general election for U.S. House Illinois District 7 on November 3, 2026.
Candidate | ||
| Tekita Martinez (R) | ||
 | Nathan Billips (Independent) | |
| Anita Rao (Independent) | ||
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 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Illinois District 7
The following candidates are running in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Illinois District 7 on March 17, 2026.
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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. | ||||
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Illinois District 7
Patricia Easley and Chad Koppie are running in the Republican primary for U.S. House Illinois District 7 on March 17, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Patricia Easley | |
 | Chad Koppie | |
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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
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Campaign themes
2026
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Thomas Fisher completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Fisher's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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emphasized service. Those motives shaped his life and he has spent two decades following this call to care for the community that raised him.That legacy inspired his path through Dartmouth, the University of Chicago School of Medicine, and Harvard University’s School of Public Health – and led him to emergency medicine, where he’s spent over two decades treating everyone, regardless of their background or means.
But the ER is also where the consequences of bad policy show up: gun violence, housing insecurity, untreated addiction, and lack of care. That’s why Dr. Fisher took the fight upstream – as a White House Fellow during the rollout of the ACA, a Medicaid leader in Cook County, a healthcare executive focused on equity, and the author of The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER, a nationally acclaimed book exposing the injustices of our healthcare system.
When COVID hit, Dr. Fisher returned full-time to the ER and what he saw inspired his acclaimed book, The Emergency, named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books. Through it all, he never
stopped fighting for the people failed by our political system.- Profit should never decide who lives or dies. Whether facing cancer, recovering from a car crash, or simply trying to stay healthy — every one of us will be a patient one day. Healthcare must protect us when we’re most vulnerable.
Instead, millions are being kicked off insurance, cures are being undermined, and the Trump Administration has corrupted the CDC. Life expectancy is now shorter than it was a decade ago with folks on the South and West Sides living thirty fewer years than those in Streeterville and the Gold Coast — proof we’re in a crisis.
We must provide resources to stay healthy and build a healthcare system that puts people first, no matter who we are.
Universal healthcare so everyone is covered. Period. Full stop. - Americans work hard and deliver record profits for corporations — but too many still struggle just to get by. Trump's tax breaks for millionaires come at the expense of millions losing health insurance. Again the rich get richer and the rest get nothing. My mother’s 30+ years with Chicago Public Schools meant stability and a secure retirement thanks to her union. Every worker deserves that same security. Today, wages lag while housing prices soar making it impossible for younger people to own a home and raise a family on a middle class salary. Families are squeezed by the rising cost of groceries, skyrocketing utility bills, and everyday essentials. It’s time to build an economy where working people come first — not corporations.
- In more than 20 years taking care of people in the ER, I’ve never gotten used to caring for young men and women torn apart by gunfire. I’ve lost friends to violence — losses that still haunt me. While our trauma system saves lives, the scars remain: on bodies, on families, on our entire community. We can and must do better: . Background checks and an assault weapons ban to keep deadly weapons off our streets. . Coordinated community-based interventions led by those closest to the problem. . Support for survivors that prioritizes healing, justice, and mental health. No one should have to live in fear — or carry these scars for life.
For more than 20 years, I’ve walked into an emergency room on Chicago’s South Side and met people at their most vulnerable. Those experiences taught me what qualities truly matter in public service.
First, empathy. Most patients don’t end up in the ER because of bad choices but because of political ones—poverty, violence, lack of care. An elected official must feel that pain and respond with compassion.
Second, integrity. In medicine, trust is everything. I’ve seen how profit pressures force compromises on values, and I’ve resisted. In Congress, integrity means telling the truth, standing by principles, and putting people ahead of special interests.
Third, courage and vision. I became a doctor partly because of Ben Wilson, a local teen who died after waiting hours for emergency care. That tragedy taught me to confront inequity head-on. Leadership requires boldness to challenge systems that fail us and the courage to risk political loss for moral clarity.
Fourth, servant leadership. My job has never been about status but service. The best ideas often come from those closest to the pain. A public servant must listen with humility, stay grounded in the community, and put people first in every decision.
Finally, equity and justice. I’ve seen life expectancy differ by decades between neighborhoods just miles apart. No child should live or die based on their ZIP code. Government must close those gaps and ensure healthcare, safety, and opportunity as rights, not privileges.
I’m also proud of the work I’ve done closer to home. In my ER, I helped push back against a proposal that would have segregated patients by insurance status—Medicaid and Medicare patients in one part of the department, privately insured in another. That plan would have institutionalized inequity right in the hospital. Alongside colleagues, I resisted until the proposal was dropped and we organized care by acuity instead of by the size of someone’s wallet. That victory was a reminder that persistence and moral clarity can bend institutions toward fairness.
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Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2026 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on September 10, 2025
