#il 13

EDWARDSVILLE - Chief 3rd Circuit Judge Ann Callis plans to resign soon to begin a run for Congress in 2014, sources say.

The decision would place her as a potential Democratic challenger to incumbent U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, a Taylorville Republican who was elected from Illinois' 13th Congressional District in November.

Callis declined to comment. The Illinois Judicial Code of Conduct requires a judge to resign office upon becoming a candidate for a non-judicial office, either in a primary or general election.

She briefly had considered a run in the 12th Congressional District last fall before party chairmen nominated Bill Enyart of Belleville, who went on to win election.

Callis is a former assistant state's attorney in Madison and St. Clair counties. She was an associate judge from 1995 to 2001 and has been a circuit judge since 2001.

Her legal career began as a prosecutor in the state's attorney's offices in both Madison and St. Clair counties.

In 2002, she became the first woman ever elected a circuit judge in Madison County and primarily has worked as a criminal court judge, hearing dozens of major criminal cases. In 2006, she became the first woman elected chief judge of the circuit. She now is in her fourth term as chief judge.

She was retained by the voters last November.

BREAKING: David Gill has conceded to Rodney Davis in #IL13 election. We're taking Davis out in 2014! #DavidGill #RodneyDavis #Twill

— Justin Gibson (@JGibsonDem) November 9, 2012

A longtime congressional aide, an emergency room doctor and a Madison County businessman are vying to take the seat being vacated by retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson in a three-way race that has drawn a heavy dose of attention from outside the district.

The race for the 13th Congressional District seat was thrown sideways shortly after the March primary. Johnson easily defeated two challengers in the Republican primary, then announced his retirement three weeks later, leaving the GOP without a candidate. Republican leaders in the counties of the new 13th District then selected Rodney Davis of Taylorville.

Meanwhile, Democrat Dr. David Gill of Bloomington defeated primary opponent Matt Goetten by 156 votes, though Goetten would not concede the race for a month after the election. Then independent John Hartman of Edwardsville successfully petitioned to join the race.

The new 13th District extends from Madison County to Champaign, including Edwardsville, Glen Carbon, Maryville and parts of Collinsville.

More than $2 million in outside money has sponsored advertising for and against the candidates, including $500,000 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against Gill and $10,747 from the Service Employees International Union against Davis, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars from the national party organizations.

The flurry has gotten so ugly that the retiring Johnson held a news conference recently to chastise both candidates for "a cesspool for negativity."

Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville

Rodney Davis found out he would be the Republican candidate for Congress while standing on the sidelines of a youth football game.

Davis, 42, has been a youth football coach for many years while raising his children in his hometown of Taylorville. When the text came confirming that he had been selected to replace Johnson on the ticket -- the text read "Winner" -- he was elated. Calls came in a flood, congratulating and advising him -- but he still had a game to coach, he said.

Now he ranks that day right up there with the day he married his wife, Shannon, and the days their daughter and twin sons were born.

Davis' family moved to Taylorville when he was 7. His father owned a restaurant, and Davis grew up working in the family business. "It taught me the value of hard work," he said. "And they taught me that the decisions made in Washington affect us all."

Like many kids in a small town, Davis couldn't wait to get out ... then came right back home after college to marry his high school sweetheart.

Davis got his degree in political science at Millikin University, and after a series of government fellowships he began working for U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville.

From Shimkus, Davis said he learned the value of service. His job was constituent assistance, helping residents of Shimkus' district deal with government agencies.

"You can make a real difference in people's lives just by helping them through the red tape and bureaucracy," Davis said. He saw his job as citizen advocacy, making the bureaucracy work for people.

And he said he wants a bipartisan approach if he is elected to Congress.

Dr. David Gill, D-Bloomington

Dr. David Gill can't remember exactly when he decided to be a doctor, but he knows he made the decision by the time he was 6 years old.

"There was no one moment that comes to mind," he said. "I just wanted to do good things for people ... It's really the same passion that drove me into medicine that drives me toward Washington; I want to help my fellow man and woman."

His choice was made long before his father got sick, dying when Gill was 13. He washed dishes to help pay the family bills, working at a number of menial jobs to get through college and medical school.

At first Gill started a family practice, but eventually turned to urgent care and then emergency medicine for the past 13 years. That experience and his first wife's battle with cancer have made health care his primary focus, advocating stronger health care reform than the Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010.

