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Its anyones guess whether the latest round of Russia revelations will flame out or bring the administration toppling to the ground. But either way, this drama is only one act in an ongoing cycle of outrages involving President Donald Trump and the East, including the eruption of controversy over Trumps remarks in Warsaw last week, which exposed a crucial contest over ideas that will continue to influence our politics until long after this administration has left office. And the responses from Trumps liberal critics were revealing and dangerous.

The speech a call to arms for a Western civilization ostensibly menaced by decadence and bloat from within and hostile powers from without was received across the center-left as a thinly veiled apologia for white nationalism. Trump did everything but cite Pepe the Frog, tweeted the Atlantics Peter Beinart. Trumps speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto, read a Vox headline. According the New Republics Jeet Heer, Trumps alt-right speech redefined the West in nativist terms.

Thus, the intelligentsia is now flirting with an intellectually indefensible linguistic coup: Characterizing any appeal to the coherence or distinctiveness of Western civilization as evidence of white nationalist sympathies. Such a shift, if accepted, would so expand the scope of the term alt-right that it would lose its meaning. Its genuinely ugly ideas would continue to fester, but we would lose the rhetorical tools to identify and repudiate them as distinct from legitimate admiration for the Western tradition. To use a favorite term of the resistance, the alt-right would become normalized.

There is no shortage of fair criticism of Trumps speech: For example, that he shouldnt have delivered it in Poland because of Warsaws recent authoritarian tilt; that his criticism of Russia should have been more pointed; or that he would have better served Americas interests by sounding a more Wilsonian tone when it came to promoting democracy around the world. And, yes, Trump has proven himself a clever manipulator of white identity politics during his short political career, so it is understandable that critics would scrutinize his remarks for any hint of bigotry. But by identifying Western civilization itself with white nationalism, the center-left is unwittingly empowering its enemies and imperiling its values.

How did progressive intellectuals get themselves into this mess? The confusion comes in part from loose language: in particular, a conflation of liberalism and the West. Liberalism is an ideology defined by, among other things, freedom of religion, the rule of law, private property, popular sovereignty, and equal dignity of all people. The West is the geographically delimited area where those values were first realized on a large scale during and after the European Enlightenment.

So to appeal to the West in highlighting the importance of liberal values, as Trump did, is not to suggest that those values are the exclusive property of whites or Christians. Rather, it is to accurately recognize that the seeds of these values were forged in the context of the Wests wars, religions, and classical inheritances hundreds of years ago. Since then, they have spread far beyond their geographic place of birth and have won tremendous prestige across the world.

What is at stake now is whether Americans will surrender the idea of the West to liberalisms enemies on the alt-right that is, whether we will allow people who deny the equal citizenship of women and minorities and Jews to lay claim to the legacy of Western civilization. This would amount to a major and potentially suicidal concession, because the alt-right not in the opportunistically watered-down sense of immigration skeptic, or social conservative, but in the sense of genuine white male political supremacism is anti-Western. It is hostile to the once-radical ideals of pluralism and self-governance and individual rights that were developed during the Western Enlightenment and its offshoots. It represents an attack on, not a defense of, of the Wests greatest achievements.

As any alt-rightist will be quick to point out, many Enlightenment philosophers were racist by current standards. (Have you even read what Voltaire said about the Jews?) But this is a non-sequitur: The Enlightenment is today remembered and celebrated not for the flaws of its principals but for laying the intellectual foundations that have allowed todays conception of liberalism to develop and prosper.

As Dimitri Halikias pointed out on Twitter, there is a strange convergence between the extreme left and the extreme right when it comes to understanding the West. The campus left (hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go) rejects Western Civilization because it is racist. The alt-right, meanwhile, accepts Western civilization only insofar as it is racist they fashion themselves defenders of the West, but reject the ideas of equality and human dignity that are the Wests principal achievements. But both, crucially, deny the connection between the West and the liberal tradition.

To critics, one of the most offending lines in Trumps speech was his remark that the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Trump clearly intended this to refer to the threat from Islamic extremism and, presumably, the PC liberals who he believes enabling it. But there is another threat to the Wests survival in the form of a far-right politics that would replace liberalism and the rule of law with tribalism and white ethnic patronage.

The best defense we have against this threat is the Western liberal tradition. But by trying to turn the West into a slur, Trumps critics are disarming. Perhaps the presidents dire warning wasnt so exaggerated, after all.

