With the likely successors to four other outgoing congressional Democrats from the Chicago area chosen in Tuesday’s primary, the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García is emerging as the most competitive federal race on Illinois’ November general election ballot.

García, a four-term lawmaker representing a Latino-majority district that stretches from Pilsen to Oak Brook and from Franklin Park to Burbank, joined fellow Democratic Reps. Danny Davis of Chicago and Jan Schakowsky of Evanston in deciding to step down at the end of the current term. But his announced exit looked nothing like theirs.

Davis and Schakowsky, the longest-serving current House members from Illinois, triggered crowded, chaotic primaries for their seats. García, by contrast, employed an insider tactic at the last minute that effectively handed his former chief of staff an uncontested spot on the Democratic primary ballot.

Last year, when the petition filing period for Tuesday’s primary opened in late October, the congressman filed to run for a fifth term. Then, moments before the 5 p.m. Nov. 3 filing deadline, Patty García — the congressman’s former chief of staff, who is not related to him — filed her nominating petitions to run. The signatures had been collected in just the past few days, and the congressman soon announced he was withdrawing his reelection bid, endorsing his former chief of staff and saying he couldn’t run for a fifth term, citing the advice of his cardiologist and his wife’s urging.

The move ran counter to Rep. García’s carefully cultivated image as a progressive reformer and drew rebukes from Democrats locally and nationally, setting the stage for a de facto Democratic showdown on Nov. 3 of this year, the date of the general election. Now, at least three fellow Democrats are mounting independent bids to challenge Patty García in the general election, along with Republican nominee Lupe Castillo and Ed Hershey, the Working Class Party candidate.

The circumstances of Rep. García’s departure remain critical to why voters will likely see a competitive race in November in a reliably Democratic district.

The exit was also the latest twist in the history of the 4th Congressional District, one of Illinois’ most notable House seats, which was redrawn in the shape of earmuffs after the 1990 census to ensure Latino representation in the Chicago area. Whether a fractured field of independent Democrats can mount a credible challenge or whether Patty García’s unusual path to the Democratic nomination leaves her vulnerable will be among the defining questions of Illinois’ fall election season.

Despite running uncontested, Patty García issued a statement after last Tuesday’s primary expressing confidence but also casting her campaign as something of an underdog.

“Our opponents will be well-funded and they will underestimate us,” she said. “In the 4th District, dark money can’t buy this seat. What we built in this primary — this coalition, this energy, over 130 endorsements — is going to keep this seat rooted in our community. We’re going to win in November.”

The most recent entrant to the race is Lyons Mayor Chris Getty, who doubles as the supervisor of west-suburban Lyons Township and is an active member of the Democratic Organization of Lyons Township. First elected mayor of the west suburb at 26 in 2009, Getty brings both local bona fides and political baggage.

His father, Kenneth Getty, who died last year, was convicted and sentenced to federal prison for bid-rigging stemming from his time as mayor in the 1990s. And Chris Getty’s five terms as mayor in the village of about 10,500 residents have been mired in controversy, from appointing his father to a seat on the local planning and zoning board in 2011, to a 2019 investigation from the Illinois Answers Project and WFLD-Ch. 32 detailing official village actions that benefited Getty’s family and insurance business, to a federal raid on village hall later that year as part of a sweeping corruption probe that brought down mayors and other officials in several nearby suburbs.

In an op-ed published in the Tribune in November, days after Patty García filed her last-minute nominating petitions to secure a spot on Tuesday’s primary ballot, Getty wrote that voters in the district were “being denied a genuine primary choice.”

“The timing ensured potential challengers had little opportunity to enter the race,” he wrote. “It’s a move right out of the playbook of machine politics, anointing successors rather than letting the democratic process determine them.”

Announcing his independent candidacy last month, Getty cast himself as a pragmatic moderate.

“Representation is earned, not inherited,” he told supporters, adding that he is running “because our country is facing serious challenges: rising costs, immigration and public safety concerns, economic uncertainty, and a political system that feels increasingly disconnected from reality.”

“We don’t need more partisan talking points,” he continued. “We don’t need more backroom deals.”

Running as an independent to the political left of Patty García is Chicago Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, a Pilsen resident who has built a reputation as one of the City Council’s most combative progressives during his three terms.

Sigcho-Lopez, an immigrant from Ecuador, first won his aldermanic seat in 2019 as part of a five-member class of Democratic socialists who became a persistent source of friction for then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot. He has since become one of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s most loyal allies and a beneficiary of the Chicago Teachers Union’s support. In 2024, Johnson tapped him to chair the council’s powerful Zoning Committee, though he ultimately could not secure enough support from fellow aldermen to be confirmed.

His tenure has not been without turbulence. He survived a rare censure attempt in 2024 after speaking at a small protest where a veteran had earlier burned an American flag in opposition to U.S. support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Sigcho-Lopez said at the time that he had not seen the charred remains. In February 2025, he apologized after appearing to call a fellow alderman a “white supremacist” during a council debate. And last November, he confronted Gov. JB Pritzker during a Little Village event over the governor’s opposition to Johnson’s proposed corporate head tax.

None of that history appeared to give him pause when he announced his congressional run in January.

“We are not tied down by party rules; we are not waiting for the Democratic Party to give us permission,” Sigcho-Lopez said at the time. “As you all know by now, I’ve never been one to be quiet about injustice or to go along to get along.”

Like Getty, Sigcho-Lopez criticized Rep. García’s attempt to anoint his successor, as did a third Democrat who entered the race as an independent.

In early December, Mayra Macías announced her independent candidacy. Macias grew up in the Back of the Yards neighborhood and later became the executive director of the Latino Victory Project and Building Back Together, a dark-money group created to promote President Joe Biden’s domestic policy agenda.

A self-described “lifelong Democrat,” Macías said she was spurred to run by Rep. García’s last-minute handoff, and she has been pointed in critiquing her party. Democrats “can’t effectively fight Trump’s attacks on our democratic system if we’re turning a blind eye to anti-democratic actions here at home by our own party,” she said in a December statement announcing her candidacy.

Late last month, Macías kicked off a petition drive to collect the minimum of 10,816 valid voter signatures required for an independent candidate to secure a place on the Nov. 3 ballot in the 4th District — a striking contrast to the 697 valid signatures Patty García needed to secure her spot on the Democratic primary ballot because it’s an established political party.

Addressing supporters, Macías harked back to her early job building playgrounds at Chicago Public Schools.

“I know how to lay concrete, or at least I used to — I’m a little out of practice,” Macías said. “And I know that when you are building something, the foundation is critical. And that’s what we’re doing here today. We are building the foundation of a movement to change Chicago politics, to make sure that our voices are actually heard, to put people first.”

The independent candidates enter the general election season at a bit of a disadvantage.

In federal campaign finance disclosures covering the end of 2025, Macías reported raising nearly $126,000, while Sigcho-Lopez reported raising about $7,000. Getty, who formed his congressional campaign committee on Feb. 23, has yet to report receiving any contributions. Patty García raised more than $192,000 through Feb. 25 and is expected to have broad support from the campaign organization her former boss built over his four decades in Chicago politics.