GOP Will County Board Member Mike Fricilone kicks off 3rd District bid for Congress

WASHINGTON — Will County GOP Board Member Mike Fricilone announced a congressional bid Tuesday, a move that could prevent a repeat of 2018, when an admitted Holocaust denier, anti-Semite and white supremacist was the Republican 3^rd District nominee.

Fricilone, 64, who lives in Homer Glen, is in his third term on the board, where he is the minority leader.

While four Democrats are running in the March 2020 Illinois primary in the Democratic-tilting district now represented by Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., Fricilone is the first Republican to launch a bid.

In 2018, Art Jones, who had run in the GOP 3^rd Congressional District primary seven times before — so it was predictable he would try again — won the nomination on his 8^th try because no one else was on the primary ballot. Embarrassed Republican leaders were stuck with Jones, whose candidacy, after it was disclosed by the Chicago Sun-Times, caught global headlines.

I asked Fricilone if blocking Jones — if he runs again — was a factor in jumping in the contest.

“It was a factor,” Fricilone said. “I mean, I thought we needed, number one, a credible, qualified candidate to run so that people actually had a real choice.”

Fricilone, a furniture salesman at Midwest Office Interiors in Woodridge, said he was not recruited to run by GOP officials. “It was my idea.”

Lipinski, one of the few Democrats in Congress who opposes abortion rights, is also one of the most right-of-center Democrats in Congress. He is facing primary challenges with main rivals, Marie Newman, who ran in 2018, and attorney Abe Matthew, coming at Lipinski from the left.

Fricilone, who described himself as conservative, anti-abortion and “pro-worker,” said he is not assuming Lipinski would be the nominee.

“He’s got a pretty big fight on his hands,” Fricilone said. “And I see Dan starting to move toward that liberal side of the Democratic Party in some of the messages I’m hearing out of him for fear of losing to the Democratic Socialist Progressive person,” who he did not name.

The district takes in parts of 11 Southwest Side Chicago wards and portions of western suburbs. As Democratic-leaning as it is, if Lipinski was not the nominee, the right GOP nominee could put the turf in play.

In 2018, Jones with no campaign but with massive publicity once his racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist views were exposed, won 26 percent of the vote in the November general election against Lipinski.