Republican Christine Shanahan McGovern says she’s running for state Senate because she’s disappointed in the way state leaders handled school and business closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, challenging incumbent Democrat Bill Cunningham, who calls himself a “middle of the road consensus builder.”

Cunningham has been a legislator for nearly 10 years but seeks reelection in a redrawn 18th Senate district that includes parts of Alsip, Beverly, Chicago Ridge, Evergreen Park, Merrionette Park, Oak Lawn, Orland Park, Palos Hills, Palos Park and Worth.

McGovern owns a real estate business and is a substitute teacher.

Cunningham said that he voted against the Illinois Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act, or SAFE-T Act, primarily because he said “it will hinder efforts to rein in crime.” There are many areas of the bill that are ambiguous, Cunningham said, like under what circumstances a judge can detain someone.

McGovern and Cunningham both said they do not support the elimination of cash bail as proposed under the law, a provision set to take effect Jan. 1. McGovern said she does not support eliminating cash bail because it removes accountability.

Cunningham said he understands the concerns that poorer offenders are forced to stay in jail longer, but said the system should be reformed not eliminated. Judges should determine if an offender is held on bail, Cunningham said.

“In some cases, it makes sense to have that cash bail option for judges,” Cunningham said.

McGovern said releasing nonviolent offenders while also releasing violent offenders makes the SAFE-T Act “null and void.” For offenders who have a drug problem, holding them for a day or two leads them to sober up, she said, so she wouldn’t support releasing offenders with a drug problem.

Cunningham said he supports the changes proposed by Sen. Scott Bennett, D-Champaign, which clarifies the pretrial release will apply to those arrested on or after Jan. 1, 2023, and allow judges to deny pretrial release for any alleged crime if the person poses a threat.

A goal of the SAFE-T Act is for all police departments to have body cameras by 2025, which McGovern called an “expensive unfunded mandate.”

McGovern said she’d support an internal audit to show where the money for body cameras could come from. Cunningham said the state can offer grants to help pay for the equipment.

Both candidates stated legislation would have to be drafted to address equipment storage and the employees to view the footage.

The best way to ensure public safety is to repeal the law, McGovern said. After all provisions of the act go into effect, she said the data wouldn’t be trustworthy because she doesn’t think suspects will be charged.

“If you have no consequences and no accountability, what’s going to deter them from committing these actions? We have to repeal the SAFE-T Act,” McGovern said.

Cunningham said crime rate data can be studied to see the effect of the act.

“That can be complicated,” Cunningham said. “You do need to do more in-depth study to determine if something is effective. That’s what we have to do. We have to do studies to see.”

Both Cunningham and McGovern said they support parental notification for when a minor wants an abortion and they don’t support state funding of abortions.

McGovern said she had to undergo fertility treatment to get pregnant, which gave her “a different perspective on the value of life.”

“I believe that every life has value in it, that they have a future. That is my position on abortion,” she said.

But, McGovern said as a patient who was told that if she gets pregnant again she could die, she understands that in some instances abortion can be an emergency medical procedure.

“That’s not an elected surgery, that is an emergency medical procedure,” she said. “There’s a difference. I think what’s happening with abortion now is people are using it for birth control.”

If someone is raped or the mother’s health is in danger, McGovern said she doesn’t view that as an abortion but rather an emergency medical procedure. So, she supports abortion under those circumstances.

As a way to limit abortions, McGovern said she’d support legislation that makes the adoption process easier for people who want to adopt children. McGovern said state funding should not be allocated toward helping out-of-state patients to get an abortion.

Cunningham said he backs federal legislation to protect patients traveling to the state to receive an abortion from being prosecuted in their home state. He’d like to expand access to medical abortions and telehealth access to further support out-of-state patients seeking an abortion, Cunningham said.

Fetal viability should be the cut off for when an abortion is allowed, Cunningham said, unless the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.

Cunningham said he was against revoking the state’s law for parental notification when a minor wanted an abortion because the law balanced parent’s rights and the legal right to access abortions.

The state Medicaid program pays for abortions, Cunningham said, which he does not support.

“Few states in the nation do more to protect reproductive rights than Illinois,” Cunningham said. “I support a woman’s fundamental right to choose, but I also support common sense approaches on the issue.”

Before she decided to run for office, McGovern said she started Reopen Illinois to push for business reopening amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s heard from business owners that it’s become too expensive to remain in Illinois.

The state needs an overhaul of its budget, McGovern said, because it has a spending issue not a money issue. To help lessen the burden on property taxes, McGovern said she’d support legislation to raise the surtax on vacant properties.

“We need a complete budget overhaul. We need an internal audit to see where all of our funds are going,” McGovern said.

The reason the state has such high property taxes, Cunningham said, is because the state never lived up to its promise to be the primary funding source for schools.

The state has eased some of the property tax burdens for homeowners through the evidence based funding formula, Cunningham said, because it changed the way the state financed school districts. The new funding formula went into effect about five years ago, he said.

For the last four years, Cunningham said the state has increased state funding to education by $350 million annually, which has lessened the burden on property taxes.

To further lower property taxes, Cunningham said the state could utilize the property tax relief grant, in which the state sets aside $50 million for school districts if administrators agree to lower property tax levies to qualify. Cunningham said he’s support legislation to expand the program and add more money to the grant fund.

“That will allow more districts to participate and it would have the direct effect of driving down property taxes,” Cunningham said. “The new funding formula is doing what it’s designed to do, I just think we need to speed up relief to property tax payers.”

McGovern said she supports a voucher school funding structure “where the money follows the students,” allowing parents to use money they pay in taxes to their school district to instead pay tuition at private schools.

Cunningham said the evidence based funding formula helps homeowners in communities with eroding tax bases.

“The state just has to pick up more of the burden,” Cunningham said. “We’ve been doing that gradually … we need to continue doing that. If we have extra revenue, we have to boost that number.”

The way to help homeowners in communities with eroding tax bases, McGovern said, is to first decrease the crime rates, which will encourage business to stay and new ones to open and then the property taxes will decrease for homeowners.

“You have to fix the root causes,” McGovern said. “Once you fix that, you can start to regenerate the community.”