Illinois
District 12
Rep. Jerry Costello (D)
Illinois 12th District
Rep. Jerry Costello (D)
Their waters roiling together, the nation’s two mightiest rivers, the Mississippi and Missouri, join just a few miles below Alton, Ill. Its 19th-century buildings recall its turbulent history, when it was the home of the antislavery agitator Elijah Lovejoy, who was murdered by a mob. More recently, it was the longtime home of conservative crusader and columnist Phyllis Schlafly. Nearby in Hartford, Lewis and Clark spent five months preparing their team and collecting supplies for their journey westward. Farther south along the Mississippi is East St. Louis, situated on the Illinois side of the river, with a view of the Gateway Arch in the city of St. Louis on the Missouri side. It is a terminus for dozens of rail lines and highways that funnel into bridges over the river. Once a rail and stockyard center second only to Chicago, East St. Louis is now one of America’s poorest and most troubled cities, a half-abandoned slum with one of the nation’s highest crime rates and a rapidly declining tax base. It is dependent on a riverboat casino and an adjacent waterfront hotel for local revenue, but casino taxes have increased and revenues have dipped, leaving the future of gambling in Illinois in question. After peaking at 82,000 in 1960, its population is now less than 29,000 and almost entirely African-American. East St. Louis is in St. Clair County, long heavily Democratic. Alton is in Madison County, which is politically more marginal.
2008 Presidential Vote |
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| Obama | 170,391 | (56%) |
| McCain | 131,443 | (43%) |
| Cook Partisan Voting Index D+ 3 | ||
South of East St. Louis and the industrial area around Belleville, the river counties are lightly inhabited. This was the site of the French Kaskaskia settlement that became Illinois’s first capital in 1818, but repeated flooding turned it into an island and reduced its population to nine people and many more egrets. Farther south, the river abuts coal country and is not far from Carbondale, once a coal center but now, as the home of Southern Illinois University, bustling with students from downstate Illinois and Chicago. In 2006, Maytag shut its plant and eliminated 1,000 jobs in nearby Herrin. The land here is sometimes known as Little Egypt, the southern end of Illinois where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi: flat, fertile farmland, protected by giant constructed levees because it is susceptible to yearly floods. The marshy landscape has created the Sinkhole Plain, with more than 10,000 sinkholes. There is more than a touch of Dixie here: The unofficial capital of Little Egypt, Cairo (pronounced KAY-roh), is a declining town closer to Memphis than to Chicago. In his 1842 work American Notes, Charles Dickens described the town in these unflattering terms: “a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise: a place without one single quality, in earth or air or water, to commend it: such is this dismal Cairo.” A more enticing locale not far from Cairo is the Shawnee National Forest, which has preserved Native American sites that are 10,000 years old. The Cherokee Nation left here in the 1830s on its devastating forced march to Oklahoma, which became known as the Trail of Tears.
The 12th District of Illinois covers all of this Mississippi riverfront from Alton south to Cairo, with some inland territory as well. Most of its population is in the Metro East area in St. Clair and Madison counties. The largest employer in Southern Illinois is Scott Air Force Base near Belleville, home of the 932nd Airlift Wing, medical transport planes, and refueling tankers. George W. Bush lost this district twice. John McCain lost it to Barack Obama, 56%-43% in 2008.
Illinois District 12
Rep. Jerry Costello (D)
Elected: Aug. 1988, 11th full term.
Born: Sept. 25, 1949, E. St. Louis .
Home: Belleville.
Education: Belleville Area Col., A.A. 1971, Maryville Col., B.A. 1973.
Religion: Catholic.
Family: Married (Georgia); 3 children.
Elected office: Chmn., St. Clair Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 1980–88.
Professional Career: Dir., IL Court Svcs. & Probation, 1973–80; Chmn., Region's Cncl. of Govts., 1980–84.
The congressman from the 12th District is Jerry Costello, a Democrat first elected in 1988. He grew up in a St. Clair County political family—his father was the county sheriff. He graduated from high school in East St. Louis, then the family moved to Belleville. As a young man, Costello went to work for the county as a court bailiff, and eventually worked his way up to administrator of the county court system. He was elected to the St. Clair County Board of Supervisors and became chairman. He waited with some impatience for the retirement of Democratic Rep. Mel Price, who was first elected in 1944 and served for more than 40 years. Price died in office in April 1988. Experienced, well connected, supported by organized labor, Costello was the obvious successor. Yet he received only 51% of the votes in the special election and 53% for a full term.
| Election Results: | ||||
| 2008 General | ||||
| 2008 Primary | ||||
| Jerry Costello (D) | Unopposed | |||
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Prior Winning Percentages: 2006 (100%), 2004 (69%), 2002 (69%), 2000 (100%), 1998 (60%), 1996 (72%), 1994 (66%), 1992 (71%), 1990 (66%), 1988 (53%), 1988 (51%) |
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Costello is a practical-minded, low-profile politician with a centrist voting record that is a bit more liberal on economics than on cultural issues. Seniority has moved him toward top posts on both the Science and Technology and the Transportation and Infrastructure committees, where he is chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee. In 2006, he pushed a bill to require contract talks between the Federal Aviation Administration and the air traffic controllers’ union, but it fell 9 votes short of passage. He wants the federal government to make a much larger contribution to modernize the system. He has criticized airlines for not meeting their commitments for a “passenger bill of rights.” In 2008, the Transportation Committee approved his proposal to ban cell phone use on planes. On the war in Iraq, Costello has been consistently opposed to Bush administration policies and voted against authorizing to use force against Iraq in 2002. (His son was a paratrooper during the Gulf War in 1991.)
In his district work, Costello is attempting to revive his district’s largely dormant high-sulfur coal mines with incentives for clean-coal research and development and has been successful in including several provisions in recent energy bills. He also has worked to secure annual appropriations for the FutureGen clean-coal power plant just outside of his district, which is designed to burn coal without polluting the air. Costello also tries to get as much federal money as he can for infrastructure improvements for downtrodden East St. Louis. Despite setbacks, Costello finally won approval of a new Mississippi River bridge north of the current congested bridge on Interstate 70. In 2008, Costello sought Ethics Committee approval to continue seeking spending earmarks for Southwestern Illinois Community College after his wife, Georgia, was named president of the college.
Costello usually draws no serious challenges at election time. But in 1998, he faced Bill Price, an orthopedic surgeon and son of Mel Price, who switched parties and ran as a Republican. At the time, Costello had been weakened by disclosures at the trial of his former business partner, who ultimately was convicted of trying to obstruct a federal investigation. The trial brought out testimony that Costello was a silent partner in casino deals at a time when he was working on legislation to help an Indian tribe that owned the land for the proposed casinos. Despite an opponent with a well-known and respected name locally, Costello won by a solid 60%-40%. Since then, he has been easily re-elected every two years.
