He fidgets with his hands and shakes his left leg under the table of the small campaign office room we’re in, rapidly. It doesn’t feel like nervousness, just the movement of a busy person not entirely excited to spend an uncertain amount of time talking about what they think is about to be brought up.

25th Ward Alderman Daniel Solís has been in office for 15 years. He’s currently fending off challenger Cuahutémoc Morfín in a run-off election April 5.

Morfín has gone after Solís for initially opposing the current proposed Chicago Clean Air Ordinance — before announcing his support for it during the run-off — which seeks to clean up Chicago toxin-emitting coal fire power plants, one of which, Fisk, is in the 25th Ward neighborhood of Pilsen. Morfín has hammered Solís for taking $50,000 from the plants’ parent company, Midwest Generation. Morfín has accused Solís of being inaccessible to his constituents.

Solís is being polite but looking a bit uneasy doing so. He clasps his hands together.

I ask him to talk about his years before taking office the issues that mattered to him, and the projects he worked on. Solís’ face lights up as he talks about discovering Teacher Corps, while a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which allowed him to stop driving cabs and working at UPS to make ends meet, and focus exclusively on his studies. Solís’ hands free themselves from one another as he gestures in the air remembering getting arrested on the UIC campus for being a part of sit-ins demanding that more Latino students be accepted to the university.

The alderman proudly talks about his years working at the Latino Youth Drug Intervention Program during the day and teaching G.E.D. classes at ...