Underwood, Gryder Face Off in 14th District Race: IL Election 2022

PLAINFIELD, IL — Election Day is finally here, and Republican candidate Scott Gryder hopes to unseat Democratic incumbent Lauren Underwood for Illinois's 14th Congressional District.

Gryder, who currently serves as chairman of the Kendall County Board, to which he has been elected as a District 2 representative three times, faced off against four Republican candidates in June's primary election, winning with roughly 30 percent of the vote, Patch reported.

Gryder's platform focused on preserving Second Amendment Rights, improving access to mental health services, protecting Medicare and expanding services for United States veterans.

Licensed to practice law in Illinois, the Republican candidate is a member of the Federalist Society and serves as chair of the Kendall County Republican Central Committee and Kendall County GOP PAC, according to his website.

Underwood ran unopposed in the 2022 primary. She was first elected to represent District 14 in 2018, making history as the youngest Black woman to serve in Congress at age 32.

When she ran again for Congress in 2020, she defeated Republican challenger Jim Oberweis by just over 5,000 votes, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

RELATED: Gryder Wins Republican Primary, Eyes Underwood's 14 District Seat

In her time in Congress, Underwood held 91 community events, made 97 visits to local businesses and organizations and held 35 town hall meetings between the seven counties represented in the 14th District. Since the beginning of the pandemic, she delivered more than $284 million in pandemic relief to K-12 public schools in the 14th District and helped pass legislation to protect kids from e-cigarettes and to increase federal funding to strengthen child abuse prevention, according to her website.

Before becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Underwood worked as a nurse while also serving as a special assistant/senior adviser and policy coordinator for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Ahead of the election, Patch distributed questionnaires to candidates running in contested races. Underwood and Gryder did not respond.

Illinois’s 14th District covers a portion of Northern Illinois, spanning from the Wisconsin border to the north and Kendall County to the south. The district includes all or parts of Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, North Aurora and Campton Hills in Kane County; Oswego, Yorkville and Plano in Kendall County; Plainfield in Will County; McHenry, Crystal Lake, Huntley and Woodstock in McHenry County; Naperville and Warrenville in DuPage County; Sycamore in DeKalb County; and Wauconda in Lake County.

Since the district's creation in 1873, the 14 District representatives generally steered Republican — historically, only five of the 22 members have been Democratic. Underwood became the first woman to hold the seat when she was first elected four years ago.