In some of his statements, Gill has referred to receiving a $17,000 bill for an emergency helicopter that carried his late wife, Polly, to the hospital. His insurance had refused to pay it, and he received the bill as he was planning Polly's funeral.

"We were married two weeks shy of 20 years, and she was sick for 13 months before she passed away," Gill said. "The cancer took over her body. But she encouraged me to go on. I went on, and shocked myself by meeting and falling in love with a wonderful woman. ... I've been very lucky in love twice."

Gill is now married to Elaine, and between them they have six children. He has run for Congress twice before, both times defeated by Johnson. Then and now, he said he runs because he is "sick and tired of seeing ordinary men and women disrespected."

"I see the suffering and the dying taking place because of decisions made in Washington D.C.," Gill said. It goes beyond the emergency room, he said: people who can't find work or worrying about their children's education.

"All of it is because (Congress) is looking out for drug and insurance companies and Wall Street banks," he said. "As a doctor, I know you can get brain damage from banging your head against a wall ... (but in the new district) it's not a handicap to be a Democrat. It was a rough primary, but I'm very proud of our work and I'm proud of what we're achieving here."

Gill states that his campaign has not run any negative ads. While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee runs attack ads, he said his campaign does not coordinate efforts with DCCC. Gill also said he has refused to take donations from Wall Street or corporate political action committees.

"The two biggest falsehoods that I've heard bandied about ... are that I want to do away with Medicare and raise people's taxes," Gill said. "I've been a doctor for 24 years, I've seen their lives saved with Medicare and will always work avidly to expand and improve Medicare. And I have no interest in raising taxes on people making a quarter-million dollars or less."

And Gill is still working a few shifts in the emergency room as the campaign enters its final stretch. "Well, I've weaned back shifts," he said. "We've tightened our belts in the Gill household; they don't pay me to run for Congress."

John Hartman, I-Edwardsville

John Hartman has worked in several different careers: business management, the stock exchange, property management, teaching and biotechnology. Now he wants a new title: congressman.

Hartman, 56, was born and raised in Edwardsville, calling his childhood there "ideal." He got his college degree from Washington University and then worked in management positions for BF Goodrich here and in West Virginia.

Then came the Pacific Stock Exchange in San Francisco in the 1980s, before he moved to the East Coast and worked in property management at the Watergate. Hartman's roommate was a clerk for Associate Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.

While in Washington, Hartman worked part-time for former U.S. Rep. Albert Bustamante, D-Texas, which let him explore his interest in politics.

"I have always cared a lot about this country and been very interested in public policy and economics," Hartman said. It was a fascinating time to be in Washington, he said; from 1985 to the mid-90s as the world was changing, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union fell.

While Hartman was not close to Bustamante and had stopped working for him long before the hammer fell, he was surprised by Bustamante's conviction on fraud and racketeering charges in 1993.

"I felt sorry for him and at the same time disgusted with him," Hartman said. "I would not say I believed in him."

When Hartman decided to run for Congress, he thought it would be dishonest to run as a Republican or Democrat when he had been an independent for 30 years.

"The public doesn't want phonies," Hartman said. "People are fed up and have had it with politics; they're being hammered with television commercials. A lot of them aren't going to vote ... I was called a criminal and a crook and sworn at just for being a politician. That's the kind of environment we're in."

So Hartman stood on sidewalks outside post offices and farmers markets in the effort to get 8,000 signatures to get on the ballot. He doesn't have funding for television commercials, and is relying on shoe-leather politics for the election.

"I think the feeling among the people is that they are more than happy to have an independent choice," he said.

House Democrats are on the air in Illinois and hitting a GOP candidate in regard to Ryan — jailed former Gov. George Ryan, that is. Rodney Davis, the GOP nominee in the 13th district, is the recipient of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s first independent expenditure in the Land of Lincoln.

Illinois remains a target-rich environment for Democrats, who tried to put more House seats in play in their redraw of the Congressional map last year. The DCCC has reserved millions in TV ad time in markets across the state.

This race is a perfect microcosm of the debate this election will be about.  On one side, we have a candidate who has spent his career as part of the political machine.  Having spent 16 years working as a congressional aide for climate change denier and Ryan-budget supporter John Shimkus, Rodney Davis is now aiming for a seat beside him.  He is getting funding from the Koch brothers and big oil, and he is doing a good job of keeping allegations of his role in a money-laundering scandal out of the news.

