The Potential Upset Nobody Is Talking About
Republican congressional candidate Esther Joy King speaks at a candidate forum this spring. The upstart candidate is reportedly gaining on incumbent Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Moline) as voters head to the polls.
There’s no shortage of underdog stories every election year. Some are downright quixotic. Others sense an opportunity conventional wisdom says isn’t there.
Most of those underdog candidates end up becoming footnotes but every now and then one shocks the political world. Just ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Dave Brat, an underfunded Tea Party challenger who took out House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 primary.
“We’ve already snuck up on her,” said Esther Joy King, the former Army Judge Advocate General attorney turned Republican candidate in Illinois’s 17th Congressional district which includes western Illinois from Rockford to Peoria to the Mississippi River. King, 33, is a former aid worker in Afghanistan and worked in former Governor Bruce Rauner’s administration.
“I don’t believe they realized that they were losing this race until last week when (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi [put] one million dollars into this race to save Cheri Bustos.”
Rep. Bustos (D-Moline ) isn’t just any incumbent, she’s also one of the most influential Democrats in Washington. Just last year she took over as the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Parties don’t usually pick someone in a competitive district to be in charge of identifying candidates and divvying campaign cash to races around the country.
If the head of the party apparatus loses, can you imagine the embarrassment?
The Illinois 17th is usually rated as a “safe Democratic” or “likely Democratic” race, but the Cook Political Report recently moved the race slightly in King’s favor. Democrats traditionally have a 3-point advantage in the district. Much of the district is a longtime Democratic bastion. Rep. Lane Evans represented the Quad Cities-anchored portion of the district for 24 years.
“Up until this election, Cheri Bustos hasn’t had a viable opponent that could beat her,” King said. “The opportunity has been there.”
There’s no suspense about who will win Illinois’ 20 electoral votes between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. The question is more how each candidate will impact races farther down the ballot.
Will Biden boost Democratic turnout enough to help Bustos? Trump may not be popular statewide in Illinois but he narrowly beat Hillary Clinton in the 17th district in 2016.
“My goal is not to connect with people who are pro-President Trump and agree with policies like I do but also to connect with voters who disagree with him and maybe create an opportunity for them to see me as a candidate beyond just the color of my political party but to see me as a human being and someone who will fight for them,” she said.
There were Bustos-Trump voters in 2016, so King thinks there will be “Biden-Esther” voters in 2020.
“There are places where President Trump helps me win and there are other people who, if I can create a human connection, they might be voting Biden-Esther (Tuesday).”
That doesn’t mean she’s running away from Trump. She spoke at one of his recent rallies and retweeted his endorsement via Twitter, his favorite medium.
The Illinoize reached out to Rep. Bustos’ campaign but they never responded.
Bustos has more than double the money King has and the polls suggest she should win re-election. With just hours left in the campaign, King’s campaign is hoping they can pull off the kind of upset which could turn heads during a campaign year fixated on the White House.
“The mantra we’ve been using is ‘all gas, no brake’. We are driving hard through the tape to Election Day.”