Rep. Sean Casten, Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau present voters with clear choice in 6th District

CHICAGO (WLS) -- One of the key Illinois congressional races next month has two-term incumbent Democrat Sean Casten facing off against Republican Keith Pekau, who is the currently mayor of Orland Park.

The old 6th District, which covered from the southwest suburbs up to the northwest suburbs, was redrawn after the 2020 census last year and now includes parts of the west and southwest suburbs.

Casten and Pekau are presenting voters a clear choice in this election.

"I think the top issues are inflation, crime and the economy," Pekau said. "We've seen that repeatedly dating all the way back to the primary."

Casten pointed to inflation and rising gas prices, and abortion.

"It's a sea change," Casten said. "It's huge. There's a lot of women who are really nervous."

Casten is proudly running on his record in Congress.

"We've passed the biggest infrastructure bill in history," he said. "We've finally given Medicare the ability to negotiate prescription drug costs, slashed the price of energy, the biggest climate bill that we've ever passed."

Pekau touted Orland Park's low crime rate and budget cutting, and his defiance of Governor JB Pritzker's pandemic shutdown. He sued to reopen restaurants and gyms.

"A lot of residents that needed, they needed physical fitness and it was pretty important and we felt that was important and our restaurants just wouldn't have survived if we didn't open them back up, so we felt it was important to go to bat for them," Pekau said.

While Casten strongly supports the Workers Right Amendment which will be on the ballot this November, Pekau is against it. The proposal would strengthen unions and effectively ban "right to work" laws.

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But it is the Downers Grove Library drag queen show, that was cancelled due to threats, that may be one of their most passionate differences.

"I think it's wrong," Pekau said. "I think it's inappropriate to use taxpayer funds or buildings for these types of things and also I just think it's wrong to be doing these types of shows with children."

"These are not sexual events, this is celebrating the diversity of experience," Casten said. "It's no different than having somebody from a race or religion that you're not familiar with talking about their experience."

The one issue Casten did not want to talk about was the heartbreaking loss of his 17-year-old daughter Gwen, who died of sudden cardiac arrhythmia in June.

This district was redrawn to help Democrats and is rated as likely to re-elect Casten, but Pekau is counting on disaffected Democrats to send him to victory.