Representative Robert J. Dold

Robert James Dold Jr. (born June 23, 1969) is an American politician and businessman who served as the U.S. representative for Illinois’s 10th congressional district from January 3, 2011, to January 3, 2013, and again from January 3, 2015, to January 3, 2017. A member of the Republican Party, he represented a traditionally moderate, suburban district north of Chicago and contributed to the legislative process during two nonconsecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives. His service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American political history, marked by closely contested elections and shifting partisan control in swing districts.

Dold was born on June 23, 1969, and grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. He was raised in a family that owned and operated a pest control business, an experience that later shaped his emphasis on small business issues and entrepreneurship. His early life in the region he would eventually represent in Congress gave him longstanding ties to the local communities of Illinois’s 10th congressional district.

Dold pursued higher education before entering business and politics. He attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where he earned his undergraduate degree. He later completed a law degree at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law and went on to receive an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. This combination of legal and business training informed his later work as a small business owner and as a legislator focused on economic and regulatory issues.

Prior to his election to Congress, Dold ran his family-owned business, Rose Pest Solutions, one of the oldest pest management companies in the country. As president of the company, he oversaw operations and expansion, and he frequently highlighted this experience to underscore his credentials as a small business owner, fiscal conservative, and social moderate. His leadership in the private sector provided the foundation for his first congressional campaign, in which he emphasized job creation, fiscal responsibility, and pragmatic problem-solving.

Dold entered electoral politics in 2010, running for the open seat in Illinois’s 10th congressional district after five-term Republican incumbent Mark Kirk retired to run for the U.S. Senate. He won the Republican primary on February 2, 2010, and faced Democrat Dan Seals, a business consultant who had been the Democratic nominee for the seat in 2006 and 2008. During the general election campaign, Dold described himself in his first radio advertisement as a small business owner, fiscal conservative, and social moderate. He received endorsements from the Chicago Tribune—whose editorial page editor, R. Bruce Dold, is not related to him—as well as from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Electrical Contractors’ Association. High-profile Republicans, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, campaigned on his behalf. After reporting nearly equal fundraising with Seals in the second quarter of 2010, Dold’s fundraising outpaced his opponent’s in the third quarter, and he entered the final stretch of the campaign with more cash on hand. At the request of the Federal Election Commission, his campaign amended its second-quarter filing in September 2010 to reflect debts and expenditures incurred but not yet billed when the filing period ended. In the November 2010 general election, Dold defeated Seals with 51 percent of the vote to Seals’s 49 percent, succeeding Mark Kirk in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Serving in the 112th Congress from 2011 to 2013, Dold represented a district that was already considered Democratic-leaning and ideologically moderate. He participated in the democratic process as a member of the House of Representatives, working on legislation and representing the interests of his constituents in areas such as economic policy, small business, and fiscal issues. His voting record and public positions reflected an effort to balance fiscal conservatism with more moderate or independent stances on certain social issues, consistent with the political character of the 10th district.

The 2012 election cycle posed a significant challenge to Dold’s congressional career. The Cook Political Report named him one of the top ten Republicans most vulnerable to redistricting that year, as Illinois’s 10th congressional district, already leaning Democratic, became even more favorable to Democrats after new district lines were drawn. Dold ran for re-election with the endorsement of Senator Mark Kirk, who remained popular in the area, and he held a strong cash-on-hand advantage over his Democratic opponent, Brad Schneider. He again received endorsements from the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald. Despite these advantages, Schneider defeated Dold by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent, a difference of roughly 3,000 votes, ending Dold’s first term in Congress on January 3, 2013.

On May 8, 2013, Dold announced in an email to supporters that he would seek to regain his former seat in the 2014 election. The National Republican Congressional Committee actively recruited him to run again, viewing the race as one of the most competitive in the nation. Roll Call ranked the contest as the seventh most likely House rematch to flip in 2014. The campaign drew national attention and significant outside spending; billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg spent nearly $2 million in support of Dold. In the November 2014 rematch, Dold narrowly defeated incumbent Brad Schneider by slightly more than 4,800 votes, returning to Congress at the start of the 114th Congress in January 2015.

During his second period of congressional service, from 2015 to 2017, Dold continued to represent Illinois’s 10th congressional district as a Republican in a politically competitive environment. He again participated actively in the legislative process and maintained a profile as a moderate Republican, occasionally taking positions that diverged from his party’s national leadership, particularly on social issues. His stance reflected the centrist tendencies of his district and the broader political dynamics of the Chicago suburbs during this period.

In 2016, Dold sought re-election and faced a third general-election contest against Brad Schneider. The race again attracted national attention. Dold received endorsements from the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, as well as from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization, which had endorsed Schneider in 2014 but backed Dold in 2016. In the presidential election that year, Dold refused to endorse Republican nominee Donald Trump and stated that he would instead write in an alternative candidate’s name, a position that underscored his independent streak within the party. In the November 2016 general election, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton carried the district by nearly 30 percentage points, and Dold lost to Schneider by about 5 percentage points, concluding his second term in the House on January 3, 2017.

Following his departure from Congress, Dold returned to private life and to the business community, drawing on his experience as a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and as a small business executive. His career reflects the volatility of suburban swing districts in the early twenty-first century and the challenges faced by moderate Republicans in increasingly polarized national politics, as he twice won and twice lost the same seat in closely contested elections while consistently emphasizing his background as a small business owner, fiscal conservative, and social moderate.