A Chicago cardiologist and medical whistleblower is entering the crowded race for mayor, promising to face the city’s problems free of special-interest connections and with a doctor’s even hand.
Dr. Lisa Nee announced Tuesday her run to lead the city. It’s a long-shot bid for a complete political newcomer, but Nee is betting that her unusual résumé will attract voters tired of special interests dominating City Hall.
“I think they want a city where you don’t need connections to get very basic things done, and I think they want a leader that’s honest,” she told the Tribune. “I’m inside the community, I’m just outside the political machine.”
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The 59-year-old said she is focused on Chicago’s fiscal health, everyday affordability and safety. But she shared few details on the policy plans she would turn to on day one in office to tackle the city’s challenges.
Instead, she argued her background — including no experience in the political arena — means she isn’t bogged down by the thorny loyalties that prevent veteran politicians from making hard decisions.
“The higher you go in the position as a leader, the less it is about you and your personal priorities,” she said. “People who are already in the system will have a harder time with that, because they’re usually beholden to someone else.”
The February 2027 election field is growing. Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, former Chicago Housing Authority board chair Matthew Brewer, Cook County Board of Review Commissioner George Cárdenas, U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley and entrepreneurs Joe Holberg and Liam Stanton have declared their candidacies.
Heavyweights, including Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, also appear poised to launch front-runner campaigns.
Nee said her upstart campaign is a “long game” that is so far backed by family, friends and colleagues. But she said she doesn’t buy the conventional wisdom that candidates, especially political unknowns with no name recognition, need millions of dollars to win.
“I respectfully disagree. I think the path to victory is simple,” she said. “There’s far more Chicagoans than there are political insiders.”
Nee grew up in Humboldt Park and Belmont Cragin, then ran track at Loyola University Chicago and worked as a nurse for seven years. But after her father died from a heart attack when first responders brought him to a less well-equipped hospital, she decided to enter cardiology, she said.
“If he was transferred somewhere else, there could have been an intervention that helped him,” she said. “There were some policy changes that needed to be made, and I wanted to be able to save people’s lives.”
After medical school at the University of Illinois Chicago, Nee entered private practice, then took a job at the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital. She thought the job would be an opportunity to serve veterans in need, she said.
“Unfortunately, it couldn’t have been further from the truth,” she said.
At Hines, Nee saw unnecessary procedures performed on healthy patients “for the sake of doing the procedure and getting credit.” Meanwhile, high-risk procedures weren’t being done on patients who actually needed them, she said.
Tests typically completed in days or a week faced monthslong and even yearlong backlogs, she added.
Nee tried to tackle that problem, going up the chain of command. Leader after leader told her to be quiet, she said, so she made an anonymous report to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general.
The head of her hospital was in her office the next day, asking why she stirred up trouble, she said. She faced retaliation and an uphill road in sharing evidence, but the complaint ultimately brought her to Capitol Hill, where she testified to senators in 2015 about the hospital’s issues.
Local cardiologist testifies about Hines VA Hospital at Senate hearing
The national campaign she helped grow culminated in the VA Patient Protection Act, a federal law that protects VA whistleblowers.
It’s a lesson she’d take with her to City Hall’s fifth floor, she said.
“If you’re a leader, if you’re a true leader, you’re not going to retaliate against people who are bringing you problems within the system,” Nee said.
Nee has since worked as a medical consultant and healthcare executive, an experience she said has made her comfortable handling budgets and finding ways to improve efficiency. She is now working full time on her run for mayor, she added.
“I’m a problem solver. I’ve also seen as an executive how decisions get made behind closed doors, benefiting those already with power and not necessarily the greater good,” she said.
Asked why she would step away from her career to take on the long-shot campaign, Nee said Chicagoans are looking for someone trustworthy and credible.
“I think they want somebody where public service really means serving the public,” she said. “We might be electing someone who doesn’t have the name recognition, but you certainly won’t be electing someone unknown in terms of having credibility, accountability, solving complex problems and collaborating well.”
People already a part of the political system have a harder time making difficult decisions because they are often beholden to someone, she said. She jabbed at Johnson for “serving a smaller group of people,” criticizing him for his close ties to the Chicago Teachers Union that once employed him.
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“I also see him making a lot of decisions in isolation versus collaborating with people,” she said.
But despite her optimistic pitch, Nee would be tasked on the first day in office with solving an array of daunting challenges plaguing Chicago, from a high rate of shootings to looming pension debt, stagnant population totals and more.
She argued that she would be no different than anyone stepping into a CEO role to run a company for the first time. Her focus would be building coalitions and surrounding herself with top advisers, she said.
“It’s having a low ego and high value system to say, ‘I can’t be the only one making decisions. These decisions have to be made with the right people,’” she said. “And that includes people sometimes you may not agree with.”
On affordability, Nee said she would focus on health and consider holding “larger corporations accountable to the communities” to address food deserts. She would also seek to grow the city’s tax base, she said.
She said she would focus on making people feel safer by focusing on “community-based policing” and improving police recruitment and retention. She believes the city needs more police, she added.
She credited outgoing Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling — and not Johnson — with the sharp decline in shootings and homicides seen in the city in the last two years.
Asked about how she would handle the Chicago Bears’ plans to build a new stadium, she said she does not believe more burden can be put on taxpayers. And on Johnson’s plan to slowly let tax increment financing districts expire, she criticized the mayor’s decision to surplus TIF funds, but said she would need more time to determine how to handle the future of the districts.
She also said she would need to meet with school communities before making a decision on whether she would support closing low-attendance public schools.
On taxes, she said the city should “look at” how it taxes wealthy residents, but added that businesses are likely to move when they face a higher tax burden.