CHICAGO — On a recent Saturday, the fight for the Democratic nomination in Illinois’ sprawling new Latino-leaning congressional district played out in a few square miles of Chicago’s Northwest Side.
In a Guatemalan restaurant in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, state Rep. Delia Ramirez, 4th District, told supporters they’re working for a progressive who will keep fighting progressive fights: “We’re not just going to send the first Latina from the entire Midwest to Congress, we’re sending one of ours.”
Less than 2 miles west in the same neighborhood, Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, knocked on doors to tell voters he’s best prepared “to hit the ground running, and to reach across the aisle in Washington, D.C., to get things done.”
The classic Chicago retail politicking on a raw spring afternoon more than two months before the primary looked familiar to anyone versed in the age-old local emphasis on a strong campaign ground game to connect with residents and get people to the polls.
But the race is also setting up as a modern referendum on issues ranging from diversity of representation to the political philosophies that are dominating the Democratic Party in Illinois and across the nation. And it’s all playing out in a new district that extends from progressive Chicago neighborhoods to historically conservative towns in the far reaches of what used to be the Republican stronghold of DuPage County.
Ramirez comes to the contest with progressive bona fides and the backing of liberal U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, 4th District, who currently represents a chunk of the new district. Ramirez spoke about her start as a Northwest Side affordable housing advocate before voters elected her to the Illinois House in 2018. She told supporters she proved her legislative chops in Springfield while championing Medicaid expansion and an elected Chicago school board.
“When people on the doors tell you, ‘She’s too young to go to Congress, she’s not experienced enough, she doesn’t have a proven record,’ … just pull up every piece of legislation that together we’ve been able to pass, and everything we’ve done even before I went to the state legislature,” the 38-year-old Ramirez told supporters.
Villegas, 51, touts his moderate political pragmatism and says he can find ways to collaborate in a closely divided, bitterly partisan U.S. Capitol rather than adhering to “an all-or-nothing approach.”
The head of the City Council’s Latino Caucus, which remains locked in a tough fight to increase the number of Latino-majority wards in Chicago, Villegas pointed to the universal basic income program Mayor Lori Lightfoot adopted after he first pushed it. And he noted his aldermanic office pivoted quickly during the pandemic, from one day dealing with potholes and garbage collection to the next day setting up vaccine clinics and helping residents find food, clothing and places to live.
“It’s about meeting people’s needs, whatever those needs are,” Villegas said in an interview. “I’ve done that here, and I’m all set to keep on doing that in Congress.”
The contest takes place in the new 3rd District, which Illinois Democrats drew to be a heavily Democratic, “lean Latino” congressional seat as the state recalibrates its district boundaries to acknowledge Latinos’ continued population gains even as the state’s overall population fell slightly in the 2020 U.S. Census.
Four candidates filed petitions to run for the Democratic nomination, which will be decided in the June 28 primary. Villegas and Ramirez are the front-runners in terms of name recognition, political organization and fundraising.
At the end of 2021, Villegas had $377,055 on hand in his congressional campaign fund, while Ramirez had $110,443, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Registered nurse and Chicago cannabis entrepreneur Juan Aguirre is also running, as is Iymen Chehade, a college professor and congressional foreign policy analyst from Chicago.
Justin Burau is the lone Republican candidate. From suburban Winfield, Burau is expected to face the Democratic winner in the November general election.
The Democrat will be favored thanks to the way the district’s boundaries are drawn, a somewhat jarring turnabout in places such as Wheaton and Glen Ellyn that were represented for decades by staunchly conservative Republicans, including U.S. Reps. Henry Hyde and Peter Roskam, before Democrat Sean Casten beat Roskam in 2018.
Both the Ramirez and Villegas campaigns said they expect more than 70% of the votes in the Democratic primary will come from Chicagoans. That’s despite the fact that the 3rd District stretches about 30 miles from the city’s Avondale neighborhood on the east to West Chicago on the western edge of DuPage County.
