In these unsettled days when most of the normal rules of politics seem obsolete, voters often seem open to candidates who are new and fresh, outsiders who come not from what are perceived as the political elites but “real life.” 

But are there limits to that trend?

An interesting test of that proposition is shaping on Chicago’s North Side, where four contenders are vying in the March Democratic primary to succeed state Rep. Margaret Croke, a Democrat who is giving up her seat to run for Illinois comptroller. Such vacancies rarely arise in that part of town.

Three contenders have more or less conventional political pedigrees, from activity in ward political organizations and local school councils to work in the Barack Obama White House and at City Hall. The fourth has little connection to the district beyond living there but is staked by a ton of family money. And to boot, in his college days a little over a decade ago, he headed Cornell University Students for Mitt Romney.

Chicago politics never disappoints.

The first of the three is Paul Kendick, 42, who works as director of program strategy at Hope Chicago, an educational advocacy group that focuses on getting inner-city kids to finish high school and graduate from college. A junior education aide in the Obama White House, Kendrick went on to lead political groups such as Rust Belt Rising and the Lakeview/Lincoln Park/Old Town chapter of Indivisible, and served as a community rep on the Lincoln Park High School Local School Council.

Kendrick says that work will enable him to focus on progressive issues in Springfield, and he has the endorsement of Croke and the aldermen of the 2nd, 43rd and 44th wards, which comprise the bulk of the 12th district.

A second hopeful, Mac LeBuhn, has his own list of endorsements, including from former Alds. Dick Simpson, 44th, and Edwin Eisendrath, 43rd; current Ald. Matt Martin, 47th; and former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in whose administration he served as senior policy adviser and legal counsel.

LeBuhn, 37, pitches himself as “an independent voice for change.” A former teacher turned attorney, he points to work he did with Lightfoot to curb aldermanic prerogative — a City Hall tradition that progressives say has been misused to block construction of affordable housing in some portions of the city — as proof of the kind of things he’ll be able to accomplish in Springfield. He’s commissioner of a toddler T-ball league.

Then there’s Litsy Kurisinkal, an Indian immigrant who chaired her Local School Council during the COVID pandemic and says it organized one of the first vaccination drives in the area to fight the disease. She served as a field organizer in Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential race and a voter-registration leader in Kamala Harris’ 2023 campaign, and she is on the board of the Harvard Club of Chicago.

“I see myself as a grassroots advocate representing people,” Kurisinkal says. Among ideas she’d like to push in Springfield: dumping the local property tax in favor of a statewide levy. Overall, she says, she’d like to change from an era in which “money and power are dominating our politics.”

Like I said, nothing unconventional about those three. Which leads to the fourth contender: Karim Lakhani.

A Harvard-trained lawyer and the son of Pakistani immigrants who built a sizable hospitality and gas station business in the northern suburbs, Lalkhani, who’s about to turn 35, says he’s running because the very things that brought his family here are under attack, be it from Trump immigration raids or high inflation. “I’m fighting for working people,” he says. “That’s my goal here. That’s where my priorities lie.”

The pitch won him the endorsement of the state council of SEIU, the big service-industry union. But Lakhani’s connections to the 12th District he seeks to represent are minimal.

Beyond living in the south end of the district in River North for the past 12 years — the Chicago Board of Elections says he changed his registration to the city from a Skokie address in October 2018 — he has not been involved in any civic, school, political or business group in the area that I could find or that his campaign provided. He has been active in the Indo-American Democratic Organization, a national group, and served a term on the Skokie Economic Development Commission. Lakhani is “a lifelong Skokie resident,” the Voice of South Asia said in reporting on his declaration of candidacy at a reception — in Skokie. 

Like other political outsiders trying to break in and make their mark, Lakhani is effectively self-funding his campaign. Lakhani has reported raising more campaign cash from out of state than from district residents. In fact, roughly $400,000 of the $500,000 he’s pulled in are from his family or family-owned companies.

Perhaps that’s just how politics works these days. But Lakhani’s decision to run as a Democrat after prominent Republican activity is not the norm.

The activity came when Lakhani was an undergraduate at Cornell University. He was president of the Cornell Review, a conservative publication that Fox TV commentator Ann Coulter co-founded. In one column he wrote, in 2012, Lakhani on behalf of “we Republicans” urged Romney, the GOP presidential nominee, to go easy on immigration to defeat Obama’s re-election bid.

In an earlier article in the Cornell Daily Sun, another student paper, Lakhani, identified as founder of Cornell University Students for Mitt Romney, is quoted as saying, “I am going to do whatever I can in my power to make sure we win.” 

Asked about that, a Lakhani spokeswoman said, “Karim is a Democrat. The work he’s done fighting for progressive priorities and working families make that clear. Like many people, he held different views as a student.” As for his lack of involvement in 12th District civic, school, government or business groups, “he spends every day listening to neighbors and will fight hard for his community.”

Voters are looking for more than the products of the same old groups, Lakhani himself separately suggests. 

Okey-dokey. In this new political era, I’ll wait with interest to see how the vote goes. We 12th District residents do have a decision to make.