Clean Government. Clean Air. I'm Dave Ehrlich, and I'm ready to lead.
CLEAN GOVERNMENT: When I saw masked ICE agents attack us, and IL and TX National Guard troops arrive in Chicago, that was the final straw of corruption. A $28 billion private Trump masked militia, unleashed for partisan political headlines, defying the Constitution, local laws, and ignoring accepted policing norms.
Arresting, jailing, and killing US citizens under the guise of immigration enforcement. Deporting randomly chosen people of color to foreign prisons, even US citizens, without due process. And in another cruel irony, cuffing and jailing native Americans for days because of their skin color.
CLEAN AIR: Clean air is a human right, like health care & housing. If you have any one you’re more likely to have the others. Wealthy Americans produce 4x more air pollution than the poorest. Poor neighborhoods breathe 3x more. Black Americans breath 20% more PM2.5 than whites. And when kids get asthma and adults get sick from pollution in high-pollution neighborhoods, they often can’t get health care. Affordable housing is scarce, gentrification is bad, loans are hard to get. In the wealthiest country in the world.
Trump & Congress WANT this to get much worse. Their endangerment finding deregulation, summarized, says: we don’t care if tens of thousands of Americans die every year from air pollution. Sounds a bit like the science behind COVID disinfectant injections. The Supreme Court says this is great until Congress acts. Congress MUST act.
Tariff Corruption; playing with our lives using tariff as threats. No plan. No logic. No economic sense. Just dumb. And And it keeps getting worse: putting a 145% tariff (now 30%) on China based on their "lack of respect" in trade (except favored tech companies)? Kidnapping a president, however corrupt, for oil? Threatening to invade Greenland and blow up NATO, or start a war with what's left of NATO? Investigating anyone who disagrees (Lisa Cook, Mark Kelly, Jerome Powell, etc.)? Threatening universities -- one of the US' biggest exporters and innovation engines -- with cutting research funding on the president's whims? Trying to force US universities to stop accepting foreign students? Cutting more than a third of the NIH budget and half the CDC budget? Is these are America Last policies, not first. If we and Congress don't stop this now, the damage will take a generation to repair.
I had to run. Out of control daily corruption. Normalized. Encouraged. Required incompetence with brainless, fear-driven loyalty. Out of control environmental, climate, and fossil fuel corruption.
Democracy matters to us, but no longer to the GOP. Trump idolized fake democracies with rigged, phony elections. It's an old playbook. At the same time, the administration is using tax dollars to charter planes to bring white South Africans to immigrate to the US. Half the DOJ civil rights attorneys are gone. I couldn't stand by and watch as Congress, Chicagoland, and our democracy are torn apart. I knew that with more than four decades of experience in policy and Congress, I could help stop it, help rebuild from Trump's "tear-it-all-down" project, and then help rebuild and move forward.
I've lived in Chicago for 33 years. I'm raising a family here. I want to improve it for your family and mine. Diversity is a huge US strength that few nations can match. And until this year, foreigners have wanted to live, travel, and study here, in a democracy that was globally respected as giving everyone as much freedom as possible. I know how important diversity is to the US economy. And I understand how much our Chicagoland melting pot has made us not only rich culturally, but is a key ingredient to our economic competitiveness. I see this intuitively, but the academic evidence is also clear that diverse teams and organizations perform better. Even for kids, biracial and bilingual homes are a benefit, not a drawback. The evidence is clear for families across the district; bilingual kids benefit greatly from their different thinking and language styles. If ICE understood this they'd be recruiting minorities and foreigners to serve in government, business, and academics. US companies with workers fluent in other languages and cultures have a built-in export advantage. Further, many reports note that the US fertility rate of 1.6 means that without immigrants, the US population, economy, and markets will begin to decline, putting further stress on Social Security and other government programs. Do we really want that?
My entire career has been devoted to improving public policy. Good policy is what makes cities, states, countries, and international organizations succeed, and bad policy condemns them to mediocrity or failure. After college I drove my old car to Washington, D.C. and walked the halls of congress trying to get a job with Congressmen I respected and agreed with. I interned with Bruce Morrison of Connecticut, got some experience, and kept looking. Charlie Rangel gave me a job, and I worked there for three and a half years. My first responsibility was to help pass a bill to honor Roy Wilkins, who led the NAACP during the civil rights movement. One of Rangel's biggest achievements was serving his work as one of several primary sponsors of Obamacare (ACA) as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. In his office I worked on policies from food nutrition labelling to arms control to campaigning for his race for House Majority Whip (he came in 2nd of 5 to Tony Coehlo-CA).
Like all the hard-working people of the 7th District, I've worked long hours at night getting a Masters in Public Policy at Georgetown University and a PhD at Wayne State University, all while working full-time for Congress. I was lucky to be able to support myself with one job; as costs rise and wages stagnate, many of the people I talk to are forced to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Many of my students who live in the 7th are doing the same thing and some, remarkably, with several young children. We value and need these neighbors; they should have access to affordable child care, college, training in the trades, health care, and housing.
I'm not a politician, but I'm an expert in policy and politics. I've always been interested in good policy. I got interested in political science when my 7th grade civics teacher took me to Ann Arbor for a seminar for kids. They told the classic joke about the definition of communism: you have two cows, the government takes both and gives you some milk. During the Detroit riots of 1967, I saw armed National Guard troops on top of buildings, and the next year Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the last version of his famous "The Other America" speech at my high school. He said "Now there is another myth and that is the notion that legislation can't solve the problem...morality can't be legislated, but behavior can be regulated." He might as well have been talking about 2025. Three weeks later he was killed. I was a little kid but even then I was sharply aware that our society had big problems, and I wanted to help fix them when I grew up. We still have two Americas, even within the 7th district. I've spent my life trying to understand how policies can make a difference in people's lives, and now in the people of the 7th district's lives.
