Seat vacated by Oberweis shaping us as fierce state Senate battleground
A Republican stronghold in the southwestern suburbs flipped in 2018, a blue wave sweeping Democrat Lauren Underwood into Congress.
Now, a Democrat who won a GOP seat in the Illinois House two years ago is hoping to move up and flip the area’s open state Senate seat on Election Day.
Freshman state Rep. Karina Villa, D-West Chicago, and Republican Jeanette Ward have sought to cast each other as being out of touch with voters in the Senate district, which includes all or parts of Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, Naperville, Oswego, Plano, West Chicago and Yorkville.
“We all knew that Jeanette Ward does not represent the needs and the concerns of the people of the 25th Senate District,” Villa said on making her decision to run for the seat. “We knew that we needed a senator in that seat who was going to look out for the needs of the
25th District, and so, therefore, we decided to go ahead and make the decision to run for the seat.”
Villa, a school social worker and former member of the U- 46 school board in Elgin, grew up in West Chicago and ran for her state House seat in 2018, defeating challenger Tonia Jane Khouri to succeed Republican Rep. Mike Fortner, who retired after 12 years in the position.
Ward, also a former U-46 school board member, said she has the support of state Sen. Jim Oberweis, who is vacating the seat to challenge Underwood for her 14th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House. The race to replace Oberweis is one of seven competitive races in the state’s upper chamber.
Ward said she’s running to protect “freedom, faith and family.”
“It’s hard to have freedom in Illinois when taxes and corruption, which is really a stealth tax, are crushing our residents,” the West Chicago resident said.
“Churches should not have been closed while abortion clinics, marijuana dispensaries, grocery stores could stay open. . . . With respect to families, I think Illinois has the highest, or one of the highest, overall tax rates in the nation,” and the proposed move to a graduated income tax will just “cause more Illinois residents to leave.”
The former Elgin-based school board member said if elected, she’ll work part time at her current full-time job at a materials and life sciences company and won’t take a state pension.
She also said term limits are needed to curtail corruption in the state and pointed to state House Speaker Michael Madigan as a prime reason for why. She also didn’t pass up the opportunity to bring up the money her Democratic opponent has previously received from the beleaguered speaker.
Villa reported receiving nearly $1.3 million from two Madigan-backed committees when she ran for her state House seat.
Villa said Ward just “wants to say things to distract the voters from what is real” and that’s “the hard work that I have proven to do as a state representative and will continue to do as a state senator.”
Asked where she stands on the speaker, the Democrat said “I’ll be in the Senate, so I will not have to take any kind of votes except for Senate president.”
“If there’s a case, then the case needs to be made — we need to let the process work itself out,” Villa said.
In her short time in the Illinois House, Villa said she’s developed a “proven track record of working with my Republican colleagues,” and she’d bring that ability to reach across the aisle to the Senate because her constituents are “tired of the polar opposite kind of extremist conversations and want someone who they can trust.”
If the former social worker is elected, she intends to focus on expanding early childhood education and paths to permanent residency for immigrants.
“I have a proven track record of working hard on behalf of my constituents,” Villa said. “I continue to look for ways to bring real solutions to problems, such as the police and fire pension reform legislation that we’ve worked so hard on, $100 cap to insulin prices here in our state. I want to continue to bring people to the table . . . in a unifying way.”