Jason Willick is a staff writer at The American Interest.

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The alt-right is an attack on Western values. Liberals shouldn't surrender so easily. - The Denver Post

Constitutional originalism has long been an unquestioned dogma for conservative evangelicals, as the recent nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court has again confirmed. Evangelical political leaders responded to the announcement with unrestrained praise. As the Southern Baptist Conventions Russell Moore wrote, Judge Neil Gorsuchis a brilliant and articulate defender of Constitutional originalism in the mold of the man he will replace: Justice Antonin Scalia.

Focus on the Familys James Dobson struck a similar note, suggesting that Gorsuch would uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and the original intent of its framers. For many evangelical conservatives, originalism has a dogma-like status not just because it is the proper way to read and interpret a text, but because the competing doctrine of the living Constitution has brought us not only the administrative state in the New Deal, but Roe and Obergefell.

Yet if John Comptons fascinating new book The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution is right, evangelicals at the turn of the twentieth century are largely to blame for evangelicals problems here at the turn of the twenty-first century: It was evangelicals then who made the doctrine of the living Constitution plausible, even if evangelicals today lament it.

Comptons fascinating and masterfully executed argument goes something like this: Evangelical campaigns against alcohol and lotteries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century aimed at not merely regulating such vices, but prohibiting them. But to enact their political vision, they had to break existing traditions of constitutional interpretation. By exerting political pressure upon courts and subordinating constitutional interpretation to their political aims, evangelicals helped create the legal and intellectual conditions in which the doctrine of the living Constitution arose.

Comptons argument for this thesis is intricate, but it demands and deserves unwinding. He posits that the political and moral perfectionism of antebellum Protestants created standards of public morality that threatened the core ideals of the commercial republic that the Constitution was drafted to engender and protect. That is, evangelicals wanted to regulate public morality in ways that impinged upon commercial and business practices that had been legal, if not always favorably smiled upon, since the countrys founding.

While evangelical campaigns against liquor and lotteries eventually aimed at eradication, rather than tolerant regulation, such a goal was at odds with existing doctrines of constitutional interpretation. The attempt to abolish existing lottery grants, for instance, ran aground upon the Contract Clause, while prohibitions on alcohol possession and sales infringed commonly accepted notions of property rights. Not only that, but prohibition at the local level could not be accomplished without overcoming the Commerce Clause. Interstate sales were protected by the federal government, while police powers were reserved to local governmentsa dilemma that left immoral property free to be distributed and sold across state lines.

Compton traces these conflicts through their development in state courts, and then within the Supreme Court, to show that evangelical morality eventually influenced constitutional interpretation. To pick but one small aspect of Comptons many data points, he contends that until the mid-1870s, agreements between legislatures and private entities were contracts within the meaning of the Contract Clause, which would have included lottery grants. However, in the 1880 case Stone v. Mississippi, Chief Justice Morrison Waite invalidated such a contracta lottery grant from Mississippion grounds that the government, as Compton says, possessed the inherent right to suppress immoral activities.

It is, of course, theoretically possible that such a doctrinal shift had pristine intellectual and interpretative causes. However, Compton points out that the decision was made in the midst of a significant public controversy about the Louisiana Lottery, which was at the time probably the most notorious of the lottery companies.

As prohibitions on gambling at the local level had increased, the Louisiana Lottery had survived and expanded through interstate ales. They were so well known that in 1879, Anthony Comstockof the anti-contraception laws famearrested dozens of Louisiana Lottery agents in New York City. The Louisiana legislature subsequently revoked the lotterys 25-year charterbut it was protected in court by a judge who was, Compton says, widely denounced as a shill for lottery interests.

This was the political context in which theStone casewas decided, and which set the stakes for the Supreme Courts ruling. Protecting the lottery grant on the basis of the Commerce Clause would mean the most notoriously corrupt corporation in America would enjoy immunity for the length of its charter. However, revoking the grant would undermine the traditional interpretation of the Commerce Clause, which had protected lottery grants.

Waites opinion in Stone suggests he is not unaware of such political realities. Waite had written that because lotteries were prohibited in many states, the will of the people has been authoritatively expressed on the question. The court could either embrace precedent and oppose the will of the peopleor innovate. They chose the latter course, and created an exception that they tried to quarantine from having broader doctrinal effects.

