Despite facing an aggressive and well-funded challenger and two other opponents Congressman Dan Lipinski (D-Western Springs) rolled to a comfortable victory last Tuesday in the Democratic 3rd Congressional District primary in a race that showcased bitter divisions within the Democratic Party.
Lipinski piled up nearly 54 percent of the vote while Mark Pera, the president of the Lyons Township High School Board, finished a distant second with just over 25 percent of the vote. Chicago lawyer Jim Capparelli and Palos Hills Mayor Jerry Bennett finished far back with 11 and 9 percent of the vote respectively.
“Despite having more than $1 million spent against me in the campaign, the very strong support that I received in both the city and the suburbs illustrates that 3rd District voters don’t just want talk, they want a representative who is willing to roll up his sleeves and get things done,” said Lipinski in a statement e-mailed by his campaign spokesman Matthew Mayer.
Lipinski did not return repeated telephone calls after the election seeking further comment about the race.
Pera ran an aggressive campaign against Lipinski. He took a leave of absence from his job as an assistant Cook County state’s attorney in August to campaign full time. He spent more than $600,000 in the race, including loaning his campaign $261,541 of his own money, according to federal campaign finance records.
According to federal records Lipinski’s campaign spent $191,016 on the campaign through the end of December.
Throughout the campaign Pera used cable television ads and numerous direct mail pieces to relentlessly attack Lipinski. He criticized Lipinski for voting too often with President George W. Bush and the Republicans.
Pera raised a lot of money through the Internet from activists throughout the country. Some of Pera’s more rabid supporters on the blogosphere continually referred to Lipinski as a “Bush Dog.”
Nine days before the election Jim Dean, the head of Vermont based Democracy for American and the brother of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, came to Chicago to campaign for Pera.
After ignoring Pera for most of the campaign, the Lipinski campaign struck back hard in the final week. The Lipinski campaign sent out a flyer that reprinted a letter to the editor written by a Lipinski supporter, Joe Kulys, to a local newspaper on the southwest side of Chicago.
The flyer, titled “An Important Message From A Fellow Southwest Sider” attacked Pera’s supporters as fringe Democrats. Kulys wrote that Pera was “heavily supported by left-wing extremist political groups. These groups and their millions of dollars are not from the Southwest Side or anywhere around here, but from places like San Francisco, Hollywood, New York City and Massachusetts.”
The letter went on to say that “[T]he left-wing extremist groups trying to defeat Congressman Lipinski are political punks who snicker and sneer at Southwest Siders like us. They laugh at traditional values. They mock people who go to church. They dismiss senior citizens as relics of a bygone era. They look down their educated noses at blue collar men and women who work for a living.”
The flyer, which included a picture of Lipinski with his wife Judy states that it was “[P]aid for by the Dan Lipinski for Congress.”
Pera said that he was dismayed at the attack on his supporters.
“I think it’s unfortunate that my supporters were characterized in such a way,” said Pera after the election. “I think it’s unfortunate that this type of smear went out at the end.”
Lipinski won convincingly in both the city and suburban portions of the district and relied on the support of Democratic ward and township organizations.
Lipinski won 50.3 percent of the vote in the suburban portion of the district and received 57.2 percent of the vote in the Chicago portion of the district.
Pera carried the Village of Riverside getting 785 votes (43 percent) to 724 votes (39 percent) for Lipinski. But Lipinski carried both Brookfield and North Riverside.
In Brookfield Lipinski received 1,478 votes or 46 percent, while Pera received 1,177 votes or 36 percent.
In North Riverside, portions of which are in the 3rd District, Lipinski received 212 votes, or 47 percent while Capparelli picked up 111 votes, 25 percent. Pera got 105 votes, or 23 percent.
In November general election Lipinski will face Bridgeview real estate broker Michael Hawkins who easily defeated Art Jones, a perennial candidate with past ties to white supremacist organizations.