Rep. Peter Roskam Dealing With Toughest Election Fight of His Life
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On primary Election Day in 2006, Margaret Prowell went to the polling place down the road from her new suburban Chicago home and asked for a Democratic ballot. The election judges were taken aback.
This was Illinois' 6th Congressional District, a place represented for three decades by Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Congress' Republican lions, and home to Wheaton College, the Rev. Billy Graham's alma mater. No one had bothered to take the Democratic ballots out of the box.
"They went in the closet and found them," Prowell recalled.
Republican Rep. Peter Roskam was elected to succeed Hyde that year, and easily won his next five bids. But in a midterm election where disapproval of President Donald Trump has Democrats competing even in some nontraditional battlegrounds, Roskam is suddenly among the most endangered House Republicans this fall — and his long right-leaning record in a safe GOP district may be his toughest opponent.
Roskam, who faces Democratic business owner and scientist Sean Casten, is trying to navigate between his past positions and appealing to an electorate that supported Hillary Clinton over Trump by 7 percentage points in 2016.
He's one of a number of GOP incumbents struggling in districts around cities that are getting younger and more diverse.
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Though Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel appeared poised to run for a third term, he made a bombshell announcement in September that he would not seek re-election to a third term. First elected in 2011, the 58-year-old former congressman and President Barack Obama's ex-White House chief of staff was forced to an historic runoff in his 2015 reelection campaign against Jesus "Chuy" Garcia. A central issue in that race was the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. McDonald was shot 16 times in Oct. 2014 by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the case. The fallout of the shooting, which in part sparked a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the Chicago Police Department, was poised to play a key role in this race as well. Although he's stayed quiet on his future plans, Emanuel - a prolific fundraiser - had been steadily adding to his war chest, with more than $7.5 million in his political committee as of the most recent reporting period ending on June 30. With Emanuel out of the race, several challengers who had already emerged will engage in a drastically different battle than previously thought.
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Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, 64, announced her candidacy for mayor in April, despite an ongoing federal probe into allegations of bribery and corruption within her office. Earlier this year, prosecutors alleged that Brown took a $15,000 bribe from a man seeking a job with her office, disguised as a loan for the business she and her husband own, as well as another $10,000 loan from a separate employee of the clerk's office. The first man was sentenced to three years probation for perjury in February, the latest development in the years-long federal corruption investigation into Brown's office. Brown - whose home was raided by investigators in 2015 - has not been charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, claiming in announcing her candidacy that people "trust" her and vowing to work "to make every square mile of the city of Chicago world-class."
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Gery Chico is running for Chicago mayor once again. Chico is an attorney who was former Mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff as well as board president of Chicago Public Schools before unsuccessfully running for U.S. Senate in 2004. He later served as president of the Chicago Park District and chairman of the City Colleges of Chicago board, then ran for mayor in 2011. Chico came in second of six candidates, earning 24 percent of the vote, behind Emanuel's 55 percent. In a statement announcing his run this time around, Chicago said he will focus on "violence, education, jobs and economic development."
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Having already taken over for him as White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, Bill Daley is looking to replace Emanuel once again - this time as Chicago mayor. The former U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton is also following in the footsteps of his father Richard J. Daley, who served as mayor for 21 years, and his brother Richard M. Daley, who became the longest-serving Chicago mayor before declining to run for a seventh term in 2011. A familiar name in Chicago politics, Bill Daley briefly entered the race for Illinois governor in 2013 before taking himself out of the running, and most recently worked in finance - enabling him to quickly build a $1.2 million war chest, the largest of all the candidates who have entered the race so far.
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Attorney and community activist Amara Enyia is throwing her hat in the ring as well – for the second time. Enyia ran for mayor in 2015 before exiting the race to back then-Ald. Bob Fioretti’s unsuccessful bid. With a doctorate in education policy, she has worked as a public policy advisor in various capacities, recently for lieutenant governor candidate Ra Joy, who fell short in the Democratic primary alongside Chris Kennedy. Enyia, 35, lives in Garfield Park and is the director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce. She founded a social lab to educate on economic development, according to her website, and co-authored a book on municipal funding in Chicago.
Community activist Ja'Mal Green is a 22-year-old South Side native (making him the second youngest candidate) and prominent figure in Chicago's Black Lives Matter organization. Green served as a surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign and parts of his platform include increasing investment in education, creating an elected school board and police reform - an issue he has been vocal about, taking part in a protest at the 2016 Taste of Chicago that ended in his arrest. Green pleaded guilty to resisting arrest but other charges in the case were dropped.
Jerry Joyce Jr. is the son of former 19th Ward Alderman and state Sen. Jeremiah Joyce, a political operative who worked closely with former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Joyce is an attorney and lobbyist from the city's Far South Side and previously served as a Cook County assistant state's attorney, according to multiple reports. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Joyce's father is part owner of a company that ran concessions at O'Hare Airport for years until Emanuel took office, awarding the lucrative contract to another company - though the paper noted that Joyce had reportedly told associates that dispute did not influence his decision to enter the race.
