ON MARCH 19th,Democrats and Republicans in Illinois are holding primaries to choose their candidates for governor, 18 congressional seats, and attorney-general,secretary of state and other local offices. The gubernatorial race is getting the bulk of media attention: Bruce Rauner, a singularly vulnerable Republican governor, and is fighting for his political life. But the race in the third congressional district in the south-west of Chicago is unusually interesting: Dan Lipinski ,a seven-term congressman is running neck-and-neck with Marie Newman, a marketing executive who has never before sought office.
The unexpectedly tight race is symptomatic of the deep division within the Democratic Party between those who want the party to plod to the right on immigration, and abortion and other social issues and those who want it to adopt the policies championed by Bernie Sanders,the liberal senator from Vermont who ran for the presidency in 2016. (Mr Sanders won the third district by eight percentage points in the presidential primaries.) Mr Lipinski is a...
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Source: economist.com