Endorsements

Kevin Ryan is a Chicagoland native, war veteran, and proud union member. A Marine infantry officer with eleven years of combined active and reserve service, his overseas military service includes leading Marines on operational deployments to Afghanistan and Africa, advising allied forces in Eastern Europe, and developing contingency plans to counter additional Russian aggression. In addition, Kevin served his community for four years as a full-time public-school teacher in Chicago where he continues to serve today as a substitute.

Kevin earned a bachelor’s degree from The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and master’s degrees in international security from Georgetown and in diplomacy from Oxford. He worked in international relations, including as a civilian analyst at NATO Parliamentary, an international affairs officer at the Pentagon, and as an international policy analyst for the Treasury Department, when the pressing problems faced by the Democratic Party compelled him to enter the political arena.

Matt Conroy is a Brooklyn-raised advocate for working people, shaped by the loss of his father in the September 11th attacks and the strength of a single mother raising four kids. With experience across finance, real estate, tech, and manufacturing, Matt has seen how deeply our economic system fails the people who keep it running. Now living in Lincoln Park, Chicago, he’s running for Congress to fight for economic justice, dignity, and a government that works for all of us—not just the wealthy and well-connected.

Joey Ruzevich is a software engineer running for Congress in the 6th district of Illinois. Joey was born and raised in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, in the district he is now running to represent. Growing up, Joey worked for his dad’s water & mold restoration company, cleaning carpets, tearing out drywall, and learning that the people who work the hardest are seldom the ones rewarded the most.

Joey is running on a platform of Medicare for All, regulating Artificial Intelligence & Data Centers, breaking up monopolies & helping small businesses, auditing the Pentagon & ending endless wars, green energy expansion, immigrant rights, dissolving ICE, and getting money out of politics.

Joey worked as a Machine Learning researcher before becoming a mobile app engineer for a Silicon Valley tech company. Now, Joey operates his own small business creating mobile apps for other small businesses that have been historically priced out of the technology market. Joey’s expertise in technology is exactly what is needed in Congress, as AI & Data Centers are already beginning to cause detrimental impacts on our society. We need someone who understands this technology in Congress in order to regulate it effectively. Joey will lead the charge on this and many other issues that would tangibly improve the lives of average Americans. Joey is ‘one of us – for all of us’.

Coming soon!

Anabel Mendoza is a lifelong Chicagoan, immigrant rights organizer, and progressive Democrat. Raised in West Lawn in a proud working-class Latino immigrant family. She has helped lead efforts that blocked more than $15 billion in federal funding to ICE and CBP and been on the front line of defending DACA for young immigrants. She has worked alongside families torn apart by detention and deportation and believes Congress must end the criminalization of immigrant communities while investing in health care, housing, education, and good union jobs.

Trained as an investigative journalist, Anabel brings rigor and truth-telling to her work. A graduate of Northwestern University, she has reported on COVID outbreaks inside Illinois prisons and dangerous conditions faced by immigrant children held by the government. Her work has exposed how systems built to protect instead cause harm—and why real change requires political courage.

Anabel’s message is clear: government should work for working people, not corporations or political insiders. She’s a NO AIPAC, NO corporate PAC, NO special interest candidate. As the youngest in the race, Anabel is running to bring honesty, unity, and bold leadership to D.C.

Junaid Ahmed is a longtime community organizer, tech entrepreneur, and a proud immigrant. Junaid started his college education at a community college, transferred to DePaul where he studied Computer Science, and eventually earned an MBA from the University of Chicago while working full-time. Junaid began his career in software development, including projects contributing to national security with U.S. Customs and UPS. He founded a technology company that helps clients use smart technology to solve real-world problems. He and his wife, Shirin, are raising their four children in Barrington, where they are active in community service, including with the organization Chi-Care, which has delivered over one million meals to unhoused neighbors.

