Democrat Robin Kelly claimed victory tonight in a low-turnout contest to decide the successor to former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in a 2nd Congressional District with a history of scandal-plagued representation.
With about 39 percent of precincts counted, the former state lawmaker had about 85 percent of the vote to about 10 percent for Republican Paul McKinley, an unemployed political activist and ex-convict. Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones was running third, ahead of three independent candidates who made the special general election ballot.
As of 1:30 p.m., turnout was 8.1 percent in the city portion of the district. That compares to 10.7 percent at the same time that turnout was sampled on Feb. 26, the day of contested special Democratic and Republican primaries to determine the major party nominees. That could mean city turnout for the South Side and south suburban contest could be about 12 percent, officials said. Turnout for the special primary as 14.7 percent.
City voters make up about one-third of the 2nd Congressional District, while the suburbs have the bulk of the votes. In suburban Cook County, where there are dozens of municipal contests, turnout in higher in areas which have significant contests for mayor or village president, Cook County Clerk David Orr's office said. But there are not many major contested local contests in the suburban portion of the congressional district.
Tonight, Kelly supporters gathered at a hotel bar in her hometown of Matteson.
Kelly had been expected to win ever since she won the Democratic special primary election Feb. 26 in the heavily Democratic South Side and south suburban district.
The district has not had representation since November, when Jackson resigned weeks after winning re-election amid federal investigations and a diagnosis of bipolar depression. Shortly before the special primary, Jackson, who had represented the district for 17 years, pleaded guilty to illegally converting $750,000 in campaign contributions for personal use. His wife, Sandi, resigned her 7th Ward Chicago aldermanic seat and pleaded guilty to tax fraud.
Kelly won the Democratic nomination with the assistance of independent advertising paid for by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that endorsed her while assailing gun-rights supporters she ran against. Kelly won the multi-candidate Democratic primary with more than 53 percent, doubling up on her nearest challenger, former one-term U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson of Crete. Unlike Kelly, Halvorson was a gun-rights supporter.
Halvorson had unsuccessfully challenged Jackson in the March 2012 primary and was soundly defeated. Jackson easily won re-election against two opponents, even though he did not appear publicly to campaign.
Prior to Jackson's election to Congress in 1995, the district had been represented by Mel Reynolds, who was forced to give up the seat after being convicted of sex-related charges, including having sex with an underage campaign worker.
Reynolds had unsuccessfully sought a political comeback in losing a bid for the Democratic primary nomination in February. Reynolds gained the seat in 1993 after his predecessor, Gus Savage, was condemned by the House Ethics Committee amid allegations of sexual misconduct involving a Peace Corps volunteer while he was on an official congressional visit to Zaire.
McKinley, 54, won the special Republican primary by defeating Flossmoor multimedia company owner Eric Wallace by 23 votes.
Wallace called the nomination "an embarrassment" to the GOP because of McKinley's history as a convicted felon who served nearly 20 years in state prison for burglaries, armed robberies and aggravated battery, most of it in the 1980s and 1990s. McKinley did not hide his criminal past as he campaigned, billing himself as an "ex-offender running to save the next offender," but he frequently declined to discuss the crimes.
McKinley later would accuse a journalist of being racist for reporting on court records that showed he was convicted for burglarizing a store, pistol-whipping a man for his watch and robbing a woman of $60 at gunpoint. McKinley said following his prison time he learned to take "all that fight" and turn it against Chicago's Democratic political machine, and his campaign focused on that single issue.
For her primary and general election campaigns, Kelly raised more than $780,000, including donations this month from union teachers and public employees. Entering the final weeks of the contest, she reported more than $121,000 left.
McKinley reported raising less than $13,000. He took the unusual step of paying at least $3,400 of that money to himself for campaign work. McKinley acknowledged he was unemployed. In addition, an independent super political action committee, the Teaparty.net Leadership Fund, spent $23,000 on behalf of McKinley, including phone calls, t-shirts, bumper stickers and online ads.
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