If you’re new here, check out my past profiles on Districts 2b and 4b. You don’t need the context necessarily, but they could be helpful.
An Introduction
Chicago is abuzz with politics right now. Municipal petition season has kicked off, Alexi let slip the biggest open secret in the city, and all eyes watch the Mayor’s next move. But before we can reach the municipals, we still have to get through November, and through the city’s first fully-elected School Board race.
Chicago School Board District 4a
Chicago District 4a is one of the most diverse districts one could draw that still remained majority-white. This districts’ center of mass reaches from Lakeview through Wrigleyville and Boystown into Uptown, and north still through Argyle, hugging the lakefront high-rises all the way to Granville. The western edge of the district does not reach Western, but pushes deep into North Center and the 47th Ward. Most relevant today, it is home to fifteen schools (per campaign site).
It is a progressive district, and while not overwhelmingly so, it seems to continue along a progressive trajectory. In the first round of the 2023 Mayoral race, then-County Commissioner Brandon Johnson won this district over Paul Vallas by less than 1% (33.4 - 32.5). Johnson won the district in the run-off 57-43, within single digits of his citywide margin. A year later, Bring Chicago Home won 58% of the vote in 4a while losing citywide by 4%. This year, despite representing a (small) portion of the district in the state house, Rep. Margaret Croke lost this district to Bernie Sanders-backed Sen. Karina Villa in the race for state comptroller, 44-34. County Assessor Fritz Kaegi won 64% here.
So let’s look at the School Board.
The Last Go-Round (2024)
District 4b is one of two (by my count) districts in the city where a candidate ran in 2024, lost, and was appointed to a districts’ second seat. But in 4a, that candidate (by my calculations) actually won their subdistrict — and that candidate was Karen Zaccor.
While member Ellen Rosenfeld (the subject of last week’s article) won District 4 by 11 points in 2024 (41-30) over a six-candidate field, Karen Zaccor narrowly carried subdistrict 4a (roughly 38-35). As Rosenfeld lives in District 4b, the Mayor appointed Zaccor to the open 4a seat. In that race, Zaccor had received the backing of the Chicago Teachers’ Union; Rosenfeld that of the Urban Center’s SuperPAC.
Karen Zaccor, per her official bio, is a ‘longtime resident of the Uptown community’, who served as chairperson of Stockton Elementary’s first Local School Council (LSC) before co-founding and teaching at Uplift Community High School, from where she retired in 2024. Zaccor’s Uptown base is clear in the above map of 2024 election results: against 5 candidates, she won an outright majority in several Uptown precincts.
This Go-Round (2026)
Down from last cycles’ six candidates, three candidates will (likely) be on the ballot: appointed incumbent Karen Zaccor, education policy analyst Ellen Sherratt, and Northwestern University employee Angel Alvarez. This race is already shaping up to be the north side’s marquee match up, with CTU backing Zaccor and SEIU backing Sherratt.
To get on the ballot, these candidates submitted (cumulatively) 1000s of petition signatures. Let’s take a look at them, aggregated up to the precinct level.
Already, clear geographic boundaries come into play. We see Zaccor’s strength in Uptown, but we also see her weakness in the southern end of the district, where Ellen Rosenfeld performed best in 2024 — Ellen Sherratt cleans up down south. Perhaps most surprisingly is Alvarez, whose more Edgewater-heavy base of support extends down into Uptown, Zaccor’s base. Overall, of the addresses our team able to confirm, Zaccor submitted the most in-district signatures, accounting for 41% of those submitted, to Sherratt’s 36% and Alvarez’ 23%.
When we adjust by number of signatures collected, the north-south split between Zaccor and Sherratt becomes even more stark — you can basically draw the line at Irving Park Road. Likewise, Alvarez’ strength is clearly clustered in the northern part of the district, which leads us to the question:
A split progressive lane?
I hope readers will forgive the fact I can speak very little to Alvarez’ policy proposals, so the header ‘split progressive lane’ may not be factually accurate. But what is certainly the case is that where he has been working, knocking doors, and collecting signatures, hits Zaccor far more than it hits Sherratt.
While Sherratt’s signatures come overwhelmingly (71-29) from precincts won by Ellen Rosenfeld, both Zaccor (75%) and Alvarez (84%) collected the vast majority of their signatures in precincts won by the CTU-backed Zaccor in 2024. Put graphically:
There is very little overlap between precincts where Sherratt was collecting and those where Zaccor or Alvarez were collecting.
