Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D) Elected 2002, 2d term
Born:	Nov. 29, 1959, Chicago
Home:	Chicago
Education:	Sarah Lawrence Col., B.A. 1981; Northwestern U., M.A. 1985
Religion:	Jewish
Marital Status:	married (Amy)
Professional Career:	Pol. Dir., DCCC, 1985-86; Natl. Campaign Dir., DCCC, 1988; Sr. White House adviser, 1993-99; Investment bank dir., 1999-2002.
DC Office	1319 LHOB20515, 202-225-4061; Fax: 202-225-5603; Web site: www.house.gov/emanuel
State Offices	Chicago, 773-267-5926.
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Few places in America today have more variety--ethnic and cultural--than the North Side of Chicago. This has been the homeland of one immigrant group after another and the chosen neighborhoods of all manner of successful middle-class people. Wooden workingman's cottages from the late 19th century give way to sturdy huge brick houses of the early 1900s and then to the prairie bungalows of the 1920s and white-shuttered, orange-brick colonials of the 1950s. Chicago was America's number one immigrant destination for Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians and Romanians; something about the heavy dull clouds of the long winters, the short hot summers, a climate suited to potatoes and cabbage and other hardy vegetables, may have reminded them of central and eastern Europe. By the late 1980s, upwardly mobile immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala, Korea and the Philippines moved in; the 1990s witnessed new rounds of immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, plus Pakistan and India. Family ties, webs of acquaintance that reach back to ancestral villages, have made the North Side of Chicago a natural port of entry for Eastern bloc migrants, even as newcomers establish new family ties and webs of relationships extending to Latin America and Southeast Asia.

The 5th Congressional District of Illinois covers an oddly shaped slice of Chicago's North Side, running from the lakefront to the suburbs directly south of O'Hare Airport. It was not apparent in early 2001 that the 5th District would survive redistricting: with the incumbent running for governor, it seemed convenient for the bipartisan redistricters to slice up the district. But the 2000 Census results showed a big population increase in Chicago's immigrant neighborhoods. Mayor Richard M. Daley insisted that Chicago should retain all its districts; the May 2001 plan left the boundaries of the 5th mostly undisturbed. It was carefully drawn to put most Hispanics in the 4th District just to the south, but otherwise it reflects the full variety of the North Side. It includes Chicago's most glamorous lakefront apartments facing the Oak Street beach and the gentrified neighborhoods of Old Town, where old houses and factories are being converted into upscale condominiums, and nearby Lincoln Park, which has the highest median household income of Chicago's 77 community areas. It takes in baseball's famed Wrigley Field, the Polish-American and Ukrainian-American neighborhoods around Milwaukee Avenue, and the old Italian neighborhoods running west on Grand Avenue. It includes, a couple of blocks from the Chicago River, the grand old church of St. Stanislaus Kostka--a traditional center of the Polish community since the 19th century but now with Masses in Spanish--and the residence across Pulaski Park of Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1981 to 1994, for whom the district was designed in 1992. It reaches the Cook County suburbs, beyond River Grove and Franklin Park into Schiller Park and Northlake. This is a solidly Democratic district.

The congressman from the 5th District is Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat elected in 2002 when Rod Blagojevich gave up the seat and ran successfully for governor. Emanuel grew up in Chicago, the son of an Israeli immigrant; he graduated from Sarah Lawrence and from Northwestern. Tony Coelho recruited him to join the staff of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1985. He worked for Mayor Richard M. Daley, before joining Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1991. He was rewarded with a high-level staff post in the Clinton White House, where he gained wide respect for his political savvy but drew criticism, even from allies, for an arrogant and abrasive style. In 1999 he left the White House and returned to Chicago where he made millions as an investment banker. His decision to seek Blagojevich's seat was greeted with disdain by those who had toiled for years in the vineyards of local Chicago politics. His strongest opponent was former state Representative Nancy Kaszak, who lost the 1996 primary to Blagojevich; she portrayed Emanuel as an interloper with few ties to the district. But Emanuel had his own local connections. He was endorsed by Daley and by labor unions (despite his support of NAFTA), and he raised large sums--nearly $2 million for the primary--from his extensive Chicago and national Democratic fundraising networks. Emanuel benefited from controversy two weeks before the primary, when a local Polish-American leader supporting Kaszak charged that Emanuel served in the Israeli army in 1991 during the Gulf War and suggested he had dual loyalties. The charge was false--Emanuel is a U.S. citizen who volunteered as a civilian at an Israeli supply base--and Kaszak's campaign was thrown off-stride. Emanuel won 50%-39%, with large majorities on the Lakefront and in Lincoln Park. He carried all of the 13 wards in the district, except for the heavily Polish 30th. In the general election, Emanuel faced a feisty challenger who attacked him as overly ambitious, but the result was never in doubt; he won 67%-29%. That made him the district's fourth congressman in a decade; before he was indicted and eventually served prison time, Rostenkowski served this area for 36 years.

