Incumbent Democratic state Rep. Mary Gill is again facing David Dewar in the 35th Illinois House District race.
The difference this time is that Dewar is challenging Gill as the Republican candidate. In 2024, he challenged her in the Democratic primary election.
Mary Gill, a lifelong district resident, was appointed in March 2023 to succeed Fran Hurley, who resigned to take a position with the Illinois Labor Relations Board.
Gill, a former special-education teacher, was executive director of the Mount Greenwood Community and Business Association since it opened in 2013. A committee of Democratic officeholders chose her out of 16 candidates after two community forums.
She went on to win a full term in 2024.
David Dewar is the owner of a financial consulting firm who has portrayed “Patriotic Uncle Sam” in local Independence Day parades in Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park, Palos Heights and Palos Park for many years.
The diverse district they want to represent stretches from 83th and Bishop Street in Chicago, to 143rd Street and Wolf Road, taking in Alsip, Merrionette Park, Palos Park, Palos Heights, Orland Park and Worth, as well as Chicago neighborhoods of Brainerd, Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood.
Dewar grew up in Calumet Park and moved to Mt. Greenwood 40 years ago. After a career in real estate investment properties and foreclosures in the 1980s, he became a mortgage and real estate broker, and later an insurance broker. Since 2010, he has been providing financial services and advice through his own company, Tax-Free Retirement Solutions.
He became an election judge and then ran for alderman in Chicago’s 19th Ward in 2019 and the Illinois House in the 38th District in 2022.
Gill graduated from Clissold Elementary School and then Mother McAuley High School in 1997. With a degree in education from St. Ambrose University, she taught at a school in Summit.
She and her husband, Dan, have three children: Ella, Luken, and Hagen.
