The congressman from the 3rd District is Democrat Daniel Lipinski, first elected in 2004 and the son of Rep. Bill Lipinski, who represented the district for 22 years. Daniel Lipinski grew up in Chicago, in the city’s 23rd Ward, and first served as a campaign volunteer for his father in 1979. He got engineering degrees from Northwestern and Stanford universities before switching to political science with his doctorate at Duke. He worked on the staffs of four House Democrats from Illinois, though not on his father’s, and was an American Political Science Association congressional fellow for the House Democratic Policy Committee. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the topic of congressional newsletters (Congressional Communication, published by the University of Michigan Press). At the beginning of 2004, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Read More

The congressman from the 3rd District is Democrat Daniel Lipinski, first elected in 2004 and the son of Rep. Bill Lipinski, who represented the district for 22 years. Daniel Lipinski grew up in Chicago, in the city’s 23rd Ward, and first served as a campaign volunteer for his father in 1979. He got engineering degrees from Northwestern and Stanford universities before switching to political science with his doctorate at Duke. He worked on the staffs of four House Democrats from Illinois, though not on his father’s, and was an American Political Science Association congressional fellow for the House Democratic Policy Committee. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the topic of congressional newsletters (Congressional Communication, published by the University of Michigan Press). At the beginning of 2004, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The process behind Lipinski’s nomination to run for his father’s seat is a case study in Chicago’s still thriving backroom politics. In the summer of 2004, Bill Lipinski denied widespread rumors that he was going to give up his seat. Then on Aug. 13, he abruptly announced he would not seek re-election in November because he wanted to return to Chicago and “spend more time with my wife.” (Not that much time as it turns out, because he later became a transportation lobbyist.) His announcement came just 13 days before the Aug. 26 deadline to replace a withdrawing candidate. A meeting was scheduled for Aug. 17 for the 19 ward and township Democratic committeemen in the 3rd District. The group was to choose the new nominee by weighted vote and consisted of a Who’s Who of connected Chicago politicians, including John Daley, the 11th Ward committeeman and brother of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley; Michael Madigan, the 13th Ward committeeman and speaker of the Illinois House; Edward Burke, the 14th Ward committeeman and husband of an Illinois Appeals Court judge; and, apparently not feeling the need for a pretense of objectivity, Bill Lipinski, the 23rd Ward committeeman. At the meeting, Lipinski offered for consideration the name of the most qualified person he could think of, his son, Daniel, and shortly afterward, he was nominated without opposition.

The nominee was not briefed quite as well by the political pros in the room as he perhaps should have been. At his first press conference, Lipinski, who had not lived in Illinois for 15 years, made the politically unconscionable assertion that he had for many years been a fan of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago’s North Side baseball team. The White Sox are the hands-down favorite team of the 3rd District’s South Side neighborhoods and suburbs. A state lawmaker at the back of the room signaled Lipinski to wrap up his remarks before further damage could be done. Luckily for Lipinski, a Democratic nomination, even one decided by a group of longtime political pals getting together in a room, is tantamount to election in the 3rd District, and he sailed to victory in November. The Republican nominee was Ryan Chlada, a 26-year-old bar owner who won the GOP nomination unopposed. Chlada avoided publicity, had no website, and filed no federal campaign reports, which is legal if a candidate does not raise much money. Lipinski won, 73%-25%.

In the House, Daniel Lipinski has kept his pledge to be “not really that different from my father,” who was the most conservative Democrat in the Illinois delegation. He opposes same-sex marriage and abortion rights except when the mother’s life is at stake. He was among the Democrats who declined to vote for California liberal Nancy Pelosi in 2011 as their party’s leader in the House; he cast his vote for Rep. Marcy Kaptur, an Ohioan who is the House’s most senior woman. A year earlier, he declined to support the Democrats’ health care overhaul, saying that its provision banning federal funds for abortions wasn’t strong enough even as other anti-abortion Democrats expressed satisfaction with it. As a member of the Science and Technology Committee, he worked on reauthorizing the National Science Foundation in 2010. The same year, he won House passage of a measure setting up a national manufacturing strategy; the measure died in the Senate.

Also like his father, Lipinski has focused on local transportation projects, especially helping Midway Airport, which generates more jobs than any other employer in the district, and on improving Chicago’s rail infrastructure. In his second term, he played a key role on two pieces of that year’s massive energy bill: cash incentives for progress toward hydrogen-based energy and a mandate requiring high-efficiency light bulbs in federal buildings. He has drawn attention in recent years for introducing unsuccessful bills to set a standard limit on the size of carry-on baggage for airplanes, a cause his father also backed. The decision is currently left to each airline.

Lipinski drew significant primary opposition in his first two re-election bids. In 2006, John Sullivan, an assistant Cook County state’s attorney, made an issue of Lipinski getting the seat in “a backroom deal.” Financial planner John Kelly used “no tricks, no fix” as a campaign slogan. Lipinski won with 54%, to 26% for Kelly and 20% for Sullivan. In the 2008 primary, Lipinski faced Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Mark Pera, an abortion rights supporter who criticized Lipinski’s support for the war in Iraq and questioned his campaign payments to his father for consulting work. Liberal interest groups, local reformers, and others contributed to Pera, who spent $770,000. But Lipinski prevailed, 54%-25%.

In 2010, however, his only primary challenger was little-known immigration activist Jorge Mujica, and Lipinski got nearly 78% of the vote. Even so, the district’s fast-growing Hispanic population could spell electoral worries in the future.