Rep. Casten holds slim lead over Ives in race for 6th Congressional District seat
With one term under his belt, Democratic incumbent Rep. Sean Casten was in a close contest Tuesday night to keep his seat in Congress against former state representative and Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives.
With 93% of precincts reporting as of 11:45 p.m., Casten held a 50% to 48.2% lead over Ives.
Addressing reporters late Tuesday, Casten was confident that he would again claim victory, saying:
“I’m looking forward to serving another term.”
The Ives campaign did not provide any statement.
A third candidate, Libertarian Bill Redpath, had garnered 1.8% of the vote.
The 6th Congressional District covers much of the near west and northwest suburbs in parts of Cook, Kane, McHenry, DuPage and Lake counties. Casten won the district two years ago by defeating six-term Republican incumbent Peter Roskam. He is the first Democrat to hold the seat since the mid-1970s.
Casten, who lives in Downers Grove, has degrees in engineering, molecular biology and biochemistry and previously worked as a scientist and clean energy entrepreneur before he was elected in 2018.
He has been highly critical of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 230,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, and Casten told the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board that President Donald Trump “bears personal responsibility for that death toll.”
Casten has called climate change his top priority. In October, he introduced a bill that, he said, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by 40% by the year 2040. The bill — the Tradable Performance Standard Act — would require power generators and industrial facilities to meet certain carbon intensity thresholds in an effort to reduce pollution.
In an interview with WBEZ last week, Ives said, “The big, big issue here is how to adapt to climate change that has been occurring since the climate existed.”
Ives, of Wheaton, was first elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 2012 and served three terms. A social conservative and West Point graduate with three sons in the armed forces, Ives ran for governor in 2018, taking on incumbent Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in the primary.
Though Rauner won that race, Ives still captured more than 48% of the vote in the March 2018 primary.