I'm interested in good policy, and have been since I was a kid. I'm not a politician but I understand it and why it's necessary but not sufficient for good policy. I was raised in a bipartisan home when northern Republicans believed in civil rights. They wouldn't recognize the MAGA Republican party, either for its racism, attacks on civil rights, or its $4 trillion in OBBB spending - much a redistribution of borrowed money to the wealthy. I welcome traditional Republicans to our campaign; I'm progressive but also worked at GAO (the US Government Accountability Office), an objective, non-partisan, non-political agency interested in facts and science, fiscal responsibility, and continuous government improvement. We do share power in government and need to work together when it's possible.
But policies start with politics; that's why I'm running. The difference between a fair, law-based, consensus-based, shared-power, and prosperous society and the opposite is good policies, as I write in my book on Policy Design. Most good policies have unique, predictable characteristics; knowing them helps you design better policies.
At GAO, I helped save $70 Billion per year, every year, in transparent, publicly detailed federal budget savings. I worked with Congress on clean energy, Chapter 1 low-income school funding, Army tank and other vehicle programs, bus and rail transit funding and efficiency, foreign lobbying of the US Congress, income security BLS data collection oversight, worker safety at meatpacking plants, and air safety, pilot training, and airplane crash survivability improvements. In February 2025 a jet crashed and flipped over at the Toronto airport. No one died. The airplane had structurally improved 16G seats and improved fire retardant materials such as those our GAO report recommended to Congress & the NTSB.
I've taught more than 140 graduate public policy courses, on 25 different public policy topics to 3,000 students; all will help me in Congress. These ranged from Climate Change Policy that I currently teach, Public Policy Process courses that I currently teach, and many that I've taught that are directly relevant to being a good representative. I've been teaching environmental policy courses for 20 years. I've taught hundreds of foreign students from dozens of countries, here to learn about the greatness of the American experiment. Now they are being threatened for being here and contributing to our great universities, which are also under threat. Now, instead of wanting to stay and contribute to the US economy, business, medicine, and science, they shake their heads and fly home. I've taken students to Washington, D.C. to talk directly with the range of players in the policy process. I've taught dozens of courses on how to analyze and design policies to succeed: policy design and analysis (16), policy evaluation and analytics (7x), environmental policy (12x), policy advocacy (4x), policy implementation, and public management or leadership (19x), organizational behavior (7x), an overview to public administration, & strategic competitiveness in the public sector (8x). I've taught government finance, nonprofit finance, statistics, research methods, comparative public policy, international public service, global civil society organizations, strategic planning, & decision-making in the public sector.
Why is my experience in Congress and teaching public policy relevant? Congress is very different than the state house. The skills are not often transferable. Business is very different than government: different goals, funding, accountability, structure, decision-making, services, regulation, and public service rather than private interests. Businesses represent narrow shareholders; governments represent everyone. The skills don't transfer: you can see this disconnect every day in Trump's inexperience and self-interest rather than the public interest; it's jarring, sad, transactional, uniformed, and focused on Trump's inherited real-estate businesses. He really doesn't understand government or its role even after 5 years in office. If you got in a serious car accident would you want to talk to me? Of course not! You'd obviously want to see Dr. Fisher, my opponent.
Generational Change: We hear a lot about it, but what does it really mean? I won't take advantage of my opponents' youth, inexperience, energy levels, or physical condition. I know some voters would. Does it refer to age? I am a new generation, young enough to be Danny Davis' son. And do you really want a representative who is too young or too inexperienced to do the job? I don't think so. Does it mean new ideas not limited by professional politicians, conventional ideas, and standard policy bromides? I'm not a politician but I understand politics. I'm not going to run for the Senate. My only interest is making policy that helps 7th district citizens of all ages, incomes, parties, and circumstances. I'm won't be a slave to old ideas, lobbyist donors, or party orthodoxy. My book on Policy Design includes ways to design better, more innovative, more effective, more efficient, more equitable policies. Does it mean mental fitness to serve? I'm teaching graduate students at the best public affairs schools in the US, and I could probably tell the difference between a giraffe and a hippo in a Trump dementia test. Does it mean physical fitness to serve? In my last marathon three years ago I qualified to run the Boston Marathon. If that's the physical fitness requirement to serve in Congress, I'll be the only member of Congress next January. I'll elect myself Speaker, impeach Trump, and help to train a Democratic senator to qualify to run Boston and be Majority Leader of the Senate. Then we could pass great policies and override every Trump veto.
My family has served for generations. My father took bomber crew training at the Illinois Institute of Technology during WW II, where I taught graduate MPA and Environmental Management students as full-time faculty for 9 years. My grandfather was a Colonel in the Army in WWI and WWII. One uncle was a career full (bird) colonel in the Army, serving in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, & the Pentagon. Another was an engineer responsible for crews repairing bombers in England to bomb German plants in WWII. A great-great-great grandfather had his eye shot out in the Civil War; he was reassigned as a quartermaster, or I'd likely not be here. My mother was a Parke-Davis research chemist during and after WWII in the massive race to develop anti-malarials, especially for the Pacific theater where malaria was killing more troops than combat. She helped design and develop Amodiaquine, which has saved millions of lives and is still in use as a first-line antimalarial drug in many African countries.
