Conscious Choice: Life After Hyde

March 2006

Life After Hyde

Can grassroots candidate Christine Cegelis fend off 6th Congressional District primary challengers — now that other Democratic candidates view as winnable the seat being vacated by GOP conservative Henry Hyde after 32 years?

By Harvey Henao

With U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde stepping down from the west suburban 6th Congressional District seat, there is no shortage of Democratic candidates ready to take his place in the traditionally Republican area, among them a wounded military veteran, a businesswoman, and a college professor.

The Democratic candidates have targeted the area to regain control after 32 years of conservative Republican rule under Hyde.

Cegelis, a businesswoman from Rolling Meadows and mother of two sons in their 20s, said she became interested in running for Congress when her sons said how difficult it was to find a job after graduating from college mired in debt.

“I’m a very successful businesswoman,” Cegelis said. “But I have always believed that we, my generation, should leave the next generation a country that is better, not that is worse. All of a sudden, I’m hearing my sons and their friends talk about working at Starbucks just so they can get health insurance.”

Cegelis said that with her background in management consulting, which involves being able to convince two opposing sides to find a common ground, she would be able to end bipartisan bickering.

Another candidate, Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran from Hoffman Estates, said her military background has given her the common sense needed to end the war and the leadership skills to represent a bipartisan district.

Duckworth was piloting a Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq when insurgents shot her down in 2003, she said. She then spent the next year in a Navy hospital learning how to walk on her new titanium legs.

“I’m going to fight for jobs, I’m going to fight for education, I’m going to fight for health care,” she said. “I just got pissed off at Bush and his administration… The point is to bring back the balance of power.”

A third candidate, Lindy Scott, a Wheaton College professor and an evangelical church pastor, bills himself as the “middle ground” between the district’s growing Latino population and its established white conservative residents.

“We need to be able to communicate well in what we believe in,” Scott said. “We have to be strong and respond to the attacks of the Republicans … We have to have strong convictions and reach out to voters. I think I can reach out better than my opponents.”

At a Jan. 29 candidates forum in Villa Park, all three candidates supported pulling troops out of Iraq. Cegelis and Scott advocated a deadline by which all troops must be pulled out. Duckworth agreed troops should be pulled out, but called setting a deadline “military suicide.”

“From a military strategy point of view, timetables do not work,” Duckworth said. “You let the bad guys know when you’re going to do what you’re going to do.”

Duckworth said she envisioned insurgents bombing convoys of U.S. troops as they pulled out of the region if a deadline was publicized. Instead, she favors benchmarks of progress that would gradually return troops home. As Americans train Iraqi battalions, a U.S. battalion could be sent home, she said.

Cegelis disagreed, saying, “If we don’t put the timetable on that, we cannot convince our allies or the Iraqis themselves that we intend to, in fact, leave their country.”

Scott called the war “immoral” and one that was not strategic and did not meet any criteria for a just war.

On the subject of education, all three candidates bashed the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB), calling it under-funded and bureaucratic. They also argued that it takes local control away from the schools.

“NCLB is a Trojan horse to try to privatize our education,” Cegelis said. If a school fails to meet annual progress goals, the ultimate penalty is to close down the school and reopen it with new administration. “Every high school in this district is on the watched or the failing list… That’s ridiculous. We have some of the best schools in the country.”

Duckworth and Cegelis said they supported the woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion.

“Government should not interfere with a private decision,” Duckworth said. “It is not the place of Bush or the Senate to make your decisions.”

Cegelis said she believes the decision should also stay between a woman, her family and her doctor.

“We have the right to make our own choices,” she said.

Scott said he belongs to Democrats for Life and proposed measures like insurance coverage for birth control and publicly funded day care so a woman doesn’t have to choose between working and having a child.

“I’ve lived in Mexico, where women are treated like second-class citizens,” Scott said. “We … can be pro-woman and cherish life across the board.”

At the Jan. 29 forum, community residents appeared to respond most favorably to Duckworth and Cegelis. Before the forum, a Lombard architect said he had no opinion on the candidates; later, he walked away a Duckworth supporter.

“She’s got a lot of get-up-and-go,” Tedd Meyer said of Duckworth. “It takes a lot of moxie for her to do what she’s doing, and that shows she’s a fighter.”

Meyer said Duckworth’s position on the Iraq war and her attitude is what spoke to him the most. He said her experience as a soldier will benefit the district because they’ll have someone who knows first-hand how the war is being handled and the best way to end it.

But while he has decided to support Duckworth, he was very impressed by Cegelis, Meyer said.

“I can tell she’s a good candidate and she’s strong leader,” Meyer said. “It really helps that she’s been a businesswoman because that shows she can get stuff done.”

But regardless of who wins the March Democratic primary, Duckworth said she would support them for the November election.

“Whoever wins on March 22nd, I’ll be out there working for them,” Duckworth said. “The way to fix things is to win this seat.”

Harvey Henao is a Chicago-area reporter.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: