2nd Congressional District GOP candidate: David Merkle

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David Merkle, U.S. House 2nd district Republican primary candidate. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

On Jan. 25, David Merkle appeared before the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board. We asked him why he’s running for the GOP seat in the 2nd Congressional district of Illinois in the March 2018 primary:

My name’s David Merkle. I’m from Bourbonnais, Illinois. I’ve been a photographer, a commercial photographer, a portrait photographer, for forty-five years in Kankakee County. Basically my interests are basically from the time I was like in eighth grade and had a good civics teacher and I wanted to give something back as a kind of a pay it back, pay it forward type thing. So I was on the county board for eight years, I helped with animal control, I’ve been involved in politics.

I’ve watched current events every night, I watch what’s going on and it’s just alarming that the people who have gone out to Washington forget who they’re working for. They forget to walk in the door, they forget to take off their jacket and roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty and go to work. So basically that’s why I got to this point and I thought well, hey, if I don’t try it, if I’m not part of the solution then I am part of the problem. And I’m just disappointed in what I see and what is going on in our country and our state.

I think the biggest priority is to get people back to the feeling that we are all Americans. We’re not this, we’re not that. Ben Franklin, when he got done talking with the king, he got on a boat and came back home to America and he said he was all in. That’s what I think needs to be done in America, and especially our district, needs to be all in. We are all Americans. You can say whatever you want about everything else later, but you need to be all in one hundred percent first.


The Chicago Sun-Times sent the candidates seeking nominations for Congress a list of questions to find out their views on a range of important issues facing the state of Illinois. David Merkle has not returned a completed questionnaire.

David Merkle

Running for: 2nd Congressional district (Illinois)


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