Casten v Pekau: Can IL's 'Likely Democratic' 6th District Be Flipped?

IL-06 — U.S. Rep. Sean Casten is looking to retain his U.S. House seat in the reconfigured Illinois 6th Congressional District. His Republican challenger, Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau, thinks he can flip the new 6th District as the race tightens in the Nov. 8 election.

Their race has been one of partisan polarization and divisive political rhetoric that has marked the stormy midterm elections across the country. Both have had heavy hitters breezing into the town to campaign on their behalf. Last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Casten hosted a roundtable discussion at Advocate Aurora Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove in support of women’s reproductive rights.

On Friday, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy arrived for a Big Red Wave fundraising bash at the Hyatt Lodge in Oak Brook to support Pekau. According to Pekau, he boasted that his campaign is going so well that McCarthy is “taking time out of his very busy campaign schedule to join me for a special event.” The evening included a VIP roundtable discussion, and a cocktail reception.

Concurrent with Pekau’s private bash in the same building, Casten and U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin held a social security town hall for the community while Pekau partied with "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is best known for leading House Republicans with a plan to devastate seniors with cuts to Social Security & Medicare.”

Later in the evening, President Joe Biden arrived in town Friday to shore up support for Illinois Democratic congressmen, long seen as a Democratic stronghold. Biden attended a late-night fundraiser for Casten and other suburban incumbents.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, Casten, like many Democrats, is hoping his defense of abortion rights will mobilize voters, especially women, to the polls. Pekau, who is adopted, is on the record as being pro-life. The GOP contender has also accused Casten of “falsely portraying his stance on abortion in campaign ads,” in which he’s cast as opposing exceptions to save a mothers' life, or for rape or incest.

Casten has also criticized Pekau for accepting an award from the far-right group Awake Illinois, for his stance against mask mandates and vaccines.

Much of their race has been spent quibbling over the Downers Grove Public Library’s drag queen bingo event for teens. Pekau denounced the event as “adult entertainment” aimed toward children and an “inappropriate use of taxpayer funds.” The library eventually canceled the event due to threats. Casten blamed Pekau and Awake Illinois for creating “an unsafe environment.”

Casten has outpaced Pekau in campaign contributions, raking in $5 million to Pekau’s $1.25 million. Casten has poured most of his haul into digital ad buys. Pekau has taken to the Fox Network News for some free air time, to warn of anarchy in the streets when the controversial SAFE-T Act that would eliminate cash bail in Illinois goes into effect Jan. 1, 2023.

In the remapping of Illinois’s congressional districts, Casten watched the old IL-06 district that helped him unseat six-term Republican Peter Roskam in 2018 get parsed down to 21 percent of his base and pushed into a wide swath of the old IL-03. Casten handily beat fellow House Democrat Marie Newman, a first-term congresswoman, who was dogged by an ethics probe throughout the June 28 primary campaign. Newman toppled the Lipinski dynasty in the 2020 Democratic primary, beating Dan Lipinski, a pro-life Catholic, and went on to win the House seat in 2020 election.

Pekau, however, has recently been touting polls that he claims show the IL-06 race tightening. What was once forecast to be “solidly Democrat,” RealClearPolitics, a political news and polling aggregator, has the IL-06 race as a toss-up. Politico has also hedged on Tuesday’s midterm race as “leaning Dem.” Pekau going after DuPage County Republicans, independents and older, pro-life Dan Lipinski Democrats across the new IL-06, who are angry about crime and high gas prices.

The new IL-06 race has been ignored by most pollsters and pundits, whose attention has been drawn to hotter races. In 2017, Pekau beat at a 27-year incumbent in his first run for mayor of Orland Park. Can Pekau and the GOP flip the 6th? Stranger things have happened. In 2020, IL-03 voters elected a progressive.