Voters in the lakefront’s 9th Congressional District Tuesday gave a thumbs up to state Rep. Janice Schakowsky’s message of equal rights for women, minorities and gays, protection for union workers, and affordable national health care.
In doing so, they turned back two more moderate challengers who might have diluted each other’s candidacies.
But according to Schakowsky supporters, the voters sent a message that the male-dominated U.S. House of Representatives needs a woman’s touch.
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In a surprisingly easy victory after a bitterly contested three-way race, where the wild cards were expected to be gender and money, Schakowsky won the Democratic nomination for the seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates.
Schakowsky received 45 percent of the vote, according to unofficial returns, while state Sen. Howard Carroll had 35 percent and Evanston businessman J.B. Pritzker received 21 percent.
Carroll, a Chicago native, suggested that part of Schakowsky’s success might be due to Pritzker’s candidacy draining votes from Carroll.
“I don’t like to second-guess why people voted the way that they did, but you look at the numbers he got . . . they weren’t many but they were enough to make a difference if they did,” Carroll said.
Schakowsky’s primary victory virtually assures her election to the U.S. House of Representatives. The district is heavily Democratic–Yates held the seat for nearly half a century and Republicans didn’t even bother to field a candidate in the primary.
A beaming Schakowsky, dressed in her signature red campaign suit, accepted the accolades of admirers and said the decisive factor in her campaign is that “People were interested in having a woman’s voice in the House of Representatives.”
“Now the men’s club delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives will have a woman’s voice,” she said.
The historic race to succeed Yates was one of the most hotly contested in the region. It also was one of the most expensive congressional primaries in the nation, with Pritzker alone spending nearly a million dollars of his own money.
Yates, 88, a Democrat, was a 24-term congressman who served continuously in the U.S. House except for a brief hiatus in the 1960s. In fact, his very longevity made any run for the seat foolhardy until now.
The ethnically diverse district runs along the lake from Diversey Avenue to Evanston’s north border. It also takes in some of the city’s Northwest Side, as well as north suburban Skokie, Golf, Morton Grove, Lincolnwood and much of Niles.
While the three candidates there were elbowing each other aside to win the favor of voters, contenders in other high-profile congressional races were doing the same.
U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush won a lopsided victory in the Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District on Chicago’s South Side, while another incumbent, Danny K. Davis, was easily nominated for another term in the Democratic primary in the 7th Congressional District, which runs from the city’s West Side through several western suburbs.
In the 3rd Congressional District, which runs from the city’s southwest side into the southwest suburbs, Republican Robert Marshall beat back two challengers–
including a white supremacist–to win the right to take on veteran Democratic incumbent William O. Lipinski in November.
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And in the 8th Congressional District, in the northwest suburbs, veteran U.S. Rep. Philip Crane cruised to an win over challenger David McSweeney in the Republican primary.
In the Democratic primary in the south suburban 11th Congressional District, Gary S. Mueller notched an easy win over Steve Barach.
In the 13th Congressional District in the west and southwest suburbs, Republican state Rep. Judy Biggert of Hinsdale breezed past Peter Roskam of Naperville and four other candidates in a primary for the seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Harris Fawell.
In the 9th District, all three candidates bought expensive television airtime on local network affiliates. But in the end, they spent their time campaigning the old-fashioned way: door to door.
Schakowsky, 53, emphasized that she ran a grass-roots style campaign with less money than the others. She said she depended on relatively small donations from individual contributors and was helped by more than 1,500 volunteers who fanned out on her behalf Tuesday.
A former schoolteacher and consumer activist, she spent much of her campaign stressing “women’s issues”–talking about health care, freshness dating on food labels and education.
Schakowsky was criticized by her opponents for her affiliation with Citizen Action, a consumer activist group under federal investigation for alleged financial wrongdoing. The group was criticized for charging senior citizens $229 for a credit card they could have received for free. Schakowsky, married to the organization’s former executive director, Robert Creamer, who is still under investigation, said she was not involved with the group’s finances and only sat on an advisory board.
For Carroll, a 55-year-old attorney, election to the U.S. House of Representatives was the next logical step of his political career. He put together a platform that stressed his more than 25 years as an Illinois legislator and a strong anti-crime stance.
Pritzker, 32, heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, had nearly $1.5 million at his disposal . Tuesday night, he said he had no regrets.