The congresswoman from the 9th District is Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat elected in 1998 and an outspoken progressive. She grew up in Rogers Park and worked for two years as a teacher. In 1969, she formed National Consumers Unite to fight for date-of-freshness labels on dairy products and other food. Later she joined Illinois Public Action, a consumer group. In 1985, she became executive director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens, where she organized the pivotal 1989 protest of Democratic Rep. Dan Rostenkowski’s Medicare catastrophic health care law for seniors. Television news images of the powerful Rostenkowski fleeing an angry crowd of old people led Congress to repeal the benefit, which many said did not provide adequate coverage. In 1990, Schakowsky was elected to the state House from Evanston and Skokie, and served as Democratic floor leader. Read More
The congresswoman from the 9th District is Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat elected in 1998 and an outspoken progressive. She grew up in Rogers Park and worked for two years as a teacher. In 1969, she formed National Consumers Unite to fight for date-of-freshness labels on dairy products and other food. Later she joined Illinois Public Action, a consumer group. In 1985, she became executive director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens, where she organized the pivotal 1989 protest of Democratic Rep. Dan Rostenkowski’s Medicare catastrophic health care law for seniors. Television news images of the powerful Rostenkowski fleeing an angry crowd of old people led Congress to repeal the benefit, which many said did not provide adequate coverage. In 1990, Schakowsky was elected to the state House from Evanston and Skokie, and served as Democratic floor leader.
In 1998, Schakowsky was selected in the Democratic primary to replace Sidney Yates, a liberal Democrat who had represented the lakefront in Congress for 48 years. Her strategy was to run from the left—“I don’t think I can be defined as too far left in a district like this”—and to build a volunteer organization. With ads in college papers, she hired young field organizers to set about identifying Schakowsky voters. She raised $1.4 million, with help from the women’s abortion rights fundraising group EMILY’s List. Her opponent was state Sen. Howard Carroll, who had the support of most Democratic ward committeemen and attacked Schakowsky for her opposition to the death penalty. Schakowsky’s 1,500 workers, 250 of them from labor unions, helped her to a 45%-34% win. She easily won the general election.
Schakowsky has one of the most liberal voting records in the House and regularly scores perfect ratings from liberal interest groups. A close ally of Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Schakowsky has worked with Democratic leaders on electoral strategy, including heading a training program for political organizers. She was an early supporter of Pelosi for party whip when Pelosi was getting her start in leadership, and Pelosi rewarded her with the chief deputy whip post. After Democrats won House control in November 2006, Schakowsky seconded the nomination of Pelosi for speaker, calling her “my treasured friend.” Her contacts with national liberal groups have helped Schakowsky become a major party fundraiser.
In early 2006, she sought a higher leadership post as vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, which would put her on a track to become caucus chairman, the No. 3 leadership job. With support from Pelosi, Schakowsky was the early front-runner against New York’s Joe Crowley and Connecticut’s John Larson. But on the first ballot, she finished third behind Crowley and Larson. Schakowsky threw her support to Larson, another Pelosi ally. With Schakowsky’s former supporters on board, Larson prevailed. Some Democrats speculated that Schakowsky was hurt by the timing of the contest, which occurred soon after her husband, Robert Creamer, the longtime head of Illinois Public Action Fund, pleaded guilty in August 2005 to bank fraud in a check-kiting scheme. Schakowsky said that her husband had “made mistakes,” but that she was unaware of his financial problems and was “proud of who Bob is…. He has been a constant crusader.” After Fox News host Glenn Beck criticized Creamer’s attendance at a White House dinner in November 2009, Creamer called Beck part of a “new McCarthyist movement of the far right.”
Schakowsky briefly considered a run for the Senate in 2004 but decided against it, and later, in 2008, she was interested in being appointed to the remainder of President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate term until the scandal broke out over Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s alleged attempts to profit personally and politically from his power to make the appointment. She was an early backer of Obama for president, giving cover to other prominent Democratic women who may have wanted to support him but felt obliged to support then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In 2009, she was a strong supporter and co-sponsor of legislation creating a federally-run insurance option in the Democrats’ health care bill. But the public option provision ultimately was dropped because of opposition from party moderates. A fierce opponent of military action in Iraq, Schakowsky hailed Obama’s June 2009 speech, saying, “The president’s brave speech in Cairo convinced me he deserves my support—and at least the benefit of the doubt when it comes to extracting us from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
As chairman of the oversight subcommittee of the Intelligence Committee, Schakowsky in July 2009 backed Pelosi’s claim that she had not been informed of the use by U.S. interrogators of water boarding, as Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta had maintained. In May 2010, she co-sponsored an amendment giving the Government Accountability Office power to investigate intelligence agencies.
On the Energy and Commerce Committee, Schakowsky was a player in the enactment in 2008 of the child product safety bill, which toughened regulations. More recently, she sponsored a bill to give chemical plants two years to stop using mercury in manufacturing chlorine. And with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., she introduced a bill in 2010 with tougher restrictions on cosmetics after findings that many included mercury. Pelosi appointed Schakowsky to a newly created commission on the national debt in March 2010, where she opposed ending federal economic stimulus spending and argued that safety-net spending for the poor should be exempt from budget cuts.
Schakowsky has been re-elected without difficulty. Illinois is one of the few states where Democrats control redistricting, so she seems safe in her heavily Democratic, lakefront district.