Yet Stone did not crush the Louisiana Lottery, which survived by exerting its considerable political power to make their charter part of their states constitution, and thus outside the scope of Stones ambit. (Yes, seriously.) The survival of the Louisiana Lottery allowed it to go on flourishing through interstate sales. Much to the frustration of evangelical anti-lottery activists, as long as a single state allowed the lottery to exist, both the states and the federal government lacked the power to curtail interstate sales.

States had no power over interstate commerce, and the federal government was hampered by the distinction between its police and commerce powers. Compton argues that congressional legislation prohibiting transporting lottery tickets was the first clear exercise of federal police power. The Supreme Court upheld the law in Champion v. Ames, in which Justice Harlan argued that lottery tickets were commercial items, even though they had never been regarded as such by the law. But Harlan also emphasized the fact that lotteries had become offensive to the entire people of the Nation. The conflict, in other words, between morality and commerce was decided on moralitys sideand thus another exception was born.

While judges in such opinions attempted to quarantine the effect of their exceptions to their cases, Compton demonstrates that the logic that they relied upon was inexorable. In each area of conflict between the aims of morals legislation and the Supreme Courts doctrines, Compton traces a three-stage pattern of judicial resistanceaccommodation, andultimatelydoctrinal incoherence.

The Supreme Courts response to New Deal legislation has often been credited (or blamed) for undermining economic due process in the service of a hugely popular administrative state, a shift that some have blamed on the idea of the living Constitution. Yet as Compton observes, nearly every argument advanced during the New Deal period began by quoting from Justice Harlans opinion in Champion v. Ames. That is, it was the morals decisions of the late nineteenth century that made the New Deal cases possible.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, who is widely credited with being one of the progenitors of the doctrine of the living Constitution, repeatedly pointed to alcohol and gambling opinions to argue that as long as the regulation was reasonable, the judiciary should defer to the considered judgment of the people. Compton suggests that morals precedents thus brought the abstract arguments of the sociological jurists and the Legal Realists down to earth. That is, they made the notion of a living Constitution credible.

It is tempting to think that the political perfectionism of the late-nineteenth century evangelicals has nothing to do with the political manifestation of evangelicalism today. The campaigns against lotteries and alcohol were, after all, progressive efforts, while the struggles for marriage and religious liberty that have occupied the Religious Rights attention are largely conservative, defensive postures. And even if Comptons thesis is true, it is always open to contemporary evangelicals to disavow their own history, and simply deny that what happened in the past has any meaningful bearing on either the Religious Rights self-understanding or its political rhetoric.

Yet besides being a deeply unconservative posture, such a path would obscure the lessons Comptons book contains for political movements tempted by perfectionist idealsas the Religious Right indisputably is. For one, the political perfectionism at the heart of the anti-lottery and anti-gambling campaigns raises deep and important questions about which vices we should merely regulate and which we should prohibit, and to what lengths we will go to restrain them.

Few of us, on the Right and Left, are willing to countenance the question of which injustices we should permit as a society for the sake of not creating deeper injustices in our efforts to solve them. But in aiming to eradicate one vice, evangelical activists sowed the seeds for accomodating many others.

In aiming to eradicate one vice, evangelical activists sowed the seeds for accomodating many others.

Not only that, but Comptons thesis should prompt contemporary evangelicals to mitigate the denunciations that they direct toward the progressive left for their advancement of the living Constitution doctrine. The idea that the meaning of the Constitution should be determined by the will of the living has generated a great deal of damaging legal nonsense. From Sen.Dianne Feinsteins comments about Roe to Judge Posners recent invention of the judicial right to legislate, the living constitution has wrought a great deal of bad upon our country.

Yet if Comptons thesis is right, it means that such strong denunciations need to be accompanied by a greater deal of self-awareness than they often are, and to be decoupled from the antithesis between us and them that happens when the argument becomes defined by partisan stigma, as this one indisputably has. The doctrine of the living Constitution is bad, but its a badness which more traditions have deployed than we would want to recognize.

Comptons thesis demonstrates that within the many ironies of history, the social and political instruments a perfectionist movement deploys may be easily co-opted for ends and purposes never imagined in their development. That is, if late-twentieth-century evangelical activists sowed the wind, todays activists have reaped the whirlwind. Or, to switch the biblical reference, the constitutional sins of evangelicalisms forefathers have long been visited upon their more conservative heirs.

