LOGAN SQUARE — Community activist Will Guzzardi announced Thursday that he will once again run for the 39th District Illinois House against longtime rep Toni Berrios.
Guzzardi surprised political observers in last March's primary election by coming within 125 votes of the political heavyweight Berrios, whose father, Joe Berrios, is chair of the Democratic Party in Cook County.
"I think we proved that these entrenched, establishment people, in this political machine, are not unbeatable," Guzzardi said in a phone interview Wednesday. "I think that we're in a real position to sort of close the book on that argument to prove once and for all that these guys can be beaten."
The 26-year-old North Carolina native moved to Chicago four years ago after getting a degree in comparative literature from Brown University.
After a stint at the Huffington Post, he decided he wanted to get more involved in community and jumped into the 2011 election to run against Berrios, coming closer than anyone expected with 3,896 votes to Berrios' 4,021.
"It was amazing," he said. "I mean, none of the political observers or the experts predicted anything like that."
A recount was conducted, but when the recount still put Berrios over Guzzardi, he conceded the election.
Still, the fact that it was so close buoyed Guzzardi, and he has spent the last year and a half continuing his community organizing in Logan Square, along with his day job as head writer for the College of Admissions at the University of Chicago.
His platform issues are largely the same this time around, but Guzzardi said much of the work he's done since the last campaign has been focused on education, including CODE Chicago, a group dedicated to returning to an elected school board in Chicago
He also got involved in protesting school closings, particularly Logan Square's Brentano Elementary, which was spared.
"That was a really happy moment for the community," he said.
He also sits on the advisory board for Chicago Votes, an organization that works to register and engage young voters.
Now Guzzardi's energy will be thrown back into campaigning until the primary March 18. He'll even be quitting that University of Chicago job at the end of the week to get the ball rolling.
He called his run a "test case" for outsiders attempting to topple established political powers.
"We'll prove that we can take on the most powerful families the most powerful institutions in the city, and we can replace them," he said.
