Illinois state Sen. Jim Oberweis kicked off his bid against freshman Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood by accidentally running for the Senate for a few hours.
On Sunday, Oberweis filed paperwork with the FEC to seek the GOP nod to challenge Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who beat him 54-43 in 2014. This news came as a surprise to us, since Oberweis had expressed interest last month in taking on Underwood. However, it seems like this news was an even bigger surprise to Oberweis himself. On Monday, he told Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller that he was indeed challenging Underwood, and that “the person who filed the paperwork for him accidentally checked the wrong box.”
We always caution readers that a politician isn’t running for office until they actually say they’re running for office, and that not everyone who sets up a campaign committee with the FEC ends up jumping in. There are many reasons we’ve been such sticklers about this over the years, but accidentally filing for the wrong seat is a new one. In any case, Oberweis is now belatedly running against Underwood in Illinois’ 14th District, a 49-45 Trump seat in the western Chicago area. However, as we’ve written before, while Underwood will likely be a top GOP target, Team Red can almost certainly do better than Oberweis.
That’s because Oberweis, who is one of Daily Kos Elections’ favorite frequent candidates going back to our Swing State Project days, has unsuccessfully run for the House or statewide office a grand total of six times beginning with his 2002 primary defeat to take on Durbin. Unlike his day-long 2019 Senate bid, all of these losing campaigns were waged deliberately.
Oberweis’ most high-profile loss came in 2008, which came after three failed statewide primary campaigns. That year, Oberweis was the GOP nominee in a high-profile special election to succeed former GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert. That district, which was also numbered the 14th, had been reliably red turf for a long time. George W. Bush carried the seat 55-44 in 2004 and Hastert (whose awful past would not be revealed until 2015), had always won re-election easily.
However, the contest between Oberweis and Democrat Bill Foster was a competitive affair, and Foster’s 52.5-47.5 victory was a strong and early sign that 2008 was going to be a very good year for Democrats. Oberweis and Foster had won their primaries for the regular November contest a month before the special was decided, and Republicans reportedly tried to convince their nominee to drop out.
Then-state Rep. Aaron Schock, who was the GOP nominee for a congressional seat to the south, loudly threw Oberweis under the bus for his defeat, declaring, “Anybody in Illinois who knows Jim Oberweis knows that was not a referendum on the Republican Party; it was a referendum on Jim Oberweis.” Schock, whose own congressional career would self-destruct the next decade and is now awaiting trial on charges of corruption, also volunteered that when it came to Oberweis, “The people that knew him best, liked him least.” Oberweis didn’t listen, and he lost to Foster again 58-42.
Things finally changed in 2012 when Oberweis won both the primary and the general election for an open state Senate seat. But some habits can’t be broken, and the next year, he launched a second longshot bid against Durbin, which characteristically ended in defeat.