The value of such an account is that it requires a more complicated assessment about who is to blame for various features of our culture war. Describing the progressive Left as the aggressors in the culture war has the dual effect of preserving the Religious Rights purity and establishing its victim status. Yet Compton makes it clear that on at least one of our deepest culture war frontstheories of constitutional interpretationmatters are far more complicated than that simplistic narrative allows. The idea that the progressive Left invented the doctrine of the living Constitution ex nihilo in the 1920s plays well, but only at the expense of letting our own history and tradition off the hook.

But then, that kind of self-exonerating narrative is precisely what a culture war requires, if it is going to be fought with the energy that it (allegedly) needs. Acknowledging the complicity of ones own tradition in bringing about the social and political conditions one is decrying must inevitably chasten a movements rhetoricbut such reflective self-awareness rarely generates the kind of enthusiasm and fervor that keeps the institutional coffers full.

It is easierfar easierto simply disavow the past and pretend that evangelical politics began in 1980 with the Advent of St. Ronald of Reagan. There is nothing particularly conservative about such a strategy, inasmuch as it seeks to ignore both the debts and benefits that a movements forbearers bestowed. But there lies the ironical rub; in seeking to escape the past and define the evangelical political witness only by the living, todays Religious Right adopts the very mentality that demonstrates their continuity with their late-nineteenth-century forbearers.

Matthew Lee Anderson is pursuing a D.Phil. in Christian ethics from Oxford University, where he is also an associate fellow of the McDonald Centre for Christian Ethics. His academic work is focused articulating the grounds for procreative and parental rights, and countering anti-natalist arguments. He founded Mere Orthodoxy, and is the author of two lay-level books and numerous essays. He is a Perpetual Member of Biola Universitys Torrey Honors Institute, and lives in Waco, Texas, with his wife.

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How Evangelicals Invented Liberals' Favorite Legal Doctrine - The Federalist

Some people have said our pathway to the majority is to do well in working-class districts where Trump was able to win last year and demonstrate to those voters that they have been sold a bill of goods, said Achim Bergmann, a Democratic campaign consultant working on several House races. But we also need to get to voters in districts that have not been traditionally competitive but voted against Trump, and are primed to support someone who will be a check on Trump.

For their part, Republicans are looking for opportunities in Rust Belt states where Mr. Trump prevailed but House Democrats held on.

Midterm congressional elections tend to pivot largely on swing districts where Republicans and Democrats have roughly equal chances of winning. But with so few of these left, both parties are now relying on their own interpretations of which seats they can force into play, with Republicans largely on defense, as the party in power tends to lose seats in midterm years even when the president is popular.

While Republicans cling to a 52-48 majority in the Senate, Democrats in that chamber face difficult re-election campaigns in many states where Mr. Trump won and scarce opportunities to win Republican seats.

The House landscape is different: Republicans there have been largely averse to confronting Mr. Trump, fearing the alienation of the presidents stalwart supporters more than the loss of disillusioned Republicans.

Democrats are betting that Republicans near lock-step allegiance with Mr. Trump, matched with an anemic list of legislative accomplishments in this Congress and traditionally low voter turnout in a midterm year when Democrats are energized, could make it happen for them. Democrats are also counting on Mr. Trumps sinking approval rating, among all but Republican voters, to continue to fall.

It is urgent that Democrats win the House in 2018 to restore financial stability and a path to the future for hard-working families, said Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the House minority leader. A Democratic victory is critical for the sake of the good health of the American people, the strength of our democracy and the future of our planet. Nothing less is at stake than America as we know it.

In some places, like many districts in California, the Republican voter advantage has shrunk in recent years; in the district that includes Anaheim, where Representative Mimi Walters, a Republican, is seeking re-election, that edge has dropped from 43 percent in 2014 to just shy of 40 percent now.

If Republicans are telling you they are on offense this cycle, they are delusional, said Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They had to spend $25 million to hold on to Kansas, Georgia, Montana and South Carolina. If they have to spend even a fraction of that money to defend their incumbents, they wont be able to go on offense.

Yet, after a bruising loss in the suburbs of Atlanta, Democrats have had to examine their playbook.