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The only Republican in the race, William Kelly has run for office multiple times. He unsuccessfully ran for the GOP nomination for Illinois comptroller in 2010, then announced campaigns for Chicago mayor in 2014 and Illinois governor in 2018 - though he did not make it onto the ballot in either race. Kelly hosts "The Citizen Kelly Show" on WCGO-AM and founded production company RevDigital, according to his website.
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Attorney John Kozlar is another candidate taking on Emanuel, looking to settle a score. The 30-year-old South Side native is a part of Aon plc’s risk solutions team and first ran for office in 2011, according to his website. He unsuccessfully ran for 11th Ward alderman at age 21, then mounted another bid for the same position in 2015, forcing a run-off against Patrick Daley Thompson, who ultimately won. Kozlar said Emanuel put $50,000 into that race against what he called an effort to defeat “machine politicians and elitists.”
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Former Chicago Public Schools principal Troy LaRaviere was the first to announce his intent to take on Emanuel, unveiling his campaign in January. LaRaviere is the president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, and has been an outspoken critic of Emanuel since his days as principal of Blaine Elementary School - a position he was removed from over allegations of insubordination. He supported Garcia for mayor in 2015, as well as Sanders for president in 2016, and with his background, education and creating an elected school board are key components of his progressive platform.
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Former Chicago Police Board president Lori Lightfoot is one of the candidates looking to take on their former boss. Emanuel appointed Lightfoot, 55, chair of the Police Accountability Task Force in the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting, and she has used that experience - as well as her time leading the Police Board - to tout her credentials on law enforcement reforms. A former federal prosecutor, Lightfoot was most recently a partner at Mayer Brown LLP.
Ex-Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy, who was fired by Emanuel during the Laquan McDonald fallout, is another former member of the mayor's administration now running for the top job. After months of speculation, McCarthy officially announced his candidacy in March with a video saying "thousands" of Chicagoans had approached him asking him to run to "fix the city's problems." The 58-year-old Bronx native and self-described “conservative Democrat” worked as Chicago’s top cop for four years before being dismissed in 2015 in the aftermath of the McDonald shooting.
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At 20 years old, Matthew Roney is the youngest candidate in the field. A political science student at DePaul University, Roney’s website says he wanted to enter politics after working as a pharmaceutical technician and seeing customers unable to afford their medications. Roney says he is running for mayor under a new party he founded called “The Garden Party” to “help Chicagoans grow.”
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Tech entrepreneur Neal Sales-Griffin entered the race in April with a speech lasting nearly an hour and a half, saying he wanted to address issues like population decline in Chicago but without delving into specific policy proposals. Sales-Griffin, 30, runs a nonprofit coding school called CodeNow and is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, saying he's running because Emanuel isn’t "doing a good enough job."
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Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, 64, led the district from 1995 to 2001 and has served as superintendent for multiple other school districts in New Orleans; Bridgeport, Conn.; and Philadelphia. He also ran for Illinois governor in 2002, losing in the Democratic primary to now-disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Vallas later ran for lieutenant governor with Pat Quinn and lost in 2014.
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An activist and perennial candidate, William 'Dock' Walls is running for mayor once again. He worked for former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s, according to his website, which says he also served as political director for Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH coalition. Walls has previously run for mayor in 2007, 2011 and in 2015.
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Dr. Willie Wilson, who ran for mayor in 2015, is running again. Wilson, a millionaire businessman who owned and operated several McDonald's franchises, also ran for president in 2016. Shortly after announcing his candidacy, Wilson donated $100,000 to his own committee - lifting the self-funding limit to allow candidates to contribute any amount to their own committees throughout the election. Wilson, 69, said his contribution is a "clear indicator of his determination to rid Chicago of the worse [sic] mayor it has ever had." Recently, Wilson came under fire for giving away cash from his charitable foundation at church and community events to help Cook County residents with property taxes. Opponents said the stunt was designed to buy votes, though the Illinois State Board of Elections ruled that it did not violate any campaign finance laws.
Thus, he's gone hiking in the woods with students from a college environmental group and visited a local mosque, posting photos of each stop on his Facebook page. The posts don't mention Roskam's 7 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters or that he supported Trump's ban on travel to the U.S. from predominantly Muslim countries.
Casten and other critics have accused him of trying to gloss over his record.
"How do you deal with somebody whose ethics are situational?" the first-time candidate said.
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Republican candidate Gov. Bruce Rauner's responses can be found here.
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Democratic candidate J.B. Pritzker's responses can be found here.
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Libertarian candidate Kash Jackson's responses can be found here.
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Conservative candidate Sam McCann's responses can be found here.
Lawrence Benito, director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, accused Roskam of trying to pander to immigrant voters in an election year and cautioned: "We have long memories."
Roskam insists he is a moderate who has been quick to criticize the administration when necessary.
