With just a few weeks to go before November’s general election, the League of Women Voters Wilmette hosted a candidate forum Tuesday night for two state house races.

Candidates for District 17, which includes parts of northwest Evanston, both attended the forum at the Wilmette Women’s Club Tuesday night to take questions from voters.

District 17 incumbent State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz (D) listed several legislative accomplishments as a reason for reelection and invoked Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign slogan on Tuesday.

“As long as I am the state representative for the 17th district, we are not going back,” she said.

Her opponent, Jim Geldermann (R), described himself as a “Citizen of Illinois and not a subject of the democrat party.”

Geldermann said he believes the power of government should be limited, and said he’s running against the “big crime lobby,” the “let’s keep our kids stupid lobby,” the “DEI lobby” and the “death lobby” that supports for assisted suicide.

Housing

Both candidates discussed housing and the need for affordable housing in the community.

Gong-Gershowtiz said she believes in creating incentives for new affordable housing units and incentives for investments in bringing existing housing stock to code.

Geldermann blamed state government policy for rising housing prices and said people are “abandoning Chicago” due to high crime, leading to housing shortages in the north suburbs.

Geldermann also said he believes high property taxes are to blame for the lack of affordability.

Education and book banning

Geldermann didn’t explicitly make clear his position on book bans, but said a lot of banned books are still available to the public, despite being “banned.”

He did say, however, that children are being “desensitized” to sexually explicit language.

“You wonder why people like P Diddy and Jeffery Epstein can exist,” Geldermann said. “It’s because of the desensitization of our children.”

Gong-Gershowitz said she believes book bans are “dangerous,” and said parents should have the right to find “suitable material” for their children.

Gong-Gershowtiz supported Illinois’ first-in-the-nation law outlawing book bans last year.

SAFE-T Act and cash bail

Geldermann said he is opposed to the SAFE-T Act, which in part eliminated cash bail in Illinois, instead only allowing a person to be held before trial if a judge deems them a threat to the community.

“We’re releasing predators back into the neighborhoods,” Geldermann said.

Gong-Gershowtiz said eliminating cash bail better aligns Illinois with the federal system.

“We are talking about whether to hold someone pretrial, someone who’s not been convicted of a crime,” she said, arguing that it’s not right for someone to pay a sum of cash in exchange for release.

Candidates for District 57, which represents Glencoe, Northbrook, Wheeling and other communities, were also in attendance. Those candidates were Daniel Behr (R) and incumbent State Rep. Tracy Katz Muhl (D).