Retirements — one announced — another reported — this week have fueled speculation that newly-reelected Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss may seek higher office next year.

Sen. Dick Durbin, first elected in 1996, announced his retirement from the U.S. Senate Wednesday and just hours later, reports began circulating that Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston plans to announce her retirement next month.

Both Durbin and Schakowsky turn 81 this year.

Biss, 47, who won a second term April 1 with nearly 63% of the vote, has long been thought of as a potential successor to Schakowsky.

He was born in Akron, Ohio, raised in Bloomington, Indiana, earned degrees from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before working as a mathematician at the University of Chicago.

He first ran for political office in 2010, elected as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from the 17th District, which includes Northwest Evanston, part of Wilmette and Glenview.

He served for just two years before winning election to the Illinois Senate upon the retirement of Jeffrey Schoenberg. He then briefly ran for Illinois Comptroller in 2015, before dropping out and endorsing Susana Mendoza.

In 2017, Biss launched a campaign for governor in a large field of Democrats. He was endorsed by a number of progressive organizations and activists during the campaign, but placed second in the Democratic primary behind eventual winner JB Pritzker.

Coincidentally, Pritzker had placed second behind Schakowsky in 1998 to represent Illinois’ 9th Congressional District upon the retirement of longtime congressman Sydney R. Yates.

On Sept. 16, 2020, Biss announced his candidacy for mayor of Evanston, just one month before Mayor Steve Hagerty announced he’d retire and not seek reelection.

Biss knocked out his two opponents in the primary winning 73% of the vote after gaining a long list of endorsements from people like Schakowsky, and Laura Fine, who succeeded him representing both the 17th district in the Illinois House, and the 9th district in the Illinois Senate.

During Biss’ reelection campaign this year, he maintained his “expectation is to serve out [a second] term” and often pushed off questions about his interest in higher office, posing them as “hypotheticals.”

In an interview in January, when asked if he’d be interested in running should Durbin or Schakowsky retire, he said, “I don’t know. I mean, I’m really focused on this.”

“I found in my time in politics that [spending] a lot of time thinking about hypotheticals instead of doing the work in front of you is a mistake,” he said.

At his campaign kickoff event later that month, Schakowsky said she hadn’t spoken to Biss about a 2026 campaign, and at the time, said she had no plans to retire just yet.

On Wednesday, as reports started circulating about her planned announcement in May, Schakowsky wrote in a post on X, “I have not made a decision about my plans for re-election. I will make that decision in the coming weeks and announce on May 5.”

On social media, Biss’ name quickly began circulating as a likely candidate for Schakowsky’s seat, with Politico reporting that he and Fine are “widely expected to enter the race after Schakowsky makes her plans public.”

Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive social media influencer from Chicago, already announced her candidacy for the seat, and a Chicago math teacher named David Abrevaya was exploring a campaign, but later told Evanston Now that he decided he wouldn’t seek the office.

So far, only one candidate, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, has announced a campaign for Durbin’s Senate seat. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-8) and Rep. Lauren Underwood (IL-14) are both expected to jump in the race as well, according to reports.

Biss didn’t respond to questions on Wednesday about his interest in either Schakowsky’s or Durbin’s seat.

If he does announce, it would likely be after a formal announcement from Schakowsky in May. Biss is scheduled to give his annual State of the City address on May 14.