Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D)

The congressman from the 2nd District is Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat first elected at age 30 in 1995 and the son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Jesse Jackson Jr. was born in Greenville, S.C., while his father was marching to Selma. But he spent much of his early life in Washington, D.C., and attended the prestigious St. Albans School. He went to North Carolina A&T, his father’s alma mater, earned a master’s degree at Chicago Theological Seminary and a law degree at the University of Illinois. He spent his 21st birthday in a Washington, D.C., jail for protesting apartheid at the South African embassy. Jackson worked for his father’s Rainbow Coalition and did not run for office until Democratic Rep. Mel Reynolds was driven from office for having sexual relations with a teenage campaign worker. In a 1995 special election, Jackson had serious competition from Democrat Emil Jones, then a state legislator for 23 years and later the state Senate President, who had the support of Mayor Richard M. Daley. Jones emphasized his clout and political experience. Jackson said being his father’s son was a lifetime of political experience. He talked of bringing dollars to the South Side and, quoting longtime Illinois Democratic Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, said, “The only way one grows into leadership in Congress is to get elected young enough that you become speaker of the House or chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.” Jackson won the primary 46%-37% and easily won the special election in December.

In the House, Jackson has combined liberal advocacy with careful attention to the interests of his constituents and to the steady advancement of his own influence. In 2001, he helped to create the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health. In recent years, he has sponsored few legislative bills, but nine constitutional amendments creating new rights, such as a right to “health care of equal high quality,” to “decent, safe, sanitary and affordable housing” and to “full employment and balanced economic growth.” He plans to keep introducing his amendments “as long as I am alive and in Congress,” he says. None have passed and are unlikely to, even with Democrats in control of Congress. Topping Jackson’s list of parochial projects is a long-standing proposal for a third Chicago-area airport in Peotone, 45 miles south of the Loop and just south of the district. The fight pitted him against fellow Democrats, including Daley, whose No. 1 priority has been expansion of O’Hare Airport. Jackson’s allies have included Republicans from the northern suburbs who are worried about an increase in noise levels in neighborhoods around O’Hare.

Jackson has had a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee for nearly a decade and is well positioned to move up to a subcommittee chairmanship. Except for Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, every committee chairmen with more seniority than Jackson is at least 13 years older. After years of flirting with a race for mayor of Chicago, he seems content to remain in the House. In 2005, his increasingly sharp criticism of Mayor Richard M. Daley led to speculation that he would mount a challenge in the February 2007 Democratic primary. In September 2006, Jackson said, “It’s more likely than not” that he would challenge Daley. But after Democrats took control of the House that year, he decided to stay where he was. Jackson has been careful not to exploit his high degree of name recognition, and, as an early and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama for president, he criticized as “reckless” his father’s off-color gibes at Obama. The movement of middle-class blacks to the far suburbs continues to diminish his core constituency, but Jackson’s connection to the city’s politics is still strong. In 2007, his wife Sandi, a deputy political director of the Democratic National Committee, was elected alderman of Chicago’s 7th Ward.

After Obama’s election in 2008, Jackson was briefly caught up in the behind-the-scenes campaign for Obama’s open Senate seat that led to the downfall of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was charged with trying to profit personally and politically from his power to appoint a successor. Jackson was “Senate Candidate Five” in the transcripts of prosecutors’ wiretapped conversations, in which fundraising for Blagojevich was discussed. In comments aimed at persuading the public to “give me my name back” Jackson said: “I did not initiate or authorize anyone at any time to promise anything to Governor Blagojevich on my behalf…. I thought, mistakenly, that the process was fair, aboveboard, and on the merits. I thought, mistakenly, that the governor was evaluating me and other Senate hopefuls based upon our credentials and qualifications.”

Before the scandal broke, the Chicago Sun-Times endorsed Jackson as “a thoughtful, committed legislator” for the seat. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid quietly opposed his selection, reportedly because he did not believe Jackson could win a statewide election.