Peter Chico is a Chicago Police officer currently serving in the 4th District, according to his campaign website. He is also a community representative on George Washington High School’s local school council.

Appointed to the City Council on Sept. 21, Ald. Timmy Knudsen made history as the 43^rd Ward’s first openly gay alderman. Prior to his appointment to the City Council, Knudsen worked as chair of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals. “As Chairman, he ensure[d] local residents, neighborhood groups and stakeholders of all kinds are fully heard and fairly represented,” according to his campaign website. “Navigating complex real estate projects and government agencies has equipped Knudsen to be an effective problem solver, which he will take to City Hall.”

Knudsen worked on Lori Lightfoot’s 2019 campaign for mayor under her campaign finance team and as a partner at Fairchild Morgan & Beres before joining the city council. “As I have throughout my legal career, my public service chairing the Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals and my time as a grassroots organizer, I will be an advocate and consensus builder as alderman,” Knudsen said in an interview with Block Club Chicago .

“I bring a passion for private sector results to public service and am honored to have a new way to give back to the community I call home.” He’s strongly campaigned on his community engagement efforts in his bid for re-election and prominent LGBTQ community members have echoed the sentiment.

A longtime attorney, Rebecca Janowitz got her start in Chicago politics working for then-Ald. Toni Preckwinkle as her special assistant, where she “focused on constituent services, public safety, housing, education, economic development, traffic and infrastructure,” according to her campaign website. She later went on to work for Chicago Public Schools and more recently, the Cook County Judicial Advisory Council as the special assistant of legal affairs. While there, “[s]he helped oversee the distribution of millions of grant dollars to community organizations working in the areas of violence prevention, recidivism reduction and restorative justice,” according to her campaign website. Janowitz’s 2022 bid for the 43rd Ward seat isn’t her first. She ran for the seat in 2019 but she was handily defeated in the election and garnered only 4.8 percent of the vote.

A longtime public relations executive, Wendi Taylor Nations previously threw her hat into the ring for the 43rd Ward shortly after then-Ald. Michele Smith resigned from the City Council.  Though she ultimately wasn’t appointed, Nations is in the running again to head the 43rd Ward. Nations has pointed to her PR qualifications, her role in launching Obamacare in Illinois and her work as a “board member of the DuSable Museum of Black History and volunteer for various food insecurity and animal rescue organizations” as qualifications for her bid for the seat, according to her campaign website. Nations has the endorsement of Smith.

Brian Comer, president of the Sheffield Neighborhood Association, was one of the applicants who sought to replace former 43^rd Ward Ald. Michele Smith after she abruptly announced her retirement in the summer of 2022. Mayor Lori Lightfoot ultimately chose Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43) for the job. Comer works as a consultant assisting businesses and organizations in growing their reaches both nationally and internationally.

Steve Botsford is a former Notre Dame football player with a master’s degree in economics from Georgetown University and an MBA from Northwestern University.

Public school teacher Ambria Taylor is a Chicago Teachers Union member and Democratic Socialist running for 11th Ward alderman. Taylor has lived in Bridgeport since 2012, according to her campaign website. In the fall of 2022, Taylor organized a community bike ride to promote awareness about Chicago’s pedestrian and bike infrastructure and public transit

Helen West is a retired educator, cancer survivor, coronavirus survivor and former art gallery owner. West has served on the Board of Directors of Muntu Dance Company, Mid-South Planning and Development and the South Side Community Art Center. West and her boyfriend both got sick with COVID-19 in 2020; while her boyfriend died, West enrolled in a remdesivir trial — she credited the drug with contributing to her recovery from the disease.

Ebony Lucas is a real estate attorney who is making her third run for the aldermanic seat in the 4th Ward. Lucas unsuccessfully challenged Ald. Sophia King in 2017 and 2019. Lucas, who is the managing partner for a firm called The Property Law Group, told the Hyde Park Herald  in September that her campaign is focused on affordable housing and local commercial development.

Some of her past experience includes serving on the King College Prep Local School Council and serving as president of Mandrake Park Advisory Council, according to a biography on The Property Law Group’s website .

Lucas is currently the board secretary for the South Side Community Investor Association, and she attended University of Michigan Law School.

Tracey Bey is making her second run for 4th Ward alderman after challenging former Ald. Will Burns in 2015. This cycle, her nominating petitions are being challenged, putting her status on the ballot in jeopardy. 

Khari Humphries, senior director of youth policy in the Mayor’s Office of Education and Human Services, is aiming to leave the Lightfoot administration to lead the 4^th Ward as current Ald. Sophia King mounts a challenge against the sitting mayor.

Humphries was appointed to the youth policy post by the mayor in the spring of 2022, with the office recognizing his 25 years of community relations and nonprofit work on behalf of youth. Humphries earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from St. Xavier University and was a 2018 Fellow of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s Civic Leadership Academy, according to the Chicago Mayor’s Office.

His previous experience includes serving as director of the Boys and Girls Club of Chicago, serving as executive director of school age strategies for Thrive Chicago and serving as senior manager of community life for The Community Builders, Inc. in Bronzeville.

State Rep. Lamont Robinson Jr. (D-Chicago) has served two terms in the Illinois General Assembly and became the first openly LGBTQ African American elected to the state legislature in 2018. He was reelected to a third term in the House in 2022. Robinson has a degree in business marketing from Clark Atlanta University and an MBA from National Louis University.

The legislator has been an insurance agent and owns an Allstate insurance branch, worked as a business professor at Harold Washington College and worked as director of the Kappa Leadership Institute in Chicago. Robinson nabbed the endorsement of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who lives in the 4th Ward and who said “Lamont works hard and has the vision and experience to lead the Fourth Ward forward.”

As outgoing Ald. Sophia King’s chief of staff, Prentice Butler is pitching his experience working for an existing alderman as the main argument for why 4th Ward residents should choose him to succeed King. His website says  his work with King “has demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of city government, social media, and community engagement, which has expanded the outreach of the Alderman’s agenda and accomplishments.”

Butler attended the University of Chicago — where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science and later a master’s in public policy from the Harris School of Public Policy — and Loyola Chicago, where he earned a master’s in Urban Life Learning: Chicago Studies. Butler worked for the Law Office of Ernesto Borges, a bankruptcy firm, to provide financial consultations, including to low- and middle-income customers.

Jocelyn Hare is mounting another run for the 5th Ward aldermanic seat after coming in fourth out of six candidates in the 2015 municipal election. Hare is a senior assistant director of Harris Policy Labs at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, a role in which she researches and implements urban policies in different cities alongside students and clients. Hare is a a former board member of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance and currently serves on the board of Chicago’s Pride Action Tank, according to a biographical page  on the UChicago site. According to the Chicago Reader , Hare was formerly a fellow in the office of Gary, Indiana Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson where she was a policy consultant.