Niki Conforti hopes the third time will be the charm.
Sean Casten is on a drive for five.
The 6th District Congressional race will come down to incumbent Democrat Casten, who is 4-0 in winning congressional elections, and challenger Republican Conforti who is 0-2 including a loss to Casten in 2024.
But during an interview last week with the Southwest Regional news, Conforti sounded upbeat when asked if the third time would be the charm.
“Absolutely,” Conforti said. “We have great momentum. We have a lot of community engagement. I think we’re going to take it over the finish line.”
She said that polls in the early summer showed that people who have heard about her and know what she stands for would vote for her. However, she admits that at that time not enough people knew about her.
“We’ve been working on getting our message out,” she said.
For eight years, Casten has been trying to get the pulse of a very diverse district. In the last four years, the district has changed.
It now includes all or portions of various Southwest Regional Publishing communities Orland Park, Palos Heights, Palos Park, Oak Lawn, Hickory Hills, Evergreen Park, Worth, Chicago Ridge, Palos Hills, Bridgeview, Willow Springs, Countryside, Hodgkins, and Chicago’s Clearing and Garfield Ridge neighborhoods.
It also includes several west suburban communities, where Casten and Conforti live.
In the past four years, Casten has been hosting several town hall meetings and roundtables. He said recently that people are looking for optimism.
“People want hope,” he said. “Candidly, the most feedback we’re getting lately from town halls and roundtables is that people just want to have some comfort that America’s future is much brighter than its past.”
Conforti, from Glen Ellyn, knows that if she is elected, there is a scant two-year window and doesn’t want to waste any time.
“I want to get to work Day 1,” she said. “There are too many people in the district and in the communities that are hurting. They feel like they are getting behind. People have to use their savings and retirement just to maintain their standard of living.
“That is not sustainable. And when you look at the cost of living, two of the biggest issues are energy and healthcare.”
She said those are areas where she can “bring the goods.”
Conforti has been involved in both.
“I am an energy consultant and have been in the industry for almost 10 years,” she said. “It’s a very complicated, rapidly evolving industry and we need people who understand the intricacies of the industry to create policy that can protect the American consumer.”
She said she also worked for 12 years in health care.
“Health care is a big nut to crack and we need people who understand how health systems work to be able to create policies that benefit the American people,” she said. “We need more choices and to bring down costs and help provide quality care.”
Casten’s top priority for the next term is seeing the completion of the Energy Bills Relief Act go through. The Downers Grove resident is tag-teaming with California Congressman Mike Levin on trying to make it a reality.
“We basically set out a few years ago to say we need to solve the fact that our energy producers have never been incentivized to provide the lowest cost of energy sources,” Casten said.
“The reason we don’t deploy is that the incentives are wrong. Would you rather sell things for $100 or $20? So, Mike and I put this bill together to address all of those issues, and we have 163 co-sponsors in the House. We’re spending a lot of time on it and I think we’re going to get it done.”
He said the bill should help lower the cost of electricity and gasoline.
Over the longer term, Casten is fearing trouble with housing and housing insurance in the coming years.
“There is a looming crisis coming with the collapse of housing insurance – especially in coastal areas and wildfire-prone areas.
“Mortgage rates are spiking largely because of the White House fiscal policy right now.”
Casten said those issues need to be fixed.
“If we’re going to address housing affordability, we have to get those two things under control,” he said. We’re trying to address that with some kind of housing package for the next term.”