Electoral failure follows former Illinoisans to Florida
When Republicans in southwest Florida pulled ballots for their Congressional primary this week, they could have been forgiven for thinking they'd traded the sunshine of Naples for Naperville. Ten people ran in Florida's 19th district primary on Tuesday, and two of those candidates ... one-fifth of the field ... had previously run for Congress in the Chicago suburbs, one as recently as four years ago.
The best-known Illinois transplant on the ballot in the Fort Myers-area district was former Illinois state Senator, onetime dairy executive and perennial candidate Jim Oberweis, who relocated to Marco Island after losing his 2020 bid to unseat incumbent Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-14th District) by about 5,000 votes. In that race, Oberweis challenged the vote count and even famously attended new-lawmaker orientation in Washington D.C. before running out of runway. It was his third attempt to run for Congress, on top of four runs for the U.S. Senate and a bid for the Republican nomination for Governor in 2006.
Oberweis was the first candidate to enter the 19th District primary in his new home state, after incumbent Rep. Byron Donalds announced last year he would not seek re-election so that he could run for governor. He also spent upwards of $3 million of his own money on the race, which is believed to be one of the most expensive in Florida history.
And as it turned out, one of Oberweis' opponents in Tuesday's primary was a candidate he'd beaten before: former Trump Administration operative and Woodstock native Catalina Lauf. Oberweis beat Lauf in the 14th District GOP primary in 2020, and she went on to unsuccessfully challenge Rep. Bill Foster (D-11th District) two years later. After that, she hied to the Sarasota area, just outside the 19th District, and made a splash in the primary by winning the endorsement of her former boss, President Trump.
It's important to remember that federal law only requires that a candidate for Congress live in the state where they're running when they're elected. Technically, a Congressional candidate need not physically live in the district they seek to represent, and there are no laws that spell out how long a candidate needs to live in an area before launching a campaign. However, "carpetbagger" is a nickname that still stings in political circles ... especially in the South where it was invented after Reconstruction ... and the 19th District had enough such accusations to keep Empire Carpet in business for months. In addition to Oberweis and Lauf, former New York Congressman Chris Collins and ex-North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn were also in the race.
And they all lost ... to a true "Florida man:" talk radio station owner Jim Schwartzel. Lauf, whose endorsement from the White House did little to overcome her lack of spending in the race, came in second. Oberweis, who you'll remember was the first one to declare for the primary, came in third.
As for the transplants' political futures, Lauf's plans are unclear. Sarasota County is represented by two different Congressional districts, but a run could pit her against popular and loyal Republican incumbents. She has not said publicly what she intends to do next. Things may be more clear for Oberweis, who told Gulf Coast News on Election Night that he was done with politics. If that's true, it would mark the end of a two-decade-long quest by this self-proclaimed "political outsider" to get on the inside.
