On Saturday, Republicans lost former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat in a hotly contested special election in Chicago (IL-14). Bill Foster, a Democrat running for his first political job, will go to Congress after defeating Republican millionaire Jim Oberweis 53% to 47%, a result that was unthinkable just weeks ago.
Hastert resigned his seat, and the special election was called to fill the remainder of his term. In November, the same two candidates will campaign for the full term 2009-2011.
The district has at its heart Kendall County, a reliably Republican fast-growing area in exurban Chicago that elected Hastert for the first time in 1986. Hastert was the Speaker of the House between 1999 and 2007, the longest-serving Republican in this capacity ever.
The special election is a huge psychological blow to the Republican Party, handicapped by a stream of senators' and representatives' retirements that forecast larger Democratic majorities in Congress after November. Hoping to turn the tide, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $1.2 million on the race, to no avail.