Adding some more geographies: Wards
District 4a overlaps five wards, the 32nd (Roscoe Village/Bucktown), 44th (Lakeview), 46th (Uptown/Buena Park), 47th (North Center/Lincoln Square), and 48th (Edgewater), but sits mainly atop two: the 44th and 46th.
Ignoring the nine signatures from the precinct-and-a-half of the 32nd Ward, support at the ward level continues to reflect the north-south divide seen previously.
(For sake of clarity, I will be using terminology usually reserved for an election in these bullet points — this is not an election. )
Karen Zaccor’s strength in Uptown translates to the 46th Ward, where she collected 751 signatures, or 51%. She also won 62% of those in the 47th.
Ellen Sherratt’s campaign is incredibly 44th Ward heavy, where she collected 84%(!) of all signatures. In the northernmost 48th Ward, she only accounted for 6%.
Angel Alvarez ‘won’ the 48th, collecting 57% of the signatures in his home ward. He also beat Sherratt in the 46th Ward; he collected 27% of that ward’s signatures to her 21%.
It can also be helpful to look at these numbers from the perspective of the campaign, rather than the ward. In this way:
56% of Sherratt’s signatures came from the 44th Ward.
Though not an endorsement, here’s a pic of Ellen & Alder Bennett Lawson.
59% of Zaccor’s signatures came from the 46th Ward.
Zaccor does have the endorsement of 46th Ward Alder Angela Clay.
… 56% of Alvarez’ signatures also came from the 46th Ward.
The 46th Ward - a historic hotbed of activism and progressive organizations - saw the lions’ share of petition collecting overall in this pre-primary. 47% of all petitions collected in District 4a came from the 46th Ward, dwarfing the second-place 44th Ward (25%). But in November, candidates will have to spread their organizing efforts outside the 46th, which only accounts for about 36% of the vote in the subdistrict.
Looking back to 2024 (and with the caveat that split precincts make these numbers approximate), votes cast in the School Board in Subdistrict 4a race broke down as the following, compared to the % of petitions collected this year:
36% of votes cast came from the 46th Ward (vs. 47% of petitions collected in ‘26)
34% from the 44th Ward (vs. 25% of petitions)
17% from the 47th Ward (vs. 14% of petitions)
13% from the 48th Ward (vs. 14% of petitions)
Over-saturation of the 46th Ward makes sense given what I’ve written already, under-saturation of the 44th also follows logically from the structure of the campaigns. I’m most surprised by the under-representation of the 47th Ward (represent!) across the campaigns.
21% of Zaccor’s petitions came from the 47th Ward, no issue there.
12% of Sherratt’s petitions came from the 47th. Her base in the 44th notwithstanding, I expected higher, especially as I learned during my research into 4b that she had circulated petitions for Ellen Rosenfeld, who in 2024 pulled a good number of signatures from the 4a-side of the 47th Ward.
Ellen Sherratt does boast - though has yet to really boost - Ellen Rosenfeld’s endorsement. You can access her website’s endorsement page by adding
/endorsementsto the end of her url, but it’s not on the menu bar.This endorsement page also lists “The Hon. Lucy Moog - 47th Ward Democratic Committeeperson”, though Lucy Moog is the 43rd Ward Committeeperson. The 47th Ward Committeeperson is Paul Rosenfeld, Ellen’s husband.
5% of Alvarez’ signatures came from 47. It appears most of his door-knocking went on in the 46th Ward’s Buena Park, but c’mon now.
Now here’s a fun experiment:
I must say first and foremost, that Ellen Sherratt will not win 84% of the vote in the 44th Ward. Especially not if 44th Ward Action has anything to say about it. But, if we adjust the # of signatures based on 2024’s turnout patterns, the ‘result’ of this race flips:
Though Zaccor collected 41% of all signatures, adjusting turnout by ward knocks her down to 38%, and bumps Sherratt’s 36% to 42%. While this would be a close match of Zaccors’ 2024 results, Sherratt benefits over the lack of a split field and improves ~7pp over Rosenfeld. A more granular, but noisier, precinct-based adjustment is less aggressive, but still boosts Sherratt ~5pp.
Adding some more geographies: State House Districts
Not as in-depth a section as ward (that’s where the fun stuff is!), but I wanted to include a breakdown by state legislative district since I referenced Rep. Croke earlier.
