Incumbent 6th District Congressman Sean Casten has another primary campaign on his hands.
In 2022, he and fellow incumbent Marie Newman squared off in a heated campaign after they were both thrown into the newly drawn district, which runs from Orland Park to Lombard.
In 2024, he was challenged by Mahnoor Ahmad, of Oakbrook Terrace, and Charles Hughes, of Chicago.
Now he’s in a primary race with Orland Park native Joey Ruzevich.
Casten is a climate scientist and he has championed climate change legislation since being elected to Congress in 2018. Legislation he has backed has secured more than $1 billion for clean energy battery storage and research and development of low-carbon industrial technologies.
He has also focused on families by fighting inflation, worked to lower prescription drug prices, and believes in gun reforms including universal background checks.
He has been a constant critic of President Donald Trump.
He hails from Downers Grove but has made multiple visits to the south suburban portion of the district and has held town hall meetings in Evergreen Park as well as opening a satellite office in Oak Forest.
Last year, he secured $1.1 million to help Palos Heights upgrade the 80th Avenue Pump Station to provide the city and Northwestern Community Hospital with a secondary water source in an event the primary source becomes compromised.
Despite the fact that he has never run for office before and Casten has never lost an election, Ruzevich is thinking big.
“I’ve always been somebody who takes big swings,” he said when announcing his campaign in October.
He pointed out that after playing basketball for Sandburg and Brother Rice and not receiving a four-year college offer, he was taking big swings. After stints with Moraine Valley and Loyola-New Orleans, he played professional basketball in Germany for two years.
Basketball helped him get an education and he is now a software engineer but he has been involved in politics since 2015, when he worked as a volunteer on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.
“As an engineer, I like to understand how things work,” he said. “Growing older, I realize that politics controls every aspect of our lives so I needed to learn about it. I started studying and reading books and listening to lectures.
“I became more and more disgusted with the level of corruption and the history of how we used our military. I wanted to get involved.”
Some old-timers may prefer their congress reps to be seasoned veterans with some experience but Ruzevich thinks that he has the chops to address some issues that are “coming down the pike” including the overwhelming rampant use of Artificial Intelligence.
“AI controls so many aspects of our life,” he said. “We need to address this now and we need somebody who has worked with this technology and understands it intimately in order to regulate it effectively.”
Ruzevich said his love and dream was to become a comedian and did some open-mic standup at local clubs. Some of his routines involved politics.
There are some parallels with performing standup and making political speeches, he said. The bottom line, he said, is that you can’t be a phony in either platform.
“The fact that I have so much time on the mic in front of a crowd definitely helps the comfort level of going up there,” Ruzevich said. “The great thing about comedy is, and you figure this out very quickly, the audience can tell if you are BS-ing them.
“If someone is not genuine, they see right through you. It’s better to just go up there and be yourself. It’s the same with politics. When you are up in front of people speaking, it has to be genuine and from the heart and things that you care about. If it’s not, they are going to see right through you.”
On his joey4congress.com website, Ruzevich has a laundry list of issues that he attacks, including breaking up monopolies and supporting small businesses, the tech oligarchy, AI regulation, Gaza, ending endless wars and wasteful Pentagon spending, supporting veterans, the housing crisis, universal health care and many others.
Ruzevich said his family, consisting of his father, mother and four sisters, doesn’t always share the same views with him, but they are behind him on this campaign.
“They are cautious and worried about me being in the public eye with slander and threats,” Ruzevich said. “They don’t want to see that coming my way.
“There is a general concern but unconditional support.”
On the Republican side, Niki Conforti, of Glen Ellyn, is running against Skylar Duensing.
Conforti is running for the right to face off with Casten again. She ran against him in 2024 and was beaten convincingly.
She is the leading candidate and has raised more than $100,000 in donations to about $8,000 for Duensing.
The 6th District covers all or parts of a variety of south and west suburbs, including several in the Southwest Regional Publishing area – Burbank, Chicago, Evergreen Park, Oak Lawn, Orland Park and Western Springs, Bridgeview, Palos Hills, La Grange, Hickory Hills, Chicago Ridge, Justice, Palos Heights, Summit, Burr Ridge, Worth, Countryside, Willow Springs, Palos Park and Indian Head Park.