Bushra Amiwala is an activist, public servant and elected official, born in Chicago to Pakistani immigrant parents and raised in Skokie, Illinois. Bushra made history as the first Gen Z elected official in the United States by being elected to the Skokie School District 73.5 Board of Education seven years ago amongst a crowded race with seven candidates. Her leadership as an elected school board member has raised teacher salaries in an equitable manner and ensured that thousands of children have access to a quality public education. Her schools became the first in Illinois to offer Halal, Kosher, and Vegetarian food options to the students she serves. Bushra has put herself through college—twice—and has a decade of nonprofit experience. She just wrapped up her five-year-long career at Google and holds an MBA from Kellogg, Northwestern’s School of Management. Bushra is a trailblazing public servant, bridge-builder, and a bold voice for underrepresented communities.

Coming soon!

Morgan Coghill isn’t a career politician. He’s a working-class fighter, a small business owner, and a relentless advocate for justice. He grew up on food stamps and free lunch programs. He worked long shifts, endured thankless bosses, and built a future. Driving nights for rideshare, he met America’s real backbone: plumbers, nurses, teachers, veterans, and single parents fighting to stay afloat while politicians look the other way.

Morgan lived in Russia as Putin rose to power and saw how corruption and propaganda can destroy a free society. In Ukraine he saw people risk everything for free and fair elections. Those moments taught him that democracy isn’t a talking point. It’s a responsibility. People deserve a representative who fights for them, not for corporate donors. Brad Schneider has spent years cashing checks from AIPAC, Big Pharma, and defense contractors, voting to protect their profits while working families fall farther behind. Morgan calls it selling out the people who trusted you to lead.

Dylan Blaha is a pro peace US Army veteran and former cancer research scientist running for US Congress in IL-13 to get big money out of politics and fight for the working class. He is a grassroots candidate who intends to use his seat in Congress to fight oligarchy, end endless wars, and eliminate wealth inequality in America.

Nick Uniejewski is a community organizer and pragmatic progressive running to build more housing, modernize public transit, and get corporate money out of politics. He’s fought for bold, research-driven policy, from expanding abortion access to modernizing government. Nick believes Democrats must be willing to throw a punch—against the federal government and a status quo that responds too slowly. He’s ready to deliver people-first leadership for Illinois and meet the urgency of this moment.

Demi was born in Edwardsville, Illinois, to a Mexican immigrant mother and a father who served in Vietnam. Growing up in a working-class family, she began working at 14 and joined the military at 19 to escape poverty. As a survivor of sexual assault while serving, Demi became an outspoken advocate for survivors and later took on leadership roles in the Army National Guard, defending transgender soldiers’ rights and combating harassment. She was deployed to Washington, D.C. after the January 6th insurrection, serving as her unit’s Equal Opportunity Leader. Back in Chicago, Demi leads as President of the 46th Ward Democrats, formerly chaired Illinois Veterans for Change, and has been appointed to the Secretary of State’s Veteran Advisory Board. She’s organized the International Women’s March – Chicago, supports and runs local community efforts, from food drives to abortion access. Demi’s communications work has powered progressive campaigns and causes across the state. As a firearms-trained veteran and gun violence prevention advocate, she brings a unique perspective to gun reform as she runs for State Representative in the 13th District.

Lynn LaPlante is a candidate for State Representative in the 42nd District. She is serving her third term on the DuPage County Board, where she has chaired Economic and Community Development and served as Vice-Chair of Collective Bargaining.

As a county commissioner, Lynn has championed fiscal responsibility, environmental sustainability, and restorative justice, securing funding for programs including music and art therapy at the county jail, a barber training initiative for inmates, and Sustainable DuPage. She has also written extensively on commonsense gun legislation.

Lynn is endorsed by the Illinois AFL-CIO, ICIRR Action (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights Action), and the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

Lynn is a concert violinist, a proud union member, and lives in Glen Ellyn with her husband and four children.

In Springfield, she will bring results-driven leadership to protect reproductive freedom, defend immigrant communities, safeguard the environment, strengthen workers’ rights, and expand access to affordable healthcare.

Christopher Espinoza didn’t come to public service through ambition, but through survival. He’s experienced homelessness in DuPage County, being one crisis away from losing everything and relying on government services to eat and stay housed.

The son of an immigrant from Mexico and a first-generation college graduate with a degree in Public Policy from UIC. Christopher understands government from both sides of the counter. He works for the Office of the Illinois Senate President and has served as a District 99 school board member for the last five years, overseeing multi-million dollar budgets, staff contracts, and policy decisions that affect real families. He knows how government works on paper, and how it feels when it fails in practice.