Rep. Croke’s 12th District includes the portions of the 44th where Sherratt collected the most signatures — 92%(!) of all signatures in the overlapping portion were for Sherratt. Rep. Ann Williams’ 11th District and outgoing Rep. Hoan Huynh’s 13th Districts, which make up the vast majority of the district, were more split: 56% for Sherratt in 11, 53% for Zaccor in 13. Rep. Kelly Cassidy’s 14th District is the mirror to Rep. Croke’s, covering just a hair at the northern end in Edgewater — Zaccor (55%) and Alvarez (39%) combine for the vast majority of the 168 signatures here.
Zaccor scored the endorsement of now-outgoing Rep. Hoan Hunyh in 2024 and recently posted a pic with incoming Rep. Demi Palecek at the Pride Parade. Though neither by any means is an official endorsement, Ellen Sherratt also posted a pic with incoming Rep. Paul Kendrick.
Dollars and Doors
As the old adage for candidates goes, it’s all dollars and doors. Are you raising money, or are you speaking to voters. That’s all there is. Let’s look at it.
Dollars: the Fundraising Game
All information below can be found at Illinois Sunshine, for Sherratt, Zaccor, and Alvarez. The below table is based on reports filed with the State Board of Elections. ‘Funds available’ is the amount of cash on hand at the end of June, in the Q2 quarterly filing report. Contributions since June 30 are only reported if they are in excess of $1,000; contributions over $500 are required to state the donors’ employer and title. Donors’ names are only made public (‘itemized’) if they cumulatively donate in excess of $150 during a quarterly filing cycle.
As of August 4, Ellen Sherratt is leading the fundraising game by leaps and bounds. With four max-out donations already (that’s $7,300 a pop) it’s hard not to. One big name that pops out is Robert Melman of Lettuce Entertain You. Another name that pops up a lot is Shulkin: the campaign committee treasurer Jeffrey, as well as two of the four max-out donations, from Alissa, a veterinarian, and Toph, a college student (fun fact: I almost went to Tufts, go Jumbos). Sherratt’s numbers also include ~$3,000 of ‘in-kind’ donations — more on that later.
Zaccor’s donors (this cycle) have yet to include any big fish - a couple hundred dollars here and there, a set of in-kind donations from Uptown-based progressive group One People’s Campaign, and a few in-kinds taken care of by Zaccor herself (including a $3,500 late filing penalty to the State Board of Elections). As the cycle heats up, Zaccor is likely expecting air support: in 2024, she received over $200,000 from PACs affiliated with the Chicago Teachers’ Union, and another $150,000+ from other progressive groups.
I am including Angel Alvarez in this section for one reason and one reason only: he filed his quarterly D-2 on paper. Not to IYKYK-post, but this is exceedingly uncommon, so much so that it breaks the Illinois Sunshine data intake pipelines. Angel, if you are reading this, please sign up for an IDES (electronic filing) account with the SBOE.
Small-Dollar Donors
Small-dollar donors (in Illinois, that’s under $150 per quarter) are harder to identify, but there is one method through which we may back out some helpful information. With required expense reporting in quarterly filings, we can see when candidates pay fees to ActBlue, the prominent left-leaning fundraising platform. These fees are 3.95% of any donation through their platform (for most campaigns), and are charged weekly, so we can see roughly how much a candidate brings in per week:
Each candidate starts with their reported ‘funds available at beginning of reporting period’, per their D-2 disclosures. Using this 3.95% fee and aggregating at each billing cycle, we can trace weekly fundraising. Big spikes likely indicate fundraiser events, but could also indicate successfully landing a major donor.
My numbers may be slightly off; each campaigns’ inferred fundraising via ActBlue fees is off by about $1000; this is likely due to some donations coming in via check or cash.
I’m only beginning to dabble in fundraising analysis, but D-2’s do offer a fair bit of data with which to play. We can subtract cash reported as A-1’s from the inferred ActBlue sums (again, at 3.95%) to get a better sense of non-itemized contributions over time, but nothing more specific than avg. daily non-itemized donation amount:
(For Sherratt, I am assuming the only max contribution from Q2 came via check)
Why the money matters:
Continuing my streak of tongue-twisters: mail makes money matter. No matter how many doors you knock, or how many viral TikToks you might make (though no one has tried that yet in this race), down-ballot races hinge a lot on mail. No one home? Mail’s in the mailbox. Doorman? Mail gets by them. And maybe you throw out the first, or the twenty-first (please don’t send 21 pieces of mail), but voters start to recognize names and faces. Maybe they even read a piece or two. But there’s one type of voter for whom mail matters more than most: folks who live in high-rise apartments.