The Georgia race to fill the seat of Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, saw Republicans successfully cover the Democratic candidate, Jon Ossoff, with a bucket of Pelosi paint.

The memories of her speakership and disapproval of her is so potent, and not just for the base, said Matt Gorman, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. She turns off independents as well. It was consistent in Georgia 6 and other suburban affluent districts.

Taking that lesson, Democrats are honing their messages to make them specific to districts, rather than sticking to the national partys talking points, and steering away as much as possible from the struggle between the progressive base and moderate Democrats.

There are a lot of people in this district who dont like Trump but dont like the national Democratic Party either, said Mr. Min, who is one of a handful of Democrats hoping to unseat Ms. Walters, who is in her second term here and is closely aligned with Mr. Trump on contentious issues like health care.

The alchemy of message and candidate is always the hardest to master. To that end, from southern Michigan to Staten Island to here in Orange County, Democrats are fielding candidates with military experience helpful in Republican-leaning districts and those with health care backgrounds, from doctors to a neuroscientist to a woman who is emphasizing her experience as a breast cancer survivor.

I am telling people I am not a Hillary person, said Mr. Min, who has his eyes fixed carefully on nonaffiliated and Republican voters Asians and parents in particular who voted for Mrs. Clinton last year.

Republicans and many election experts say that even though midterm elections have historically been tough on the party in power, last year clearly demonstrated that voters make a distinction between congressional Republicans and Mr. Trump, especially when it comes to some incumbents like Representative Ed Royce, who represents a district near here. Voters cooled themselves at the Independence Day parade Mr. Min attended with paper fans festooned with Mr. Royces name.

Unhappiness with Mr. Trumps policies does not mean that those mainstream Republicans are willing to throw out every elected official, said Nathan Gonzales, the editor of Inside Elections. It is unclear whether voters now consider Trump and congressional Republicans under the same banner and hold them responsible for him.

At the same time, trying to recapture independents and Trump-voting Democrats alone will not do the trick. The fight for the House includes different battles in lots of different types of districts, Mr. Gonzales said. Democrats know they cant compete in just the Clinton-Republican districts and take back the majority. Theres just not enough of one type of seat.

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Democrats, Hoping to Retake House, Walk Tightrope in Unlikely Places - New York Times

By Daniel Jos Camacho By Daniel Jos Camacho July 14 at 1:06 PM

Daniel Jos Camacho is a Contributing Opinion Writer at The Guardian U.S. and writes about politics and religion.

U.S. President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed Russia, China, the Paris climate agreement and terrorism at a joint news conference on July 13. (Reuters)

As President Trump heads back from his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, a number of Americans are sighing wistfully for the president we dont have. Macrons American admirerssee in himeverything that welack in Trump: The new president is young, attractive, concerned about the climate and possesses commanding power in parliament. In short, Macron represents what Democrats here have lost. The French dodged their bullet; we didnt. Macron stemmed the nationalist tide sweeping across Europe and restored order to the free world reeling after Brexit and Trump. Or so the story goes.

With Marine Le Pens National Front as the only alternative in the French runoff earlier this year, Macron was the right and necessary choice. Yet Americans should beware of developing too much of a love affair with Frances latest president: After all, Macron does not provide a truly progressive blueprint that we should or even could emulate here.

American liberals have been quick to embrace Macron. During Frances election, former president Barack Obama called and formally endorsed him. Painting this simply as an effort to stop Le Pen would be a half-truth: Obama reached out before the first round, where a more progressive candidate by the name of Jean-Luc Mlenchon would go on to win the youngest segment of the voting population. Obama was not opting for a lesser evil but an unabashed embrace of centrist politics. As political commentator Joy Ann Reid put it, Macron found a way to thread the needle between far right and far left populism/socialism. Hes culturally liberal but economically pragmatic. Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, was another visible leader in the Democratic establishment who argued that Macron provides a model for progressives here. Enthusiasm for him extended to the popular level. When Macron attended the G-7 Summit in late May, he ignited social media fan fiction over his impossibly romantic first date with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

[Frances Emmanuel Macron is about to expand his power in a most remarkable way]

At first, Macrons liberal boosters seemed to be getting what they bargained for. Macron stood up against Trump, publicly airing his disagreement with him for pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord while saying, Make our planet great again. There was his pre-emptive white-knuckled handshake with Trump which demonstrated firmness.

