Illinois’ 17th District looms large in tight battle for U.S. House

SPRINGFIELD – With less than three weeks remaining before voting ends in the 2024 election, polls have been showing Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump running virtually neck-and-neck, especially in “battleground” states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, an equally close battle is being waged for control of the U.S. House, where Republicans currently hold a slim seven-seat majority.

Like the presidential contest, the race for control of the House will likely be decided in a small handful of swing districts. That’s because of the 435 seats in the House, the vast majority are considered “safe” for one party or the other, either because there is no meaningful opposition in the race or because the district boundaries are drawn in a way that strongly favors one party over the other.

Two of the leading political handicapping websites, the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, rate 366 House districts, or 84% of the total, as “safe” for either Republicans or Democrats and only 69 seats rated as “competitive,” although their lists differ slightly.

In Illinois, only one of the 17 congressional districts falls into the “competitive” category – the 17th District, which covers much of northwest Illinois, including Carroll and Whiteside counties, Rockford, the Quad Cities area, Peoria and Bloomington-Normal. Cook Political Report rates the district as “likely Democrat” while Sabato’s Crystal Ball scores it “leans Democrat.”

The candidates

The seat is currently held by first-term Democrat Eric Sorensen, of Moline, a former TV weatherman for a local station in Rockford. First elected in 2022, he serves on the House Agriculture Committee and the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

He faces Republican Joe McGraw, of Rockford, a retired judge in the 17th Judicial Circuit. A graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Northern Illinois University College of Law, he spent nearly 20 years as presiding judge in the criminal division of the circuit court.

Sorensen describes himself as the only meteorologist currently serving in Congress, something he says lends him credibility when talking with Republicans about issues such as climate change. In public appearances, he often begins by telling his audience, “As a kid, all I ever wanted to be was the weatherman on Channel 13 in Rockford, Illinois.”

Speaking to his fellow Illinois Democrats at a breakfast meeting during the party’s national convention in Chicago in August, Sorensen also described himself as “the first out LGBTQ member of Congress in Illinois’ history.”  He says he supports reproductive rights and codifying Roe v. Wade, the recently overturned 1973 Supreme Court ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.

McGraw has campaigned on a law-and-order platform, touting his experience as a prosecutor, private attorney and judge. His campaign website states “soft-on-crime policies only create more victims and empower criminals.”

“There’s a generalization in political science that is well researched, that if you’re going to beat an incumbent, the times to do it are the sophomore run, the second run, or after redistricting, or rarely but occasionally after a big personal scandal.”

—  John Jackson, a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University’s Paul Simon Public Policy Institute

In September, the National Republican Congressional Committee released a digital ad attacking Sorensen, alleging that he supports “exposing minors to life-altering sex-changes” and that he “hosted drag events that exposed children to adult sexual content.”

“Instead of fighting for good-paying jobs and safe communities in Illinois, Sorensen would rather push his San Francisco-style priorities like exposing minors to life-altering sex changes, hosting youth drag shows and defunding the police,” NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement to Capitol News Illinois.

But speaking to reporters at a Tazewell County farm last week, where he accepted the endorsement of the Illinois Farm Bureau, Sorensen brushed aside such attacks.

“Those aren’t the issues that the people of the district are concerned about,” he said. “The people in our district are concerned about the price of food, about prescription drugs. … I work for the people here. I work for farmers. I work for people in the cities that are having a hard time today, and I’m opening up opportunities for them.”

District makeup

John Jackson, a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University’s Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, said in an interview the matchup has at least some of the characteristics typically found in a competitive race.

“There’s a generalization in political science that is well researched, that if you’re going to beat an incumbent, the times to do it are the sophomore run, the second run, or after redistricting, or rarely but occasionally after a big personal scandal,” he said.

This election marks Sorensen’s “sophomore” run. He was first elected in 2022 immediately following a redistricting process in which the Democratic-controlled General Assembly made significant changes to the district’s boundaries.

During that process, Illinois lost one congressional district, dropping it to 17. The new map created three safe Republican districts, 13 safe Democratic districts, and one district – the 17th – that tilts less heavily in favor of Democrats.

In 2022, Sorensen won the 17th District with just under 52% of the vote over Republican Esther Joy King. But in statewide races, Democrats like Gov. JB Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth pulled in closer to 55% or more of the vote.

Republicans, however, believe the district is winnable. They note it is made up of large swaths of rural areas, farmland and industries like John Deere and Caterpillar that employ the kind of blue collar, non-college educated union workers who were once considered reliable Democratic voters but who have been trending more toward Republicans in recent election cycles.

Sorensen’s predecessor in the seat, Democrat Cheri Bustos, held the seat for 10 years before stepping down in 2022. Speaking at a panel discussion during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, she conceded that Democrats have not done well in rural districts in recent election cycles.

“Democrats will not win rural America,” she said, referring to the presidential race. “But if we can just not totally and completely bomb and get 15% like we did in the previous election – we have counties where Biden got 15% and Trump got 85%. We’ve got to increase those numbers.”

Speaking at the same event, however, former U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, of Peoria, who served 14 years in Congress representing a district that included part of what is now the 17th District, said the Republican Party now vying for votes in Illinois is not the same one he remembers.

“I remember Ronald Reagan,” he said. “I was at the convention in Dallas when Reagan was nominated. I was at the convention in Houston when George Herbert Walker Bush was nominated. I was at the convention as a delegate, when George W. Bush was nominated. And that Republican Party is gone. It’s been taken over by Trump.”

According to the most recent campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Sorensen enjoys a large fundraising advantage, with more than $4.5 million in total contributions for the entire election cycle compared to just under $1.3 million for McGraw.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.