In his first term in the House, Emanuel cut an unusually high-profile figure. Even before winning election in 2002, he strategized for the national party, met with the national media and sought a prime committee assignment: Rosty's old haunt at Ways and Means. Although he failed--freshmen seldom get on Ways and Means--his aggressiveness, political skills and fundraising prowess quickly made him a congressman to watch. "He's very strategic, very good at message, smart on the legislative process, and disciplined," said Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who represents the neighboring 9th District. In March 2004, working with Representative Rosa DeLauro, Emanuel asked the General Accounting Office to investigate whether the Bush administration had improperly promoted the new Medicare law; two months later, they were the first Democrats to applaud the GAO decision that the HHS's "video news releases" about the new prescription drug benefit violated federal law. He also showed skill in working across the aisle. He cosponsored with Representative Gil Gutknecht the House-passed bill allowing Americans to import prescription drugs from other nations. "Few members here have Rahm's energy, or know what reporter to talk to at The New York Times," Gutknecht marveled. NRCC chairman Tom Reynolds became Emanuel's chief co-sponsor of a proposal to spend billions of dollars to clean up the Great Lakes. "He came to me, and I liked his concept," Reynolds said. "I think that Hillary [Rodham Clinton] told him he should get to know me."

In the highly competitive House, the peripatetic Emanuel was careful not to seem overly ambitious. "The legislative process is a people business," he said. "You are part of a group, and you try to get to know people." But he made another run to convince Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that he was ready for a Ways and Means seat and in January 2005 he got one. After the death of Robert Matsui, the DCCC chairman in the 2004 cycle, Emanuel was named as his replacement, thus chairing the committee on which he had once been a staffer. With his quick start, Emanuel has shown that he is a member to watch.

Committees

• DCCC Chairman
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• Ways & Means (17th of 17 D): Health; Human Resources.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	100	70	100	100	60	8	29	0	0	8	--
2003	95	--	100	95	--	23	39	20	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	77%	--	23%		89%	--	8%
Social	75%	--	24%		78%	--	22%
Foreign	70%	--	27%		85%	--	14%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Drilling in ANWR N 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 3. Medicare/Rx Bill N 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. Y 5. DC School Vouchers N 6. Ban Human Cloning N		7. Restrict Gun Liability N  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 10. Fund Iraq War Y 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds Y 12. Intelligence Reorg. N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Rahm Emanuel (D)	158,400	76%	$689,463
	Bruce Best (R)	49,530	24%
2004 primary	Rahm Emanuel (D)	60,821	83%
	Mark Fredrickson (D)	12,255	17%
2002 general	Rahm Emanuel (D)	106,514	67%	$2,971,514
	Mark Augusti (R)	46,008	29%	$217,731
	Frank Gonzalez (Lib)	6,913	4%

2004 Presidential Vote Kerry (D) 161,348 (67%) Bush (R) 79,349 (33%)

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 143,106 (66%) Bush (R) 73,793 (34%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifth District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +18
• District Size: 58 square miles
• Population in 2000: 653,647; 100.0% urban; 0.0% rural
• Median Household Income: $48,531; 8.5% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 21.5% blue collar; 64.9% white collar; 13.6% gray collar; 6.7% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 65.9% White, 2.2% Black, 6.5% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 2.2% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 23.0% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 13.5% Polish, 11.5% German, 9.9% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.