Who is running against roskam

Sign up for our morning newsletter to get all of our stories delivered to your mailbox each weekday. View the discussion thread. Skip to main content. Search WTTW:. Thanks to our sponsors:. Peter Roskam. Sean Casten. Candidate Forum. The race garnered plenty of national attention from the beginning, with implications well beyond its suburban boundaries.

The district, largely in DuPage County, has been red for decades, represented by Rep. Henry Hyde from to and by Roskam for six terms since.

In , Roskam held onto his seat even though presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won the district by 7 points over President Donald Trump - making Roskam a prime target for Democrats looking to take back the House. Roskam's work as one of the architects of the GOP's tax reform bill and his votes to repeal Obamacare, plus criticism over his refusal to hold town hall meetings with constituents in person, have been among the issues that dogged him even before the general election.

This was Illinois' 6th Congressional District, a place represented for three decades by Rep. Billy Graham's alma mater. No one had bothered to take the Democratic ballots out of the box. Republican Rep. Peter Roskam was elected to succeed Hyde that year, and easily won his next five bids.

But in a midterm election where disapproval of President Donald Trump has Democrats competing even in some nontraditional battlegrounds, Roskam is suddenly among the most endangered House Republicans this fall — and his long right-leaning record in a safe GOP district may be his toughest opponent. Roskam, who faces Democratic business owner and scientist Sean Casten, is trying to navigate between his past positions and appealing to an electorate that supported Hillary Clinton over Trump by 7 percentage points in He's one of a number of GOP incumbents struggling in districts around cities that are getting younger and more diverse.

Thus, he's gone hiking in the woods with students from a college environmental group and visited a local mosque, posting photos of each stop on his Facebook page. The posts don't mention Roskam's 7 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters or that he supported Trump's ban on travel to the U. Lawrence Benito, director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, accused Roskam of trying to pander to immigrant voters in an election year and cautioned: "We have long memories.

Roskam insists he is a moderate who has been quick to criticize the administration when necessary. He points to his criticism of Trump's tariffs, which hurt businesses in the district west and northwest of Chicago, and his vocal opposition to the president capping the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the U.