The seat was vacated by Rahm Emanuel when he was tapped to be President Barack Obama's chief of staff.
In his concession speech to staff and supporters, Wheelan said that Quigley was the candidate he would have voted for if he had not run himself, Emily Phelps, deputy communications director for the Wheelan campaign, told The Dartmouth.
Given that the district is more than 60 percent Democratic and has sent one Republican to Congress since 1907, the winner of the Democratic primary is widely expected to triumph in the general election on April 7th, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Quigley will face Illinois Minutemen Project founder Rosanna Pulido, the Republican candidate, and Green Party activist Matthew Reichel in the general election. Quigley had received 11,814 of more 30,000 votes in the Democratic primary as of midnight on Tuesday, according to the AP. In comparison, less than 3,000 people voted in the Republican Primary, and about 500 voted in the Green Party's primary.
Pundits considered Wheelan, a lecturer at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy who teaches summer classes at Dartmouth, to be a top-tier candidate but not a frontrunner. He was not endorsed by the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times or any major interest groups though he did receive national media attention for filming advertisements in which he appeared fully clothed underwater and hanging upside down from a rope.
Wheelan is the author of the best seller "Naked Economics."
Four of the top-tier candidates outspent Wheelan, according to recent Federal Election Commission reports. State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz was the top fundraiser, with $801,244 in reported assets on March 1; state Rep. John Fritchey raised $584,913; Quigley raised $402,380 and lawyer Tom Geoghegan raised $263,669. Wheelan was the fifth highest fundraiser, with $252,900 reported.
Dartmouth students and faculty increasingly became involved in Wheelan's campaign over the past few months.
Students met Tuesdays during the month of February at Alpha Delta, Psi Upsilon and Sigma Nu fraternities and made more than 2,000 calls to voters on Wheelan's behalf, Syam Palakurthy '09, who helped coordinate the effort, said.
Economics professor Bruce Sacerdote held a cocktail party for Wheelan at the Hanover Inn on Jan. 23, which more than 100 students, faculty and community members attended.
Palakurthy said that Dartmouth students had worked as hard as they could to support Wheelan given their lack of geographic proximity to him.
"I think there were about 30,000 people voting in the election, so we did reach a good number of people," he said. "It's not as effective as going door to door, but I definitely think we had an impact."
Phelps said after Wheelan's concession speech that the campaign greatly appreciated students' efforts.
"There was universal love for the phone bank in our campaign office," Phelps said. "We don't have a quantitative evaluation of their impact, but their support went a long way to getting Charlie's message out."
Wheelan intends to return to Hanover to teach public policy and economics classes this summer, he said in previous interviews with The Dartmouth.