Take a look at a zoning map of this district’s northern tail, which stretches along the East side of Sheridan from Granville to Balmoral, before bumping out a bit to Broadway south of Balmoral. Between Granville and Balmoral, the parcels (ignoring the Emanuel Congregation, for now) are zoned either RM-5.5 or RM-6: mid-rise and high-rise apartment buildings. You’re not getting in unless it’s through the mailbox, or through a residents’ house party.
These precincts also skew older (anecdata), so digital ads aren’t going to cut it. There’s one precinct (48-23) that is almost entirely the Admiral at the Lake, a senior-living community. They always show up for No Kings Marches (they’re delightful), but it can lead to some outlier results in certain races — f.x. 44% for Biss in IL-09 primary vs. his 26% across the 48th Ward. Rosenfeld won it by 16pp in 2024 (45-29) while losing the 48th Ward by 3pp (32-35). I digress. Spent money on mail.
The Doors: Field, Petition Collecting, and Organizing
Part of why I like looking at petition signatures is that no campaign is going to publicize their field plan. It might be obvious, but they’re not going to shout it from the rooftops - it’s a competitive advantage! So let’s see what the petition sheets tell us:
% in-district:
A vast majority of all candidates’ signatures we were able to analyze were in-district (and therefore valid): good for them!
86% of Zaccor’s addresses we were able to code were in-district, above 74% of Sherratt’s and 72% of Alvarez’s — to me, this indicates a signature-collecting approach that skews more towards door-to-door campaigning rather than ‘high-traffic canvassing’ as you might see at a CTA stop or farmers’ market.
% personally collected/# of collectors:
Two notes:
1) When you submit a petition sheet, you must sign your name and have the sheet notarized: a legally-binding affirmation that it was you who circulated that sheet. So I’m taking folks at their legally-binding word.
2) While I can see the names of circulators & notaries, I’m not using any in this piece, and any affiliations I describe can be verified through public sources.
Alvarez was the only circulator on his campaign. 100% of all sheets circulated on behalf of Angel Alvarez were done by Angel Alvarez. He’s got that dog in him: soloing ~1000 signatures is no easy task. But a lack of early-stage volunteers is not conducive to a strong campaign.
Sherratt collected 77% of her own signatures, roughly 1,100, though she did have 14 additional folks circulating on her behalf.
A couple of these circulators had also made donations to her campaign.
A couple of circulators are affiliated with On the Ballot, LLC, a political firm that helps circulate petitions. More on this later.
Zaccor only collected 35% of her own petition signatures (~500), but it helps to have 33(!) other individuals circulating on your behalf.
Many of Zaccor’s circulators are community organizers or affiliated with organizations that are backing her, such as Northside Action for Justice, ONE People’s Campaign, and 46th Ward Neighbors United.
Dollars for Doors: Paid Petition Services
Ellen Sherratt’s campaign received a bit over $3,100 of in-kind donations from three organizations: Common Ground Collective PAC, INCS Action, and the Urban Center NFP. This donation was to On the Ballot, LLC on behalf of the Sherratt campaign, for ‘petition consulting’ or ‘consulting’. You can check out an interview with On the Ballot’s Matt Moeller here on his work, which appears to be more focused on signature verification than paid petition passing.
In Conclusion / Who’s Going to Win?
Who knows? We’re less than 100 days from the November election, but campaigns are still just shaping up. But I’ll try and sketch out what each candidate would need to do to win:
Sherratt
Build out a mail program targeting the 48th Ward high-rises that went for Rosenfeld in 2024.
Squeeze as much out of the 44th Ward as you can. More if possible.
Hold a campaign event north of Irving Park Rd.
Zaccor
Convince 46th/48th Ward voters that Alvarez is a spoiler.
Keep running it up door-to-door, especially in the 47th Ward.
Get cash or call the cavalry.
Alvarez
Raise more than $1000
Win over some institutional figure or organization, whether in or outside the district, who’s willing to throw money or volunteers your way.
Right now, it’s tight. As I pointed out earlier, this is an incredibly progressive district, and many progressive institutions have lined up behind Zaccor. But with the CTU-SEIU split, and a strong north-south divide, Sherratt could pull (what I would still describe as) the upset. And the real kicker of it all? The still-outstanding challenge to Zaccor’s petitions, which is set to be decided on August 11, per ChalkBeat.
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