But look closer, and a much more complicated picture of Macrons politics emerges. To start, he won the presidency with a weak mandate in an election in which over a third of French voters abstained or cast white ballots. His party En Marche! won an overwhelming majority in parliament only amid record-low turnout. This weak mandate, coupled with his effort to push through controversial labor reforms without debate in parliament, does not sound deeply democratic.

Macron, who took Trump to Napoleon Bonapartes tomb, has himself earned comparisons to the French emperor, something he doesnt entirely seem to mind: He has previously said that France needs a king and Jupiter-like president. Macron has also given other offensive and sometimes utterly bizarre commentary. When he was recently asked if Africa would implement a Marshall Plan for Africa, he described Africas economic problems as civilizational. After the president skipped the traditional Bastille Day news conference, an administration source explained that Macrons complex thought process didnt lend itself to interviews with journalists.

[Macron is set to be one of the loudest anti-Trump voices in Europe]

Macron has emphasized tax cuts for businesses and limits on public spending. When the new French Prime Minister douard Philippe spoke to FT and was told that these were right-wing measures, Phillippe allegedly burst into laughter and responded, Yes, what did you expect? Macron has made a concerted effort to lure capital to France, particularly bankers leery of Brexit. When Macron speaks of revolutionizing and transforming France, in sounds more like a Silicon Valley-style neoliberalization than pro-worker reform that might benefit the poor and working class. Americans, at the very least, should know that this has not been to solution to the plight of workers.

Depending on who you ask, Macrons politicsare either masterful compromise or the art of standing for everything and nothing at the same time. He spoke out against Frances colonial complicity in Algeria only to apologize after his comments caused an uproar. Regarding the Muslim burkini, Macron thinks the dress is not religious but ideological and opposed to gender equality. Still, he thinks it is wrong for police to forcibly remove burkinis. Yet again, he supports a partial ban. This is against a backdrop in which Macron has low regard for civil liberties mosques can be closed if Macrons Interior Ministry does not like what is said in them and in which he plans to make Frances state of emergency permanent.

It is unclear whether Macrons policies will bury the nationalist xenophobic current feeding on economic discontent or further it. Nevertheless, Democrats here should not look to him as the progressive model to emulate here. The Democratic establishments attraction to Macron is fueled by nostalgia for a bygone era. Lacking a successor to Obama, it is as if some now look to Macron to imagine an uninterrupted order in which the center is stable, and nothing has changed. But that world is gone now, and dreaming of France wont bring it back.

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Democrats, get a grip: Emmanuel Macron is not your progressive savior - Washington Post

WASHINGTON Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., targeted by Democrats for defeat in 2018, has stockpiled $1.1 million in his campaign warchest, raising $833,243 in the past three months, his campaign said on Friday.

Its the largest fundraising quarter ever for Roskam, according to Roskam campaign consultant Cam Savage, a co-founder of Limestone Strategies, sending a message to a litany of Democrats who are looking to unseat him.

Roskam, a Wheaton resident, is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which helped Roskam build a substantial base for fundraising.

Roskam is a top 2018 Democratic target because, in 2016, Hillary Clinton won his west suburban 6th district over Donald Trump, 50 percent to 43 percent. But even though Clinton won the district in 2016, Roskam handily defeated Democrat Amanda Howland, a Lake Zurich attorney, getting 59 percent of the vote.

Still, Clintons win has given rise to a large Democratic group of contenders, though noone familiar with the district expects them all to end up on the March 20, 2018, Illinois Democratic primary ballot.

No major-name Democrat has surfaced yet.

Carole Cheney, a former district chief of staff for Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., joined the crowded Democratic primary field this week.

Cheney worked for Foster from 2013 until earlier this year. She is a former attorney at Kirkland & Ellis.

Also running are Barrington Hills Planning Commission member Kelly Mazeski and Suzyn Price, a Naperville district 203 School Board member.

Mazeski raised $118,648 from 536 donorsin six weeks and loaned her campaign $90,000, to put her haul at $208,648, according to her campaign consultant, Peter Giangreco.

Roskam stepped up from the Illinois Senate to Congress after he beat Tammy Duckworth in 2006 in his closest vote to date, 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent.

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Peter Roskam's million dollar warchest a reality check for Democrats - Chicago Sun-Times