The reconfiguration concept isn’t a new one for Villegas. He’s represented the Northwest Side 36th Ward’s Belmont Cragin, Montclare, Portage Park and Schorsch Village neighborhoods since 2015, the first election after aldermen made it a majority Latino ward to reflect Latino population gains in the 2010 U.S. Census.
Villegas won the seat with the support of the once-powerful Arroyo political organization, which was an ascendant force in Northwest Side Latino politics at the time. Things have gotten rocky for the Arroyos in recent years. Former state Rep. Luis Arroyo is awaiting sentencing in a federal bribery case for offering to pay kickbacks to a fellow legislator to support sweepstakes gambling legislation in Springfield.
Villegas counts his base among those who now reside in the bungalows, ranch-style homes and Tudors peppered throughout the Northwest Side’s Bungalow Belt.
Greeting him a week ago outside a ranch in Belmont Cragin with a weather-beaten Ald. Villegas-branded “Pick up after your dog” sign stuck in the front lawn, Tadeusz Bednarczyk announced, “I support you, always.” Speaking Polish as a Villegas staffer translated, Bednarczyk then took the opportunity to vent about neighborhood crime to his alderman and would-be congressman.
Ramirez’s state House district overlaps with the 36th Ward for a few blocks in the Hermosa neighborhood, but mainly stretches east and south to take in parts of Logan Square, Humboldt Park, Wicker Park and the Ukrainian Village.
She won her House seat with strong backing from Garcia, who has built a formidable local progressive coalition of elected officials and grassroots organizations. Ramirez also has enjoyed considerable financial and organizing support over the years from the Chicago Teachers Union, which has endorsed her in this congressional race.
Asked whether such progressive allies will play beyond the hipster-inflected, Sen. Bernie Sanders-backing neighborhoods in her House district and into the more conservative Far Northwest Side and western suburbs, Ramirez said she’s spent years fighting for working class people and the concerns she’s hearing throughout the new 3rd District are pretty universal.
“What are the things they care about? The same things I care about: a good quality of life, the ability to retire not when you’re 90, but maybe in your 60s without the worry that you’re going to have to take a second job because you can’t afford your mortgage,” Ramirez said. “These are the things people care about in Logan Square, and they care about in West Chicago and Wheaton.”
In addition to the political stratification across the district, candidates have to deal with the bias some suburban voters feel toward Chicago candidates.
About 47.4% of the 3rd District’s nearly 754,000 residents are Hispanic, according to the Illinois Democratic Party.
In creating the new 3rd Congressional District, gone is the infamously gerrymandered “earmuffs” that the majority-Latino 4th Congressional District represented for years by Luis Gutierrez and then Garcia that used a thin ribbon of suburban real estate to connect areas with sizable Latino populations on Chicago’s Northwest and Southwest sides.
While Garcia continues to represent his Southwest Side base in Washington, D.C., the Northwest Side now has its own district that also includes parts of about two dozen other municipalities within its boundaries.
DuPage County, historically a Republican stronghold, has become more diverse and gotten decidedly bluer in recent elections. But DuPage County Democratic Party Chairman Ken Mejia-Beal said Chicago Democrats face challenges convincing residents in places such as Glen Ellyn and Winfield to trust them.
“When this district was drawn, a lot of people were apprehensive about having a quote-unquote Chicago representative representing parts of DuPage County,” Mejia-Beal said. “After meeting both (Ramirez and Villegas), those fears have largely dissipated.”
There’s also likely “some apprehension” among some DuPage County voters about being represented in Congress by a Latino in a district that was designed to “lean Latino” for election purposes.
“That’s just the world we live in,” Mejia-Beal said. “But I also believe the majority of voters look at the skill set and the issues. Is everyone on board? No. Is the majority on board? I think so.”
The big politically purple swaths of DuPage reward renaissance candidates, Mejia-Beal said.
“I think in Chicago and Cook County, you tend to find more neighborhoods aligned really strongly around the same core issues,” he said. “To be a successful candidate in DuPage, you have to be multifaceted. You have to know a little bit about a lot, because you might find a single block with one voter or household very concerned with the environment, the next one really focused on fiscal issues and then the next house has a very conservative voter.”
