Newcomer Takes Longshot Bid to Unseat 23 Year Incumbent in IL-09 House Race

The general election for the Illinois 9th Congressional District is Nov. 8 and will determine who will represent the 9th District in the House of Representatives for the next two years. The candidates are the Democratic incumbent Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and the Republican challenger Max Rice.

Election projections and analytics site FiveThirtyEight gives Schakowsky a greater than 99% chance of winning re-election. In 2020, Joe Biden won Cook County, which comprises a significant portion of the 9th District and most of Chicago, with a 66.39% majority, according to the Cook County Clerk’s Office.

Schakowsky was initially elected to the House of Representatives in 1999 and has held the seat since, according to Ballotpedia. In the 2018 general election, she won re-election with 73.49% of the votes cast and in 2020 she won 70.98% of the votes cast, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Rice first ran in the 2018 Republican primary but did not advance to the general election after receiving only 10.15% of the votes cast. This year both candidates won their June 28 primaries in uncontested races, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

A new Illinois congressional map proposal was signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Nov. 23, 2021 that divided the state into new congressional districts. Following a decrease in population tracked in the 2020 census, Illinois lost a congressional district and now sends 17 representatives to the House.

Before the redistricting, the 9th District was mostly contained in Cook County and with large parts of Chicago. Now it extends farther north and west to Lake and McHenry Counties.

Some of Schakowsky’s major policy concerns include the environment, healthcare, reproductive freedom and supporting Israel’s peace and security, according to her congressional website. Among her recent legislation is the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that she voted for in the House before eventually becoming law, according to the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. The IRA is a bill from Democratic lawmakers signed by Pres. Biden on Aug. 16 aimed at addressing climate change, inflation, healthcare and other issues, according to Senate Democrats.

“Well I was very involved actually in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Schakowsky told The Phoenix. “The other thing I like about the legislation is that it doesn’t add one cent to the deficit, because we pay for much of it by asking the wealthiest Americans, the millionaires and billionaires, to pay their fair share.”

Democrats hold a narrow majority in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. Republican leaders are vying to regain control of Congress in the midterm elections, according to the Associated Press.

“I am concerned that if Republicans take over that we would see a lot of our freedoms, our rights, our right to vote, our right to reproductive health, the freedoms of Americans would be diminished,” Schakowsky said. “On the other hand, if we win the House and the Senate, just two more Senators, the sky is the limit.”

Ben Head is the Political Director of Schakowsky for Congress. He found it difficult to narrow down Schakowsky’s main issues to only a few topics.

“Jan is just a tenacious fighter on like every progressive front you can think of,” Head said. “The issues that I think are probably most pressing to her right now are, abortion rights, gun safety, the cost of healthcare, and that sort of dovetails into corporate price gouging, inflation and other economic stuff.”

Head is not concerned that the new district will greatly affect Schakowsky’s re-election chances, because both Illinois Democrats and his candidate have not changed significantly.

“One of the best parts about Jan is that Jan is Jan,” Head said. “So that Jan that you see on TV is the same Jan that you see sitting in her kitchen eating breakfast. There’s no, like, dual persona like a lot of elected officials have. What you see is what you get with Jan.”

When speaking about Rice, the Republican challenger, Head had little to say.

“Based on the intense level of disrespect that Max Rice has shown not only to our candidate but the system and the process itself, I don’t feel the need to respond to anything he has said,” Head said.

Some of Rice’s main policy concerns include making the United States rich and less corrupt, increasing the resilience of the American energy grid while reducing energy costs and the environment. Rice has worked as an energy consultant for EnergyCX, Watt Pricer and Energy Professionals of Illinois before running for Congress, according to his campaign website.

“Our environmental issues are affecting us in tangible ways,” Rice said. “It’s not just some privileged, pie-in-the-sky cause, it’s really tangible. And the way I think about the environment is topsoil quality, water quality and air quality. And then energy is separate from the environment but that would also be a top issue, and I’m very pro-nuclear.”

Rice described his bid for Congress as what felt like a last stand effort against corruption.

“It’s kind of like the ‘Chicken Little’,” Rice said. “The sky is falling but you actually see the sky is falling. Where you see just next level dysfunction and bad intent and kind of it all coming crashing down. So it was kind of like I was either considering moving Illinois or running for Congress.”

Despite running as a Republican, Rice has made a campaign promise to disavow himself from the Republican Party once elected because of what he sees as abuses of power on both sides of the aisle. He said he chose not to run as an independent because of a systemic disadvantage towards third party candidates.

No matter the results, Rice does not plan on trying to become a career politician. Instead, he wants to focus on issues and teach other issue-oriented citizens how to run for office.

“If you had more people that were like me, and weren’t in this for a career, and in this because they got picked on and they have some like weird power fix or some sort of narcissistic or ego problem,” Rice said. “We have too many people like that and not enough people that are just angry about a niche issue or just feel like they could help out and then get out.”

The midterm elections are on Tuesday, Nov. 8, the last day to submit a mail-in ballot is Thursday, Nov. 3 and early voting begins in all 50 Chicago wards at a ward-specific location on Sunday, Oct 23, according to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.