On Tuesday, with less than a week to go before Illinois’ Dec. 4 candidate filing deadline, Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a leading voice for immigrant rights, announced that he would retire from the House. Prior to his service in Congress, Gutierrez was a Chicago alderman and close to Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, and he won his House seat in 1992 as an ally of then-Mayor Richard Daley, though the two later became adversities. Indeed, Gutierrez wanted to leave the House a decade ago, and he considered challenging Daley in 2007 and even announced that his 2006 re-election bid would be his last.
Ultimately, Gutierrez decided he wouldn’t run against Daley after all, though he said at the time that he’d stick to his plans to leave public office. He didn’t: After Democrats retook the House in 2006, Gutierrez changed his mind and stuck around for another 10 years, even foregoing the 2011 race to succeed Daley. However, unless Gutierrez changes his mind really fast, there's no going back this time.
Illinois' 4th District is an unusually shaped set of “earmuffs” that cut through two distinct swaths of Chicago; while it’s often mistakenly criticized as a “gerrymander,” the district was designed this way not to maximize partisan gain but rather to link two separate, heavily Latino areas and thus comply with the Voting Rights Act. As such, this seat is 70 percent Hispanic, and it’s therefore unsurprisingly blue: Hillary Clinton carried it by an enormous 82-13 margin, so all the drama will be in the Democratic primary.
It’s also likely that another Latino politician will succeed Gutierrez. However, potential candidates need to decide what they're doing very quickly. Democrats need to turn in over 800 valid signatures to make the ballot, and candidates will want to collect even more to be safe: Chicago politicians frequently try to get their opponents ejected from the ballot by challenging their signatures.
Indeed, three Democrats have already announced that they're in: Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, and Chicago Aldermen Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Proco “Joe” Moreno. We'll start with Garcia, whom Gutierrez endorsed as he announced he was retiring. Garcia ran for mayor of Chicago against incumbent Rahm Emanuel, a fellow Democrat, in 2015, and earned endorsements from a number of progressive organizations, including Daily Kos. In a stunner, Garcia forced Emanuel into a runoff, trailing him by a respectable 45-34 in the first round. However, the very well-connected former White House chief of staff decisively outspent his challenger and ultimately won 56-44,
However, according to Matthew Isbell, Garcia carried the Chicago portions of the 4th District 68-32. (About 75 percent of this seat is in the city, while the balance is located in nearby suburbs.) Gutierrez ardently backed Emanuel during that campaign despite having opposed him four years earlier, but says he only did so because Garcia entered the race after Gutierrez had already signed on to help the mayor. After his defeat, Garcia became a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, and he talked about challenging Emanuel in 2019 as recently as a few weeks ago. According to the Green Papers, Sanders carried this district 58-42, so Garcia could benefit by being associated with him.
Ramirez-Rosa also quickly made it clear that he'd run to succeed Gutierrez, and he's also close to Sanders' allies. Ramirez-Rosa was elected to the Chicago city council in 2015 at the age of just 26, making him its first-ever gay Latino member, and he was a Sanders delegate at the Democratic convention the next year. It wouldn’t be Ramirez-Rosa’s first bid for office this cycle, though: State Sen. Daniel Biss initially picked Ramirez-Rosa, a vocal member of the Democratic Socialists of America, to be his running mate in next year's gubernatorial primary in what appeared to be an effort to appeal to Sanders supporters and progressive outsiders.
The union didn’t last long, though. Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider unendorsed Biss in September over Ramirez-Rosa's support for the so-called "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" (or BDS) movement targeting Israel, and Biss soon dropped him from the ticket. Biss said that the alderman told him he opposed BDS when he was being vetted, even though Ramirez-Rosa had made public remarks last year that sounded very supportive of BDS. Afterwards, Ramirez-Rosa insisted he'd "been consistent in my position for several years."
Finally, Moreno, another member of the city council, also announced that he’s collecting petitions to run. While Moreno easily won his first full term in 2015, he took just 51 percent of the vote in a three-way race in 2015, just barely enough to win without a runoff. It’s possible other folks could still get in: Indeed, Alderman George Cardenas also expressed interest in this seat. But as we noted above, anyone considering needs to move almost immediately if they want to make the ballot.