Justice
Meet the Chicago City Councilman Hoping to Fix Illinois
Alderman Ameya Pawar is running for governor with a focus on criminal justice, a New Deal-type infrastructure plan, and progressive taxation. But he’s facing some tough opponents in his own party.
Chicago politics is famously dirty. But that didn’t stop Ameya Pawar from jumping in anyway.
In 2011, 30-year-old Pawar was a political rookie, working as a program assistant in the Office of Emergency Management at Northwestern. He’d grown tired of politics as usual, he said at the time. So he set up an office in a bowling alley, rallied together a group of friends, and ran a door-to-door campaign for the 47 Ward Alderman’s seat. He won. And then in 2015, he won again. With 83 percent of the vote, Pawar was reelected with the highest margin in the city.