Jesse Jackson Jr. faces tough primary against Halvorson

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Chicago Sun-Times:

 

Jesse Jackson Jr. has had a bad couple of years.

How bad?

Voters in the Democratic primary in the 2nd Congressional District are about to tell him.

Nobody is predicting defeat for the incumbent congressman, who first was elected to the office in 1995 and has picked up 80 percent of the vote in subsequent elections. But polls show that two recent scandals — accusations that he tried to buy a Senate seat from former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and allegations of an extramarital affair — have taken a toll. Polls in January showed Jackson with a strong, but not necessarily run-away, lead of 13 or 14 points over his primary race challenger, former one-term Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson.

Adding to Jackson’s vulnerability, the newly drawn 2nd District stretches from the South Side all the way to Kankakee, including the area around Peotone where he wants to build a third regional airport. The district now includes Chicago Heights, where Halvorson grew up, and Crete, where she lives, as well as much of the suburban part of her old 11th District. In 2010, Halvorson lost the seat — badly — to Republican Adam Kinzinger.

Halvorson is playing up three themes in this race: Her loyalty to President Obama, her personal story of hard-won wisdom through adversity (having raised four children as a single mother by selling Mary Kay cosmetics) and her success in creating jobs during her brief time in Washington. She was influential, above all, in getting the Pentagon to approve the expansion of a massive warehouse facility in her old district, which created jobs.