Illinois Voters (And Non-Voters?) Opt For Status Quo In Low-Turnout Primary

By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois

With only a few exceptions, incumbent officeholders in Illinois cruised to easy victories in primary elections Tuesday that were marked by historically low voter turnout.

Although final numbers won’t be known for several more days, preliminary returns from many of the state’s larger counties showed turnout hovering in the range of 20-25 percent.

That compares to a statewide average of 47 percent in 2016, when the White House was an open race, and 28 percent during the pandemic-impacted primaries in 2020.

That may have been due to the fact that there were few truly competitive races for voters to decide, especially at the top of the ballot. Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump had both secured enough delegates to win their respective party nominations a full week before polls even opened in Illinois.

One race that did prove competitive, though, was the 12^th Congressional District race in southern Illinois, where incumbent Republican Mike Bost, of Murphysboro, survived a challenge from former state Sen. Darren Bailey, the unsuccessful GOP candidate for governor in 2022.

Bost is a former state legislator who was first elected to Congress in 2014. Bailey had served only one term in the state House and half a term in the state Senate before running for governor.

Both portrayed themselves as pro-Trump Republicans. Although Trump had endorsed Bailey in his bid for governor, he endorsed Bost in the primary.

Bailey conceded the race Tuesday night when unofficial returns showed Bost ahead by about 3 percentage points, with 96 percent of the votes counted.

Another close congressional race was in the 7^th District of Chicago, where longtime incumbent Democrat Danny Davis fended off challenges from Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and community organizer Kina Collins among others.

Davis, who is 82, was first elected to Congress in 1996. Before that, he served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners and, starting in 1979, the Chicago City Council. Although his challengers argued it was time for a new generation to step into leadership, Davis drew on his support from Gov. JB Pritzker and other established Democrats to win the race with an estimated 53 percent of the vote.

In state legislative races, two Democratic lawmakers from the Chicago area were ousted by challengers in Tuesday’s primaries.

In the 20^th Senate District, Democratic Sen. Natalie Toro was defeated by challenger Graciela Guzman.

Democratic Party officials appointed Toro to that seat to fill a vacancy when the last elected senator, Christina Pacione-Zayas, resigned to take a job in Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration. Toro had backing from Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, but Guzman was endorsed by liberal U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

And in the 31^st District, Rep. Mary Flowers, the longest-serving member of the House who had fallen out of favor with Democratic leaders in recent months, lost her seat to challenger Michael Crawford.

In the 1^st District Democratic primary for a Cook County seat on the Illinois Supreme Court, incumbent Justice Joy Cunningham defeated challenger Jesse Reyes, an appellate court justice, by a roughly 75-25 percent margin. Cunningham was appointed to the seat in 2022 to replace retiring Justice Anne Burke.

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