Casten, Newman and Hughes Face Off In IL-06: Democratic Primary 2022

ILLINOIS — The incumbent vs. incumbent Democratic primary in the redrawn 6th Illinois Congressional District is considered one of the hot congressional primaries to watch. The 2022 Illinois gubernatorial primary will take place Tuesday, June 28.

The remapped IL-06 includes 21 percent of Casten’s former district, and 41 percent of the former IL-03 District, that Newman currently represents. The new boundaries do not go into effect until after the November election.

Two, liberal House Democrats, Sean Casten and Marie Newman, are fighting it out in a game of political musical chairs, where the loser of the June 28 Democratic primary goes home and the other makes it on to November’s midterm ballot.

If you’re a Chicago voter, you can type in your home address at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioner’s site to find your polling place. Chicago voters can also see a sample ballot for a preview of the races they can vote it. If you requested a mail-in-ballot, you can still submit it to one of these drop boxes or mail it, but it must be postmarked no later than June 28 to count.

Suburban Cook County voters can find their polling pace and who is on their ballot by plugin their address into the Cook County Clerk’s site. Again, if you requested a mail-in ballot, it must be postmarked no later than June 28 to count.

Casten’s camp claims an internal poll conducted by the Garin, Hart, Yang Research Group in May, in which 402 likely Democratic Primary voters were surveyed, shows him with a 9-point lead “prior to his campaign spending a single dollar on television advertisements,” a campaign news release claims. You can read the polling memo here.

Newman’s has been dogged by a House ethics probe into her alleged quid pro quo offer to convince a potential rival not to run by offering him a job not to run. She has garnered significant backing from labor unions and some of the same pro-choice organizations that endorsed Casten.

Challenger Charles M. Hughes, of the Southwest Side Garfield Ridge neighborhood, says he’s been getting an earful from IL-06 voters from knocking on doors, who don’t know who Casten is and don't like Newman. A one-time precinct captain for former congressman Bill Lipinski, Hughes has been spending most of his money on TV and radio ads.

Hughes says he’ll be watching the returns on Tuesday evening in shorts and a T-shirt, just like a “regular person” from Archer Avenue watering hole, Tom’s Tap.

Lyn Sweet, the Chicago Sun-Times political analyst and Washington, D.C. bureau chief, noted that according to Casten’s poll from last month, 46 percent of likely Democratic voters said they prefer to vote Tuesday, the day of the primary campaign, rather than take advantage of early voting or mail-in ballots. Anything can happen.

In 2018, Casten famously toppled six-term Republican Peter Roskum, becoming the first Democratic congressman to represent the old IL-06 before the remap, that encompassed DuPage County. Casten is running for his third term in the U.S. House.

He’s a climate scientist who’s worked to pass clean energy legislation to reduce the federal government's carbon footprint, expand access to electric vehicles, and invest in clean energy technology. Casten has also voted to lower costs for families, such as prescription drugs and child care costs, introduced legislation to address the gun violence epidemic, and fought to protect a woman's right to choose.

Casten has garnered endorsements from environmental groups, such as the League of Conservation Voters, the NRDC Action Fund and Clean Energy for America. He’s received union backing as well, including the IBEW Illinois State Conference, IUEC Local 2 and the DuPage County Building and Construction Trades.

Casten’s also won the support of pro-Israel organizations – Democratic Majority for Israel and the Jewish Democratic Council of America – which may not sit too well with the district’s sizeable Palestinian American population.
Newman fought hard to come back and beat long-term Congressman Dan Lipinski in the 2020 Democratic primary, after losing by a narrow margin in 2018.

A progressive Democrat, Axios called Newman “the third most active freshman in Congress.” She’s championed a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, LGBTQ+ rights, health care for all, and common-sense gun safety laws. During her first term in Congress, she helped pass five pieces of bipartisan legislation to boost local small businesses, bring jobs to the Southwest Side and suburbs, and improve IL-03’s aging public transit and rail freight systems.

Like Casten, Newman has earned endorsement nods from the same pro-choice groups, including Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America, to name a few. Newman has won the support of such progressive groups as the Independent Progressive Alliance, DuPage Progressive Alliance, the Progressive Caucus, Democracy for America and Blue America.

Newman also has the same union backing that traditionally supported Dan Lipinski, such as the United Steel Workers, National Nurses United, the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 4016, Cook County Teachers Union and Iron Workers Local 1.

The elephant in the room, which Casten has hammered Newman for in TV ads before the tragic death of his 17-year-old daughter, is the ethics probe into Newman’s alleged quid pro quo offer to convince a potential rival not to run.

A Palestinian American college professor, Iymen Chehade, sued Newman last year for breach of contract, over allegations that she promised him a staff job with a six-figure salary not to run and divide the district’s Palestinian American vote, if she won the 2020 election. Chehade told Patch last year that Newman instructed him to draw up a contract, which they both signed. When Newman won the 2020 election, the complaint alleged that the congresswoman-elect told Chehade that she didn’t intend to honor their contract because Chehade was “unsuited” for one of three positions she promised him.

Both parties have settled out of court, and Newman has reportedly paid Chehade $50,000 in the second half of 2021, commensurate with the six-figure salary he would have earned if she hired him, according to the Daily Beast. Newman maintains that a far-right group lodged the original ethics complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics, which kicked over its findings to the House Ethics Committee for further review of the allegations.

Newman has accused Casten's “backer,” the right-leaning Democratic Majority For Israel PAC, of funding the recent “misleading attack ad” and of promoting “a false narrative intended to mislead voters ahead of the June 28th Democratic primary election.”

Newman has denied any allegations of wrongdoing in her past dealings with Chehade, and has been cooperating with the House Ethics Committee’s investigation.

Earlier this month, Newman and Chehade issued a joint statement, where Chehade called claims of him entering the 2020 IL-03 congressional race “misinformation.”

During a recent forum hosted by WTTW, Chehade directly addressed the right-wing complaint and ensuing congressional ethics review, affirming that the complaint was baseless, which was included in his and Newman’s joint statement.

"I was never a candidate for Congress. I never declared candidacy. I never hired anybody. I never fundraised. I never did any of those things. Did Marie and I sign a contract? Yes we did. Was it for me to drop out of the race? Absolutely not. I was not in the race. This is an issue that was brought on by a right-wing organization that the media has latched on to," said Iymen Chehade.

"Marie and I have had our issues in the past, but I can tell you this is a hit job on her, and I'm collateral damage for it …,” Chehade continued. “I think the facts are going to come out after the primary, and you will see this is just what it was, just nothing but a hit job..."

Hughes lives in Chicago’s Garfield Ridge neighborhood on the Southwest Side. He is a one-time precinct captain for the former U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski, father of former U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, who is reportedly circulating petitions to run as an independent in November’s IL-06 race, Hughes has been knocking on doors, spending most of his money on TV and radio ads.

An operation tech for Nicor Gas, Hughes ran unsuccessfully in the 2020 IL-03 Democratic primary before it was redistricted. He accuses the two incumbent congresspeople of regulating “the economy until inflation hit.”

Hughes supports more drilling for oil on U.S. soil to lower energy costs and producing union jobs in renewable energy in America and reducing taxes on the middle class. Hughes is pro-choice, stating that what a woman decides to do with her body “is between herself, her doctor and God.”