“I am here for the people who are struggling quietly, who are dismissed as statistics, and who deserve a government that treats them like human beings,” Christopher says. “Government should work for the people who need it most because one day, that could be any of us.”

Mahnoor Ahmad is running for the DuPage County Board as an immigrant who knows firsthand what it means to build a life in a new country with nothing but hope, resilience, and community. She didn’t just grow up hearing about the promise of opportunity — she had to fight for it. She understands what it feels like to navigate systems that weren’t built with you in mind, to work twice as hard to be heard, and to lean on neighbors when the path forward feels uncertain. That lived experience shapes everything about why she’s running.

Mahnoor has dedicated her career to public health because she believes the government should protect people most especially those too often overlooked. She has managed complex budgets, improved oversight, and worked to ensure services reach working families, seniors, and vulnerable residents. She’s seen how policy decisions made in boardrooms affect real people at kitchen tables. To her, affordability isn’t a talking point —it’s whether an immigrant family can afford rent. Mental health funding isn’t abstract — it’s whether someone in crisis gets help in time. Transparency isn’t optional — it’s how we rebuild trust in institutions.

She’s running because DuPage County can lead with compassion and courage. Because the local government should stand up for working people, invest in affordable housing, strengthen public health, and ensure every dollar is spent with integrity. Her campaign is powered by everyday residents, not corporate interests, and rooted in the belief that our county should reflect the strength and diversity of the people who call it home. Mahnoor is running not just to hold office — but to open doors, to widen opportunity, and to prove that immigrant voices belong at every level of leadership.

Lauren “Laurie” Nowak is a lifelong DuPage resident and community advocate. In 2012 she became the youngest woman elected to the DuPage County Board, where she was the Vice Chair of the Environmental Committee.

Motivated by the belief that starting locally we could achieve the highest government accountability, she entered the political arena from the grassroots level, driven by a desire to promote inclusivity, curb harmful propaganda, and to achieve local government reform.

Since her service on the County Board, she has continued her commitment to strengthen civic participation in the face of threats to democracy by serving as an election judge not only on election day, but during the critical early voting/vote-by-mail and post-election retabulating periods. She believes there is room at the table for all of us together, and has recruited and mentored a diverse group of candidates, election judges, and activists. She advocated for years in favor of the Fair Tax to help untangle Illinois finance and budget issues and campaigned heavily when it was put to a vote on the 2020 ballot. She jumped into activism in high school and has never stopped – she has advocated on issues from human rights to environmental and economic justice.

Professionally, she began her career in 2009 as an AmeriCorps member working with immigrant youth and adults, and in 2015 went on to work for the Cook County Environmental Department as a community outreach coordinator after her term as a DuPage County Board Member. Returning to the US after teaching English in Spain from 2017-2019, she worked as a Spanish Interpreter for the Early Intervention in-home therapy program for children with speech and developmental delays. She was also the Lead Field Supervisor and Trainer in the DuPage region for the Census, ensuring an accurate count so critical funding is directed where it is needed. When the Census concluded she worked on the launch of the Illinois Solar for All initiative made possible by Illinois’ CEJA (Climate & Equitable Jobs Act) legislation, ensuring that low-income residents, especially fixed-income seniors, have access to clean, affordable energy that is creating new jobs in Illinois. She now works for the Cook County Assessor helping homeowners of all ages and backgrounds claim eligible exemptions and appeal their property values.

Academically, she received her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies, Spanish and Journalism from Knox College and is in the process of earning a Master’s degree in Public Administration. She held a graduate assistantship with the DuPage Federation on Human Services Reform and interned with the National Park Service Geotourism project to promote sustainable economic development and intentional regional planning with a special focus on deference to Tribal wishes.

Civically, she has been an active member of the Sierra Club, the Resurrection Social Concerns/Peace & Justice ministry, and served several years on the Board of Directors of Neighborhood Food Pantries (FKA Feeding Northwest DuPage), the Legion of Young Polish Women, and the Children’s Advocacy Center.

She is excited to come full circle to the DuPage County Board, uplifting Democratic, economic and social Justice for all.