U.S. Reps. Sean Casten and Marie Newman fight for suburban congressional seat

The 6th Congressional District is shaping up to be Sean Casten and Marie Newman’s Thunderdome: Two Democrats in Congress enter, one leaves.

As Illinois’ only one-on-one face-off between Democratic incumbents, the 6th District race in Chicago’s west suburbs has become one of the most bitter — yet also awkward — in the state. And as the race enters its final weeks before the June 28 primary, Casten and Newman are busy hurling barbs at one another over ethics complaints and their stances on abortion and other issues while also not so successfully trying to avoid the unseemly visual the Democratic Party helped create in which caucus mates are dragging each other into the mud.

Both candidates would rather not be in this position but they were essentially put here by the Democratic Party’s remapping decisions and are now fighting for their political lives.

It all began last year when Illinois Democrats set out to give their party an overwhelming advantage in winning congressional seats in 2022. In doing so, they passed a map that will see either the progressive Newman or the more moderate Casten go down. In many ways it’s a quintessentially Byzantine Illinois dust-up, the vagaries of a backroom map deal reached in Springfield tossing the two Washington, D.C., colleagues into a kill-or-be-killed political blender.

Newman is refusing to cry over the redrawn boundaries and instead portraying herself as someone unafraid to take on a more experienced and in some ways more conservative incumbent much like she did two years ago when she defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinksi.

“One thing I’ve learned throughout my career,” Newman said, “is when you play Monday morning quarterback too much or you get very upset and revenge-based, it is not good for anybody.”

Casten, meanwhile, says his ability to connect with moderate and conservative residents in the district makes him the better choice to ensure a seat that could tip to Republicans in the fall stays Democratic.

“If we do not have a proven ability to find the common ground across all voters, regardless of their political perspective, we’re not going to hold this seat in the Democratic camp,” he said.

Both think they already connect with the most voters in the newly redrawn district. But reflecting the tightness of the race, both are seeking to broaden their appeal.

Though she’s considered the more progressive of the two, Newman talks about her success working across the aisle in her first term.

“I sit on (the House Committee on) Transportation and Infrastructure, and we had a markup on the water reclamation distributions for all of our districts. And it was smooth as silk because, you know what, there are water problems everywhere and there are transportation problems everywhere,” she said. “So, yeah, are there things that we’re fighting on and it’s painful but are there a bunch of things that help the country function and live up to our principles? A hundred percent.”

And Casten touts his more strident position on climate activism, an issue beloved by progressives.

“I think I can say without any exception that I’ve been prioritizing climate more than any other member of Congress, certainly in terms of the number of bills introduced, but also the substance of them,” he said.

Currently the congresswoman from the 3rd Congressional District, Newman won that seat by taking it from Lipinski, the eight-term Democratic congressman and son of Southwest Side political powerhouse and former longtime congressman Bill Lipinski. In their second straight primary matchup after Lipinski prevailed in 2018, Newman rode a progressive wave to victory by doubling down on her criticism that the anti-abortion rights Dan Lipinski was too conservative for the district.

But Newman’s representation of the 3rd District has been short-lived.

Amid her successful effort to defeat Lipinski in 2020, the U.S. was undergoing a decennial census that is used to reshape congressional districts every 10 years across the nation. Following months of wrangling last year about Illinois’ districts, state Democrats eventually placed Newman’s La Grange home in U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia’s majority Latino 4th District.

Rather than take on the daunting challenge of competing against fellow progressive Garcia for a seat that includes his Southwest Side base of power, Newman opted to run against Casten in the nearby 6th District because, she said, she better represented that area. Though U.S. representatives don’t have to live in the districts they represent, Newman will move into the 6th if she wins, according to her campaign.

Casten has held the current 6th District since he beat six-term Republican U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam in 2018. That election was considered a benchmark win for Democrats in a seat that had been in the hands of conservative icon U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde for decades prior to Roskam.

One Democrat who worked on the Illinois congressional maps following both the 2010 and 2020 censuses said there was a confluence of competing political factors that set the stage for officials to put together the map as it is.

For one thing, first-termer Newman “lacked the political clout” to stop herself from getting mapped out of her 3rd District seat, said the Democrat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And her defeat of Lipinski made it easier for lawmakers to de-anchor the 3rd from the Lipinski family’s political stronghold around Midway Airport, the Democratic insider said.

“With Dan Lipinski gone, it opened up the mapmaking to create a new Latino influence district, as well as protecting existing Black South Side districts and the Latino majority district of … Garcia,” the Democrat said.

Indeed, the 3rd District jumped north and became a new “Latino influence” district stretching from the Northwest Side deep into the northwest suburbs in recognition of Illinois’ growing Latino population.

