State Rep. Rita Mayfield is facing her first primary challenge since being appointed to represent the Waukegan area in Springfield nearly a decade ago.
Mayfield is the only incumbent legislator representing Lake County who will face an opponent during the March 17 primary, a review of state election filings shows.
Her challenger is Diana Burdette, who has lived in Waukegan since 2010 but who threw herself into local politics a little over a year ago after reading a baiduhai investigation about ethylene oxide emissions from two area facilities.
Burdette had been dealing with health issues at that point for years. She had begun feeling sick about a year moving to Waukegan — first numbness in her skin, then memory lapses and periodic shakes, and finally gastrointestinal problems that led to severe weight loss.
Burdette said she was shocked after reading about the November 2018 investigation and immediately called her husband, Dylan, who has a doctorate in biochemistry.
“You go numb,” she said. “To find that you may have been a victim to something so — a poisoning. It’s a lot to take in. I went blank, and then I felt it in my stomach mostly.”
Burdette and her husband had always been civically engaged — they opened a free-trade, organic coffee shop called My House in Chicago shortly before the Great Recession hit and participated in protests and rallies in their 20s — but it wasn’t until ethylene oxide that she became an activist and ultimately decided to run for the Illinois House.
She’s since joined Clean Power Lake County, testified in Springfield on environmental issues and become a regular during public comment periods at Waukegan City Council meetings.
Mayfield contrasts Burdette’s relatively recent engagement with her years of experience, representing residents, first on the Waukegan District 60 school board and then in the Illinois House of Representatives.
Mayfield was appointed to the statehouse in July 2010 following the death of state Rep. Eddie Washington. Since then, she has run unopposed in each Democratic primary and easily won each of the general elections. She did not face a November opponent in 2018.
“Where were you for the last five years?” Mayfield said. “This happens every single year there’s an election, where someone pops up but they haven’t been active in the community.”
Mayfield describes herself as a “straight shooter” with a particular focus on education and recidivism, pointing to her efforts regarding several tuition assistance programs as among her recent accomplishments.
The programs include a grant program that targets traditionally underserved populations and led to the creation of the Transform Lake County program at CLC; as well as another program aimed at preparing more bilingual teachers to address a shortage and a $2.5 million grant for YouthBuild, a nonprofit that provides job training and helps participants get their high school diploma.
If re-elected, Mayfield said her goal would be to make these programs more than just a one-time thing. She said she’s already started a conversation about the need behind these programs, and said the data from these pilots will show whether they work.
She said she’s also been working on a bill that would give inmates with life sentences under the state’s version of a three-strikes or habitual criminal law a chance to be considered for parole.
Burdette said she’d bring a more proactive approach to the statehouse, pointing as an example to the bills passed in the wake of the ethylene oxide investigations, which only address ethylene oxide and came years after the U.S. EPA reclassified the chemical as a human carcinogen from a probable one.
If elected, Burdette said her first priority would be to push a more comprehensive approach to environmental regulations that took into consideration the cumulative effects of pollution, particularly in communities like Waukegan that have had a long history of environmental contamination.
“That needs to start happening if we’re ever going to get ahead of the social, environmental and economic injustices that we experience in this community,” Burdette said.
More Top Picks Best Queen Mattresses
Burdette also pointed to some of Mayfield’s votes, including one against the Equal Rights Amendment, and another against a House bill that would have been called the Prescription Drug Affordability Act, saying she would have voted for both.
Mayfield said she voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, which was approved by the House in a 72-45 vote in May 2018, because the Illinois version did not draw a distinction for women of color, who she said have their own struggles separate from white women.
Mayfield said she is also in favor of addressing prescription drug pricing — having voted for a bill that capped insulin prices in November — but she had questions about the bill Burdette pointed to, in particular how much and from which fund the members of a board that bill would create would be paid.
The bill failed 8-8 in committee with Mayfield as one of three Democrats to vote against it.