Campaign sign for Jeff Cohen, Economist for Congress, with a large orange upward arrow overlayed on blue text.

I’m jeff cohen.

And I’ve spent my life working on big economic problems.  Everywhere in the 9th District people tell me that they just can’t get ahead.  

Affordability is gone.

For three decades I’ve worked in the field of law and economics.   What does that mean? Let me tell you:

  • I worked with the Department of Justice to stop Anthem and Cigna from merging.  Letting these two health insurance giants merge would have raised prices for consumers even higher. 

  • As much as I love sports, I had to tell the City of Chicago that it couldn’t afford to host the 2016 Olympics.  It was going to leave taxpayers holding a very big bag.

  • In a fight for public health, I helped Uruguay defend itself against Philip Morris in what became the infamous cigarette packaging wars.  Tiny Uruguay actually won, saving lives as a result.  (See “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” Feb 2015, or #jeffwecan)

  • I was the guy Apple asked to figure out if it was creating enough American jobs. The answer? Actually yeah—370,000 more American supplier jobs supported than were listed on Apple’s own payroll, and that’s not including large spinoffs from the App Store ecosystem.

  • And in Evanston, city leaders have floated some fiscally irresponsible ideas in the last few years, like underfunding police and fire pensions, and just accepting, or worse, sponsoring studies that claimed a new stadium would save our economy. I stood up, helped change the vote, and meanwhile shed some light on poor governance.

I think of all that experience as the best real world training you can get on how the economy works, and how to make it work better for everyone. What I hear is that folks are one step away from a major financial crisis.  Healthcare is expensive or beyond reach, and their jobs are insecure.  They fear for their kids’ future, while at the same time many are helping their struggling parents.    

A good chunk of this is because a political system that’s become warped by corruption serves fewer and fewer of us. And Donald Trump’s chaotic economic nonsense will only make it worse, choking off productivity in the economy and flat-out eliminating prosperity for most of America.  He is a terrible businessman for the country.

Of course, President Trump’s attacks on the constitution, our sacred Democracy, science, education, climate change, women’s reproductive rights, the Federal Reserve, the judiciary branch and whatever else he’s done since you started reading this bio, do not reflect who we are as a people and what we want to be as a country.  

To be successful I believe we need a serious change in leadership.  We don’t just need change for change’s sake, and we don’t need more of what got us here. If we keep sending more of the same politicians to Washington they’re never going to save our economy because they don’t know how to do it.  

That’s not me. I am not interested in being a career politician. I am not particularly interested in attention; (I got all I needed fronting a rock band). But I do have the kind of deep, real world experience with the economy and how it works to help make life more affordable for people of the 9th District of Illinois. 

My wife Kim and I have lived here for most of our lives, first in Edgewater and then in Evanston, where we proudly sent three kids to ETHS. Before that… I was born in India, grew up in downstate Illinois as one of six kids, graduated from Urbana High (Go Tigers!), and went on to attend the University of Chicago, where I earned both my BA and MBA.  

I hope this all makes good sense to you.  If it does, please join me.  

A light blue vintage Volkswagen Beetle with two people inside, sitting in the front seats, each holding small American flags. The scene is set outdoors on a sunny day with autumn trees in the background.
People celebrating Holi with colorful powder, some covered in colors, outdoors in a courtyard.
A young boy with red hair and a grey t-shirt sitting in a red toy fire patrol vehicle, smiling at the camera outdoors.
A young man in a graduation gown and cap standing between two elderly women smiling, with one woman placing her arm around his shoulder, in front of a wooden wall.
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A black and white photo of six children and one adult on a farm, sitting and standing on an old farm wagon with fields in the background.
A fluffy orange tabby cat lying on a light-colored couch with a neutral pillow in the background.
A happy tan and white dog with floppy ears and a long tail standing on green grass, panting with its tongue out, in a sunny park.
A barn with open doors revealing a gathering of people sitting around tables inside, illuminated by string lights, with a sunset sky in the background.
The crest of a university featuring a white eagle with outstretched wings, a partially open book with Latin text, and a maroon background.
A woman kisses a man on the cheek in a black and white photo.
Black and white photo of a young boy standing on a city sidewalk, holding a bag in one hand and wearing a jacket and sneakers.
A man with curly brown hair wearing a white shirt and a black tie playing an acoustic guitar.
A man taking a selfie in front of a large sign for Wolfy's, a restaurant, with a big neon hot dog on top. The sky is partly cloudy with patches of blue, and cars are visible on the street behind him.
A vintage 45 RPM vinyl record with a label reading "PHILLO LOVE 45 RPM LOSS 'EVERYTHING DIED' JEFF COHEN LOVE 'CUPID' SAM COOKE" from the Phillosound label.
Two children wearing 3D glasses sitting at a restaurant table, each holding an ice cream cone.

PAID FOR BY JEFF COHEN FOR CONGRESS