Luis V. Gutierrez, born in 1953, Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois (1993- ). The son of a cab driver and a factory worker, Gutierrez was born in Chicago and grew up there and in Puerto Rico. He received a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern Illinois University in 1975 and taught school in Puerto Rico in the late 1970s. Later he was a social worker in Chicago.

Gutierrez entered politics in 1983, when he ran for a local ward committee position as a challenger to Chicago’s powerful political establishment. Although Gutierrez lost, he supported Democrat Harold Washington in that year’s mayoral campaign. Washington won and appointed Gutierrez to a staff position. In 1986 Gutierrez was elected to the Chicago Board of Aldermen. He was president pro tem of the board from 1989 to 1992. Gutierrez won election to Congress in 1992 and was returned to office in subsequent elections.

The solidly Democratic Fourth Congressional District of Illinois covers the Hispanic communities in northwest and southwest Chicago, connected by a narrow north-south band. The boundaries of the Fourth District were deliberately drawn in the early 1990s to create a Hispanic-majority district. Hispanics make up about two-thirds of the district’s population.