David Ehrlich

David Ehrlich graduated from Grosse Pointe South High School. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1981, a graduate degree from Georgetown University in 1989, and a Ph.D. from Wayne State University in 2004. His career experience includes working as a professor.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

THE MOST QUALIFIED candidate by far (43 years doing & teaching public policy): 2x to 40x more Congressional & public policy experience than opponents. We can’t wait five years for our Congressperson to learn the ropes. Congress & federal government & policies are complicated. It’s a huge risk to trust the job to someone with little or no experience in Congress, in federal government, or with formal policy education.

LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE: Making and teaching public policy is my life’s work. For nearly 7 years I worked for and was mentored by two of the most effective Congressmen in history. Charlie Rangel (D-NYC), a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus. Claude Pepper, Chairman of the House Rules Committee (D-Miami). Both districts, like ours, were very diverse. We listened & worked with everyone.

CONGRESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: I was a senior analyst for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) for 15 years, consulting with Congress to improve policy while looking for corruption, fraud, & waste.

PUBLIC POLICY PROFESSOR: 21 years teaching 25 policy topics. I’m now teaching at two top-ranked graduate programs training legislators, advocates, journalists, & nonprofit leaders: Indiana University O’Neill SPEA (#1 of 267 public affairs schools) & at UIC, & writing a book on policy design. I’ve already done the job for nearly 7 years. Now I’m asking you to let me do it for you.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

CLEAN GOVERNMENT: Restore democracy. End ICE. Treat immigrants with dignity & respect. Fix Supreme Court and Inspector General terms. Enforce ethics laws. Congress stock trading ban. Reducing US corruption to Denmark levels would increase average income by $15,000+/year, & more here given our levels.

CORRUPTION affects much of our lives, often indirectly and invisibly. In housing, crimes, hiring, health care costs and access, poverty, property taxes, schools, electricity prices, public services, waiting times. It reduces innovation, infrastructure quality, and increases inequality for those who can’t go elsewhere. It results in reduced happiness and satisfaction with government. These are not opinions, but research.CLEAN AIR is a human right, like health care, housing, and education. We can have cleaner air, which can extend your life expectancy in a dense city by 2 years, mainly due to reducing PM 2.5 & other pollutants. Chicagoland could be a world leader in clean energy, clean air, & in clean jobs: we have the workforce and companies to do it. Even if you don't care about climate change. Better policy, technology, and urban planning, energy efficiency, electrification, EVs, cleaner fuels, renewables all contribute.

PROFESSOR DAVE created & teaches Climate Policy at the #1 public affairs and #1 environmental policy grad school in the US (USNWR). He'll be a national leader. Other cities have done it; we can too.CLEAN GOVERNMENT & CLEAN AIR lead to many other benefits. More inclusion & less extraction by elites, for ex (Acemoglu & Robinson). If you have both, you likely have others: a better safety net, fair and affordable housing, education, better policing, lower crime. You can get a loan. Better health care, less asthma, healthier kids, less cardiovascular disease, and fewer hospitalizations. Higher productivity, attendance, cognitive capacity, longer careers, fewer sick days. It adds up. Many clean energy, clean tech, and related industries are growing by 20%-100%+/year. Like many large cities, we've made huge strides, up to 90% reductions in some air pollutants. But we're still way behind Zurich, Helsinski, Auckland.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I’m passionate about policies that work to solve real problems and improve the lives of real people: our 7th district neighbors. I’ve worked in, written on, consulted with Congressional Committees, or advised individual members of Congress on nearly every public policy topic, from public management topics to legislative processes, to substantive topics from health care to crime to low-income federal education assistance to housing to aviation safety to transit to defense to energy to climate.

I’m very passionate about environmental and climate issues, and have worked on them and taught them my entire career, including still at the #1 ranked US school.

Note: Ehrlich submitted the above survey responses to [the profile publisher] on March 4, 2026.

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February 12 submission

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I’m the most qualified candidate by far (43 years doing & teaching it): twice to 40x more Congressional & public policy experience than my opponents. We can’t wait five years for our Congressperson to learn the ropes. Congress & federal government & policies are complicated. It’s a huge risk to trust the job to someone with little or no experience in Congress, in the federal government, or with formal policy education.

Making and teaching public policy is my life’s work. I walked the halls of Congress until I got legislative assistant jobs with my heroes. For nearly 7 years I was mentored by two of the most effective Congressmen in history. Charlie Rangel (D-NYC), a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus. Claude Pepper, Chairman of the House Rules Committee (D-Miami). Both districts, like ours, were very diverse, with no racial majority. We listened and worked with everyone. I was a senior analyst for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) for 15 years, consulting with Congress to improve policy while looking for corruption, fraud, and waste. After 21 years teaching 25 policy topics, I’m now teaching at two top-ranked graduate programs training legislators, advocates, journalists, & nonprofit leaders: Indiana University O’Neill SPEA (#1 of 267 public affairs schools) and here at UIC, & writing a book on policy design. I’ve already done the job for nearly 7 years. Now I’m asking you to let me do it for you.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

I have three main goals in my first term: 1) CLEAN GOVERNMENT, 2) A CLEAN, FAIR, & STRONG SAFETY NET with SAFE STREETS, and 3) CLEAN ENERGY JOBS, CLEAN AIR, and FAST CLEAN TRANSIT. These are all achievable.

CLEAN GOVERNMENT: Corruption is a tax & drain on every one of us: it makes health care less affordable and health care jobs harder to get, puts us in physical danger from gun violence, it means less opportunity to buy a house, start a business, or send a child to college. Stop the most corrupt administration in history, including attacks on our freedom, communities, democracy, and most of our Constitutional Bill of Rights such as by ICE. Our streets would be 3,000 police safer with no CPD $300 million 2025 corruption settlement.A CLEAN, FAIR, & STRONG SAFETY NET with SAFE STREETS. I’ll work to restore & improve the safety net of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ACA SNAP, CHIP, the Child Tax Credit, with education & jobs & small business in the 7th. 60,000 neighbors don’t have health insurance. That’s unacceptable, and I’ll work to cover them and continue the health care legacies of Cong. Rangel & Pepper. I’ll work to ban assault weapons, stop gun trafficking with federal help, & increase waiting periods for gun licenses. Housing, a human right, needs fair lending and to be affordable. Expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit that Cong. Rangel created while I worked for him, which has financed 90% of the 3 million affordable homes built in the last 30 years.I’ll be a leader in Congress in clean energy jobs, the environment, & reducing GHG emissions, as an advocate and passing legislation. We have to stop the madness and change course 190 degrees.

We need clean air, climate justice, and good jobs. We can get all three by turning the 7th into the US and world's center for clean energy jobs, research, manufacturing, and technology exports, to US and foreign markets. We can. We should. We have 2 million jobs in Chicagoland, but we need more and we need to start building now. Chicago is a logical place for a climate and renewable energy jobs cluster to grow. It will grow 25% a year whether here or somewhere else. We have all the building blocks even if Congress won't help right now.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I’m passionate about policies that work to solve real problems and improve the lives of real people: our 7th district neighbors. I’ve worked in, written on, consulted with Congressional Committees, or advised individual members of Congress on nearly every public policy topic, from public management topics to legislative processes, to substantive topics from health care to crime to low-income federal education assistance to housing to aviation safety to transit to defense to energy to climate.

I’m very passionate about environmental and climate issues, and have worked on them and taught them my entire career. For example, I designed and teach the first climate change policy course at the #1 public affairs and #1 environmental policy univer