The 6th District now includes Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood and areas near Midway, and southwest suburban towns including Orland Park and Alsip. It also sweeps through the west suburbs, taking in all or parts of Burr Ridge, Darien, Elmhurst, Hickory Hills, Oakbrook Terrace, Oak Forest, Oak Lawn, Orland Hills, Western Springs, Willowbrook and Worth, and extends north to Villa Park and west to Downers Grove.

Newman said she’s energized by the new boundaries.

“All I care about is making sure that this district has representation that actually understands this district,” Newman said, “And hands-down in this race, born, lived, raised, understand, worked with every elected, worked with every community group throughout the district. That is what you get in me.”

Casten said he simply needs to show the new 6th District voters who he is, “and if you agree with that you should vote for me, if you don’t agree with that I’m probably not the guy.”

“I didn’t get into office by telling a significant majority of the Democratic voters that they were wrong for voting for another Democrat,” he said. “I didn’t get into office by telling people who had historically voted Republican that they were bad people.”

Also in the Democratic primary is Charles Hughes, a former precinct worker for Bill Lipinski in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood west of Midway.

Hughes said both incumbents are misreading the mood in the district. “Every time people go to the gas pump, they’re looking at sitting members of Congress and saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing anything about this?’ ” Hughes said. “Voters are fed up with the inaction in Washington. They’re looking for someone new.”

The two-incumbent tussle makes for an expensive primary, with Casten ahead in funding with just over $2 million on hand at the end of March, compared with $552,510 for Newman.

They’re pulling in money from many of the big campaign spenders you’d expect to see backing Democratic incumbents.

Casten sits on the House Financial Services Committee, and he‘s gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from political committees affiliated with financial firms and insurance companies. His dedication to trying to pass legislation fighting climate change also has earned Casten the financial backing of various conservation groups.

Newman’s position on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has led to considerable support from transportation unions. She’s gotten money from infrastructure trade groups as well.

She also pulled in more than $48,000 through the end of March from EMILY’s List, the political action committee that helps elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. And she’s received contributions from other progressive political organizations, according to the Federal Election Commission reports.

With the leaking of the U.S. Supreme Court conservative majority’s draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion also has become a focal point. Both Casten and Newman favor abortion rights but Newman has made the issue more personal after she discussed publicly her decision to have an abortion when she was 19 and also released an ad about it.

Casten a few weeks later launched his own TV ad highlighting his pro-abortion rights voting record. The 30-second spot shows images of Casten and his daughter marching against Donald Trump’s presidency downtown. “Women have a fundamental right to make their own decisions, especially when it comes to abortion,” Casten says in the ad.

Newman followed with another commercial that touches on her pro-abortion rights philosophy, though the latest ad tries to grab viewer’s attention by showing video of her dog preparing to defecate.

“I’m congresswoman Marie Newman, and unfortunately, you’re going to hear a lot of” — a scatological reference is then bleeped — “about me from my opponent Sean Casten,” she says as she deposits the bagged dog waste in a garbage can. Newman then underlines her history of progressive values and questions Casten’s commitment to abortion rights and universal health care.

Also hanging over the race is the cloud of a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations Newman offered a foreign policy job on her House staff to Chicago college professor Iymen Chehade in exchange for him agreeing not to run against her in 2020.

Chehade did not receive the job, and sued Newman. That lawsuit was settled. Chehade is now running in the 3rd Congressional District Democratic primary, and working as a foreign-policy analyst on Newman’s political campaign.

A conservative group, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, filed a complaint against Newman with the Office of Congressional Ethics, whose board found “substantial reason to believe” Newman may have promised federal work to Chehade, and referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee last fall.

The Ethics Committee voted in January to extend its review of the allegations.

Casten said, “the only question is whether (Newman) will get away with” the violation, and it’s another reason Democrats should be leery of nominating her.

“I think it is safe to say if she were to win the primary, the Republicans won’t stick to the facts” of the case, making her even more vulnerable to losing the seat, he said.

Newman said she did nothing wrong, and will be vindicated once the Ethics Committee completes its work.

“We’ll get past it, but I do have to wait my turn. I’m not special,” she said. “We’ll get there, it will pass, and everything will be fine. That said, I have to wait for that. And I cannot wait, because it has been a pain in my backside.”

Newman, meanwhile, says Casten should worry more about a complaint filed this year against him with the FEC, alleging a super PAC funded by his father in 2018 illegally coordinated with the campaign in how to spend the money.

“He brushes it off in a very Trumpian way and says it will just go away,” Newman said of Casten.

While the FEC has received the complaint, the agency won’t comment on the status of any inquiry it is making to assess the validity of the claim against Casten.

The coordination charge first came to light in 2018, and Casten said it’s no more credible now than it was then.

“This is a manufactured crisis,” he said. “This is (Newman’s) attempt to try to distract from it. … There was no crime committed. There’s no story there. The only reason this was done was to try to create a ‘both sides’ problem.”

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