The house races that tell a bigger story
Reliably Democratic Illinois is no one’s idea of a swing state.
But three heated House primaries next week in the Land of Lincoln illustrate the broader vulnerabilities of both major political parties contesting the general election: age, extremism and immigration. In today’s newsletter, I’m going to tell you about some fascinating primaries that will shed light on some broader trends in American politics.
Let’s start with Illinois’ 12th Congressional District, in the southern part of the state. Mike Bost, a Republican and Marine Corps veteran, was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2014. The Democrats tried him as “Slump Mike,” He highlighted his outbursts in the state legislature, warning: “He would make Washington worse.”
Well, those were simpler times. Ten years later, Bost is what passes for an establishment Republican. He chairs the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and sits on the agriculture and transportation committees, from which he can direct money and projects to the largely rural district that spans the bottom third of the state.
His main opponent, Darren Bailey, is proving that in the era of Donald J. Trump, there may be no limits to the rightward trajectory of the Republican Party. Bailey, you may recall, was the fiery, pro-Trump Republican whom Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker spent big money to run for governor in the 2022 Republican primary, thinking he would easily could be defeated – which he was. Pritzker won by almost 13 percentage points.
Bailey calls Bost “Amnesty Mike,” an insufficient apostle of Trump’s “America First” agenda. But Bost has Trump’s support. And to make matters even more interesting, Bailey is endorsed by Matt Gaetz, a high-profile Trump ally and rabble-rouser, who heated run-ins with Bost. It’s all enough to make heads turn.
Don’t say ‘age’
Democrats have their own problems that are captured in races in their stronghold of Greater Chicago. Let’s start with age: Danny Davis has represented a part of Chicagoland that stretches from Lake Michigan to the western suburbs for nearly 28 years, and at age 82, he’s determined to stay in Washington.
Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and a youthful community organizer, Kina Collins, are eager to send him to a well-deserved retirement on Tuesday.
But for the Democratic establishment, “age” is a word not spoken out loud, not with President Biden in the White House. Davis is a year older than the president, and the Democratic elite, including Pritzker, have once again rallied around him. The governor cited Davis’ “steadfast commitment to serving the people of Illinois with integrity, compassion and dedication.”
In an interview with The Chicago Tribune, even Conyears-Ervin took pains not to question Davis’ age. “It’s the energy, it’s the vision, it’s the relevance,” she said.
Immigration division
Just down the road, in Illinois’ Fourth Congressional District, two Mexican-American Democrats, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García and Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez, face off in a primary centered on immigration and the influx of migrants – many of them ride buses. or flown to Chicago by Republican governors.
No issue has dominated Chicago politics over the past year more than the influx of migrants who have overwhelmed shelters in Chicago and its suburbs.
Lopez has pushed for the revocation of Chicago’s sanctuary city status and much tighter border security, positions that would once have been unthinkable in his progressive city. García, who sticks to the more traditional Democratic position, wants more work permits for migrants, the decriminalization of undocumented immigrants and a path to citizenship for those brought to the country as children.
The divisions within the Mexican American community mirror the divisions among Hispanic voters nationally, a divide that Republicans hope to exploit, as my colleagues Jennifer Medina and Ruth Igielnik reported yesterday.
Ultimately, the power of those in power and the money ensure that Bost, Davis and García will all survive, even if there are no guarantees. And whoever wins, it will almost certainly not change control of the House of Representatives, because they represent districts far beyond the reach of the opposition party.
But similar issues driving their primary battles will play out in swinghouse districts and swing states across the country. Republicans from Trump on down will put immigration, border security and their idea that Biden is simply too old for another term at the forefront. Meanwhile, Democrats will portray the Republican Party as too extreme and authoritarian to take control of government.
In that sense, the Illinois primaries are a test run. Check out the results on Tuesday.
The candidate who almost emptied her bank account
Today’s political antennae have become extremely sensitive to oddities in House campaigns, especially résumés that don’t add up and campaign finance revelations that fall outside the norm. So eyebrows were raised early this year when a political unknown, Krystle Kaul, took the fundraising lead in the wide-open Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Jennifer Wexton in the suburbs and outskirts of Washington, DC.
The race for the Democratic seat has 13 candidates, including former Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, a state senator, Jennifer Boysko, and an Army veteran turned Virginia delegate, Dan Helmer. In early January, after 2023 fundraising deadlines passed, Helmer thought he had won last year’s prize when he announced he had raised more than $600,000.
Two days later, Kaul, a defense and communications contractor who ran as a “national security Democrat,” defeated him with $604,000, of which $447,800 came from her own pocket in the form of a loan to her campaign. Her personal financial disclosures showed she earned about $302,000 last year — well-off but not rich by political standards. Her total net worth is somewhere between $490,000 and $1 million, according to her financial disclosure, which lays out a range of values for a candidate’s assets.
Kaul speaks proudly of her Indian heritage, especially the Hindu Kashmiri side of her family, and she has received financial support from South Asians, a key voting bloc in Virginia’s 10th District. But she is not the only Indian American in the race. Suhas Subramanyam, a senator with much more political prominence, is also in the Democratic pack. But his fundraising totals — $271,902 at the end of 2023 — lagged far behind Kaul’s.
In an interview, Kaul responded to questions about her fundraising numbers but acknowledged the unusual size of her loan to her campaign. It is, she said, a big gamble.
“To be clear, I’m not a millionaire, so to put that money in, yes, you’re right, it’s a big amount of money. It is most of what I have,” she said, saying it all came from her own bank account. (A loan from an unnamed donor would violate campaign finance law.) “But that’s because I believe strongly in wanting to create a safer America.”