He points to his criticism of Trump's tariffs, which hurt businesses in the district west and northwest of Chicago, and his vocal opposition to the president capping the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S. next year at a record-low 30,000.
"I think the criticism is really from partisans who want to run against a caricature," Roskam said. "They don't want to run against a real person."
Democrats are targeting dozens of Republican seats across the U.S. as they try to pick up the 23 they need to win control of the House. Many of those are districts where incumbents chose not to run again or seats that have flipped between Republican and Democratic control over the past decade.
Far less common are seats like Roskam's, where the GOP has had a hold for more than 40 years.
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Incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner is running for a second term using many of the same rallying cries that sent him to Springfield the first time around. Rauner announced his re-election bid in October 2017, once again railing against powerful Democrat and longtime nemesis Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The Winnetka native’s announcement included another call for lower property taxes and term limits – two of the issues he focused on in his 2014 campaign, which was his first run for public office after a career in private equity. From the past four years, he counts education funding and criminal justice reform, as well as pro-business measures and his veto of an income tax hike (that eventually took effect), among his successes. But this time around may prove more difficult. Read more on Rauner here.
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J.B. Pritzker is a member of the billionaire Pritzker family, best known for owning the Hyatt hotel chain. After months of speculation, Pritzker announced in April 2017 that he would enter the race to unseat Gov. Bruce Rauner. For years, Pritzker has been a powerful Democratic fundraiser, involved in several local and national races, and unsuccessfully ran for Congress himself in 1998. A venture capitalist, Forbes listed Pritzker as the 219th richest person in the country in 2017, with a net worth of $3.4 billion - making him another candidate capable of self-funding his campaign. Read more on Pritzker here.
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Grayson "Kash" Jackson is the Libertarian candidate for Illinois governor. Born Benjamin Winderweedle in Louisiana, the 39-year-old retired U.S. Navy officer legally changed his name in 2017 and currently resides in north suburban Antioch. Jackson's proposals include requiring any tax increases to be passed by two-thirds of voters in a referendum, as well as unspecified criminal justice reforms, which he said includes getting family courts to “stop treating divorcing couples as sources of revenue" - an issue with particular relevance to his life. Read more on Jackson here.
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Republican State Sen. Sam McCann entered the race for governor in April under the Conservative Party label after initially mulling a GOP primary run against Rauner, with whom he has long been at odds. Billing himself as the only conservative in the race, McCann says on his website that he will “push for protections that preserve our religious beliefs from being attacked by leftist values” and “work with President Trump to secure the sovereignty of our borders.” Read more on McCann here.
Roskam is touting his role as an architect of the GOP tax bill, which he says will bring $1 billion in tax relief to the upper-income district, and he's blasted "Shady Sean Casten" in ads, saying he wants to raise taxes on residents but took tax breaks for himself and a company he owned that recycled waste energy.
He also says Casten has "embraced the politics of ridicule." Earlier this year, Casten was captured on audio saying Trump and Osama bin Laden "have a tremendous amount in common."
"He criticizes Donald Trump — and there's a lot to criticize of Donald Trump — but he's emulating the style," Roskam said.
Chuck Smith, a 67-year-old retiree, said Roskam's record on taxes is one reason he's a longtime supporter. He says high taxes, particularly property taxes, are keeping people like his daughter and two grandchildren from moving to DuPage County.
"Peter has always been one who's always been focused on what he can do to help people be able to stay in DuPage County," Smith said.
In one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country — Illinois Republican incumbent Rep. Peter Roskam and Democrat Sean Casten clashed over President Donald Trump in their debate Monday. They also differed over what to do about environmental concerns at the Willowbrook plant in the 6th Congressional District. NBC 5’s Mary Ann Ahern reports.
Democrats are investing in the district in a way they haven't since 2006, when Roskam defeated now-Sen. Tammy Duckworth, and they've become increasingly optimistic.
They point to Roskam's strong opposition to abortion and votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, issues they say are motivating the large number of college-educated women in the district.
The suburbs that make up the district also are home to a growing immigrant and refugee population, and supporters who are turned off by Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric. World Relief, a Christian nonprofit, has worked with churches in the Wheaton area to resettle thousands of refugees.
But Casten said the biggest shift hasn't come from within the district, but in Washington.
"Yes, the district has moved a little bit to the left, but I think the Republican Party has sprinted to the right, and Trump made that manifest in ways that you could ignore it before but you can't anymore," he said.
The political arm of the Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has a team in the district registering voters. Last week NARAL, an abortion-rights organization, brought dozens of supporters to knock on doors.
Among them was Prowell, who sent election judges searching for a Democratic ballot in 2006 after moving from the liberal suburb of Oak Park, bordering Chicago.
The 67-year-old retired mail carrier supports abortion rights, was married to an immigrant who now owns his own business, and has a gay daughter. She wants to ensure Democrats take over the House so there will be a check on Trump, and was happy to vote early for Casten.