Both Ramirez and Villegas take pains to tout their outreach to suburbanites, like those now represented in the U.S. House by Democrats Casten, Lauren Underwood, or Raja Krishnamoorthi, who could soon see a Chicagoan take over speaking for their interests in Washington, D.C.
“Suburban mayors back me because I talk to them and they understand that I’m the guy who can bring back resources for their cities and towns,” Villegas said. “As a freshman legislator, it’s going to be difficult to pass major legislation, so it’s about being able to send resources back to municipalities that need it, and they know I can do that.”
Villegas talks often about how his father died when he was 8, and his mother’s struggle to make ends meet. He enlisted in the Marines after graduating from Roosevelt High School in Chicago and joined the Teamsters union while working as a bread truck driver after he got out of the service.
That story and Villegas’ approach resonate with suburban voters, according to state Rep. Kathleen Willis, D-Addison, who is backing Villegas’ bid.
“He’s someone who can understand people’s concerns when the grocery bill goes up, when the gas bill goes up,” Willis said. “He’s willing to do the work and work hard, and people appreciate that.”
“And this district is not as progressive as some people think. It’s more moderate,” she said.
Ramirez wore a shirt emblazoned with the slogan “DuPage Democrats: Good Trouble” as she talked to supporters in Belmont Cragin, and told them to be prepared to carry the campaign’s message “across DuPage.”
That readiness to be present throughout the suburban parts of the district and bring different groups of people together sets her apart, Ramirez said.
“They want someone that’s actually going to show up, that’s going to do town halls … someone who will establish offices throughout the district and find ways to engage and listen to constituents,” she said. “And that’s always been my thing.”
State Sen. Karina Villa, D-West Chicago, said Ramirez has already done a good job of that.
“She has a long-standing record of being out here, getting to know the community and listening to people,” said Villa, who has endorsed Ramirez. “That didn’t start with this campaign. Delia was here helping get people to fill out their census forms, and the things she’s been fighting to achieve for years — affordable housing, affordable health care, immigration reform — are the things that are important to residents here.”
Ramirez is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. Her husband arrived from Guatemala as an undocumented immigrant and has been living in Chicago under the auspices of the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Ramirez said. That personal experience will ensure she centers immigration reform in her congressional efforts, she said.
While they’re the highest profile candidates, Ramirez and Villegas aren’t the only two vying for the Democratic nomination.
Aguirre, 26, is part-owner of an Illinois marijuana dispensary license, which he said he expects he and his partners to sell rather than opening a site. He grew up poor before getting into Chicago’s prestigious Walter Payton College Preparatory High School and then winning a Gates Scholarship to help cover his costs to attend the University of Michigan.
“I’m in this race because poor people are set up to fail in this country unless they get lucky,” Aguirre said. “I was lucky to get into Payton. I was lucky to get a Gates Scholarship, and we need to help poor people so they don’t need to get lucky. I’m the one candidate who understands that.”
Aguirre has filed paperwork with the FEC to create a campaign fundraising committee, but it hasn’t been processed, according to the election commission. He said his nominating petitions have been challenged, and he plans to fight to stay on the ballot.
Chehade, 48, teaches at Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and also serves as the foreign policy director for U.S. Rep. Marie Newman’s election campaign. Chehade has been named as part of a U.S. House Committee on Ethics investigation opened last fall aimed at Newman into whether she improperly offered Chehade a job on her congressional staff if he agreed not to run against her. The investigation remains open.
Chehade said his grassroots campaign appeals to the many voters in the new 3rd District who are sick of the machine. He had $38,846 on hand at the end of 2021, and said he plans to personally knock on “at least 12,000 doors” in the district by the primary.
“When you’re put in office by the establishment, you’re beholden to the establishment,” Chehade said. “We’re not beholden to anyone but the constituents.”
Whichever candidate wins the new seat in November, Mejia-Beal said the freshman U.S. representative better start gearing up to earn DuPage County voter support again two years later. “No seat in DuPage — county, state or federal — is a safe seat. We’re the Ohio of Illinois.”
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