Alex Harrison

Everyone needs to be talking about this.

Cursory look shows that unsurprisingly, her top expense was media buys at $1.25mm, 77% of her total. Literally all of it was spent by Jan. 23, in line with my reporting on her TV ads ending at the end of Jan *just* before Elect Chicago Women started buying ads supporting her at the start of Feb.

Pre-primary figures for Laura Fine: Raised $635,393.04 and spent $1,613,683.77 (!!), leaving her with $461,679.43 on hand as of Feb. 25.

okay no one else upload their pre-primaries for a few minutes, i need to start my laundry (yes i know i'm tempting fate with this)

Despite being labeled as "digital ads," those three Yosemite lines also include cable TV ads per FCC filings: at least $222k out of the $439k total, if I'm reading these correctly (there's some weirdness with contract revisions and Comcast posting a contract way late lol)

Cursory look at spending shows her top categories were digital ads ($439k), direct mail ($121k), "media buy" ($105k), fundraising consulting ($91k) and payroll ($80k). Almost all spending for those top three was done a month ago or earlier, except for one mailer batch and the media buy items.

Pre-primary figures for Kat Abughazaleh: Raised $654,699.95 and spent $1,083,031.70 (!), leaving her with $382,621.26 on hand as of Feb. 25. That $13k debt is a carry-over from Q4 '25 concerning some disputed charge over media consulting services.

A cursory look at expenses shows Biss spent a whopping $1.14mm on advertising alone, no less than 88% of his total spending over this pre-primary period. All of it was spent through an Arlington Heights company called "Novel Messaging" which is located on, and I'm not joking, Evanston Avenue lmao

A cursory look at expenses shows Biss spent a whopping $1.14mm on advertising alone, no less than 88% of his total spending over this pre-primary period. All of it was spent through an Arlington Heights company called "Novel Messaging" which is located on, and I'm not joking, Evanston Avenue lmao

Pre-primary figures for Daniel Biss: Raised $555,433.08 and spent $1,285,818.30 (!), leaving him with $645,919.35 on hand as of Feb. 25. He's also notably receiving more support in recent weeks from independent expenditures (though not nearly as much as opponent Laura Fine).

NEW – J Street Action Fund is entering #IL09 with a new digital ad buy of about $98,000

Here's the spot:

Mike Simmons has filed his pre-primary with uh, shockingly precise figures: $89,168.24 raised, $89,169.75 spent, leaving him at $135,150.04 as of Feb. 25 — exactly $1.51 less than on Jan. 1.

Mike Simmons has filed his pre-primary with uh, shockingly precise figures: $89,168.24 raised, $89,169.75 spent, leaving him at $135,150.04 as of Feb. 25 — exactly $1.51 less than on Jan. 1.

This might help explain why a group of Wilmette residents threw together a last-minute super PAC to help him through independent expenditures...

Phil Andrew's pre-primary financial summary, showing (with numbers rounded) he received $128,000, spend $917,000, and had $173,000 on hand as of Feb. 25

Phil Andrew is the first major IL-09 candidate to file his pre-primary financial report. Shows he burned through almost all of his cash, spending $917k and only raising $128k, leaving him with $173k as of Feb. 25.

And if you'd posted this Sunday you'd have been an hour closer, so what even is time really

Alex sits in an office chair looking very tiredly down at numerous stacks of campaign mail spread out on the floor

finally reaped what I sowed (asked all of our staff/freelancers/etc to bring election mailers into the office a while back, and finally bothered to organize them)

"this coming week" lol sure buddy

Anyway, hey look what just dropped:

The Massachusetts Department of Correction has been fighting me for months, trying to withhold data about its collaboration with ICE.

Yesterday, I won that fight, and obtained records showing that the state has transferred more than 2,000 people into ICE custody since 2009.

A quick thread:

Breakout of these expenses:

— Media buy (TV): $700k(!) pro-Fine
— Media buy (Digital): $100k pro-Fine, $25k anti-Biss
— Direct mail: $47,547.82 pro-Fine, $86,515.08 anti-Biss

Example from last year's local elections: District 65 had 4 school board seats up for election, and the highest winner got 16.15% of the vote. But when you just look at votes for her / total ballots cast, her percentage was actually 52%

Could be a vote-for-multiple-seats type of election, which artificially lowers the "winning percentage" since it spreads things out so much

Carl Sandburg’s iconic 1914 poem “Chicago” recently gained fresh relevance when a judge read it aloud in a court ruling addressing DHS use of force.

That inspired our arts desk to ask some well-known Chicagoans to recite it, with help from Bill Kurtis, Sandra Cisneros, Colston Loveland and others.

Followers notably include Carol Ronen, the current state central committeewoman for IL-09 who is supporting Fine

Oh hey, more obvious AI slop

screenshot of a post from the dansplaining account with a photo of kat abughazaleh and daniel biss in a booth at the green mill after a candidate forum. a cartoon speech bubble is above biss saying "Let me Dansplain something to you, baby...", and the caption is "Dansplaining under the influence is still #dansplaining."

and yes, they posted weird shit with that photo of kat and biss after the green mill forum, because of course they did

case in point, this is a real instagram account i was just emailed a link to

march 18 will have the first 7pm sunset of the year and i think that's beautifully poetic

An info panel for the YouTube Page of EDW Action Fund. It was created on March 2, 2026, one day before their ad started airing

Peep their YouTube channel's creation date btw lol

Virtually no* money, of all the words to miss lol