  On the other side, you have Dr. David Gill, an emergency room doctor who got into politics after seeing the effects of a broken health care system first-hand.  Gill is a supporter of single-payer and marriage equality who refuses to take money from corporate PACS.  He eked out a primary victory over a conserva-Dem preferred by the DCCC, and now faces a race for this open seat that is expected to be very close.

Anyway, I had moved away from Illinois, and I had Dr. Gill chalked up as a great candidate in a hopeless district... until I saw the results of re-districting in Illinois.  The bulk of Dr. Gill's base from Champaign, McLean, and DeWitt counties was no longer a part of the red and rural old 15th that Tim Johnson knew so well.  Gill's base is now in the new 13th district, which encompasses Democratic parts of Bloomington, Springfield, and Edwardsville, including a number of universities and community colleges.  It is definitely a winnable race now.

Now, don't get me wrong.  The state party didn't draw up this district for Dr. Gill.  In fact, the Party establishment threw their weight behind the other guy.  He was a family friend of Dick Durbin, and I can't blame them for their logic: they think that Blue Dog centrism is the safe bet.  I politely disagree.  

The people of the 13th district agreed with me, although by a relatively bitter sliver.  That's saying something about his grassroots support, considering he was outspent 5-1 in the primaries.  In Champaign, DeWitt, Piatt, and McLean counties (the only parts of the new 13th that came from the old 15th), Dr. Gill trounced Goetten.  Dr. Gill will be a proud voice for reform, and he has a true grassroots campaign behind him.  Most of the Democrats that supported Goetten down here did so because of the electability argument, and they have closed ranks behind Dr. Gill.  

Unexpectedly, Tim Johnson, the sitting incumbent, announced that he was retiring shortly after Gill's unexpected primary win.  Johnson gave the usual line about "wanting to spend more time with his family," but it sounds he was scared he might lose his first election.  He certainly wasn't fundraising like someone with plans to retire.

After this bombshell, the GOP was forced to search for a candidate to replace Johnson.  They looked past Erika Harold (a female multi-racial Harvard Law grad and former Miss America winner), and chose Rodney Davis.  

Rodney Davis has spent more than a decade as a Congressional aide to John Shimkus for more than a decade, and a supporter of the Ryan budget.  He raised nearly half a million dollars in the past five weeks, as the GOP machine has thrown its full weight behind him.  He has experience working with dark money behind the scenes.  In fact, that might be part of the reason the GOP picked him.  The GOP didn't have the benefit of an actual primary election, and it seems that actual Republicans in the district aren't especially enthused about the outcome.

Republican nominee Jason Plummer has an 11-point lead over Democratic nominee Bill Enyart in the race for the 12th U.S. House District seat, but there still are a lot of undecided voters, according to a poll conducted Monday by We Ask America.

The automated poll of 1,510 likely District 12 voters found that Plummer, of Fairview Heights, was leading Enyart, of Belleville, 45-34 percent. The poll has a plus/minus margin of error of 2.5 percent.

Over in the 13th House District -- which runs across Illinois from Madison County in the southwest to Champaign County, northeast of Springfield -- Republican nominee Rodney Davis held a 9-point lead over Democratic nominee Dr. David Gill, according to a July 7 We Ask America survey.

The firm's poll of 1,299 likely voters in District 13 showed that 47 percent preferred Davis, while 38 percent backed Gill, with 15 percent undecided, the poll showed. 

Among independents, Davis led Gill 43 percent to 34 percent, with 23 undecided, the District 13 poll show.

Rodney Davis, an aide to Congressman John Shimkus, has been chosen by Republican leaders to be the GOP candidate for congress in the newly redrawn 13th Congressional District.

Davis, of Taylorville, will be the GOP candidate instead of U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Champaign. Johnson won the Republican nomination in the March primary election, but announced shortfly afterward that he would retire and not run in the general election.

That meant a new candidate had to be chosen by the Republican Party chairmen in the 14 counties of the congressional district. The chairmen met Saturday and chose Davis.

The district includes a midsection of Madison County, such as the Edwardsville, Glen Carbon, Maryville and Collinsville areas.

Davis was chosen from among four finalists. The three other finalists were:

* Jerry Clarke, who previously served as Johnson's chief of staff;

* Former Miss America Erika Harold, an attorney and Urbana native;

* Kathy Wassink, of Macoupin County, who owns a business that serves students with special needs. She also is an organizer of a local Tea Party-type group.

Davis serves as projects director for Shimkus, R-Collinsville.

He will face off against David Gill (D) in November, and Gill's the favorite to win.