Patty García’s path to Congress was paved long before Election Day. The challenge now for the first-time candidate: Shaping how the voters she wants to represent see her.

Her pitch was clear as she spoke to campaign volunteers in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood in September.

She was raised by an immigrant father, a union worker once laid off by a company greedy for “cheap labor,” she told the crowd. She objects to taxpayer dollars spent on Israeli weapons. She wants to “abolish ICE,” the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“Abolishing ICE means holding those agents accountable that have kidnapped our neighbors, that have killed our fathers in the neighborhood, our mothers,” she said, referring to Silverio Villegas González, who was fatally shot by a federal agent in Franklin Park in September 2025. “Abolishing ICE means not one more penny to this rogue agency with a blank check, working unchecked.”

But just as telling as García’s working-class background, progressive bona fides and allegiance to Chicago’s Latino communities were the people standing behind her: Illinois Democrats and Southwest Side officials ranging from Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, to Little Village Ald. Michael Rodriguez.

Those allies credited the 41-year-old with years of effective behind-the-scenes work running the same 4th Congressional District office she now hopes to lead.

Her opponents — Lyons Mayor Chris Getty, running as an independent; Republican nominee Lupe Castillo; and Working Class Party candidate Ed Hershey — say she is seeking a coronation, not an election win, after a series of heavy-handed maneuvers gave her a uniquely smooth lane to victory.

Last year, U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, no relation, had been widely expected to seek a fifth term. Instead, he bowed out at the last minute, leaving Patty García, his then-chief of staff who quietly filed to run just before the deadline, as the only candidate on the March primary ballot. The move quickly drew widespread criticism and later a formal House resolution admonishing the four-term congressman.

Allies of the congressman and his chosen successor then challenged the nominating petitions of two progressive Latinos hoping to run as independents: Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, and Mayra Macías. The Illinois State Board of Elections removed both from the ballot, finding Sigcho-Lopez 1,222 valid signatures short and Macías 1,058 short. A federal judge last month dismissed a lawsuit Sigcho-Lopez filed seeking to reverse the decision.

García is unrepentant about the way Rep. García all but handed her the Democratic nomination in the deep-blue district, and she rejects criticism of her ties to the ballot challenges. She says she is qualified, the best candidate to take on President Donald Trump and Republicans, and that it’s time to move on from the controversy.

“I’m not running for office to be in the media spotlight, or because it’s a nice resume booster for me,” she said. “I can’t stand on the sidelines while all this s−−− is happening against my community, and I know that we deserve someone there who is going to fight just as hard as other progressives and Democrats have across the country.”

A progressive, anti-Trump vision

García sat at center for the race’s lone televised debate in September, facing near-nonstop attacks from the three other candidates on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Amid the predictable onslaught inside the audience-less WFLD-Ch. 32 Chicago studio, she kept her hands clasped on the table. Her thumbs fiddled, and her eyebrows rose as Castillo excoriated government spending on undocumented immigrants. She repeatedly cut off the GOP challenger.

Getty attacked her at every chance.

“Patty García is a virtual unknown,” he said. “She is a weak candidate.”

García, who once recruited and trained Latino candidates, had a well-rehearsed answer.

“I have worked with legislators across the state of Illinois. I have worked with city council members across the city of Chicago and municipalities,” she fired back. “People do know me.”

On the debate stage and in interviews, she has pointed to her work leading efforts in Rep. García’s office to bring federal dollars to the heavily Latino, Democratic district. It covers much of Chicago’s Southwest Side and several western suburbs, including parts of Berwyn, Brookfield, Hinsdale and Melrose Park. Her experience navigating Capitol Hill and Chicago politics sets her apart, she argues.

Her behind-the-scenes career began in high school, García said.

She credited protests against the Iraq War as a student at Hubbard High School on the Southwest Side as her first organizing work. More followed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she said she earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees and led a 2006 student response to a racist fraternity and sorority party built on anti-Mexican stereotypes.

When she didn’t land a job in education policy after earning her doctorate, she joined the 2012 General Assembly campaign of Rudy Lozano Jr., the son of a slain labor activist and community organizer. The elder Lozano sought to become one of Chicago’s first Latino City Council members in the 1980s, in a campaign managed by a political newcomer named Jesús García.

After Lozano Jr. lost, García moved to Washington, D.C., then Texas, spending half a decade doing political work in part focused on voter outreach and electing Latino candidates, Rep. García hired her as district director in 2019, and she then served as his chief of staff for almost three years before entering this year’s race.

The 4th is the only Latino-majority congressional district in the Midwest. García cited securing citizenship for her mother three years ago as the sort of personal triumph that makes her ready to lead it.

“There should be a Latino in office,” she said. “Why? Because having that Latino experience helps you be a best advocate for this district that is largely immigrant, that is largely working class.”

García praises her former boss but acknowledged one key difference while speaking with the Tribune Editorial Board earlier this month: He hasn’t called for ICE to be abolished, while she calls it a top priority.

That position is one of many she has staked out to establish herself as the most progressive viable candidate in the race.

In an interview, García said she would push for legislation to naturalize immigrants brought to the U.S. as children without documentation. She also wants to clarify and broaden temporary protected status, which allows people from designated countries in crisis to live and work in the country.

To address affordability, she wants legislation that strengthens labor union rights and cracks down on price gouging, particularly in healthcare. She also supports higher taxes on the wealthy, a $25 federal minimum wage and stricter environmental rules that account for the cumulative impact of pollution concentrated in certain communities.

“If we can have better-paying jobs, that’s going to transform lives,” she said. “The wealthiest people and the ultra-billionaires should be paying more. They can afford it. It shouldn’t come at the cost of working-class people.”

García repeatedly has called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should stand trial, and the U.S. must stop giving Israel military aid, she said.

“With him and others that are around him, they’ve committed a genocide, and we have to hold them accountable,” she said. “I think that the United States needs to be leading the charge on that, not only because it’s politically right, but because it’s morally right.”

No apologies for the clear path

After winning the Democratic primary in March, García’s campaign repeatedly did not respond to the Tribune’s questions about the race-shaping efforts, agreeing to an interview only after the general election ballot was set this summer. When she addressed the controversy, García was firmly unapologetic.

“They’re wrong because I’ve been doing work here. It is not a coronation,” she said. “It was an endorsement. There was a process. We followed every rule to get on the ballot.”

García said she had little forewarning that the congressman would not run again. He had already gathered enough signatures to make the ballot when he came to her three days before the filing deadline, she said, and told her he wouldn’t run and that other officials had promised to support her if she entered the race.

He made the decision quickly, she said, citing his own health struggles, his wife’s worsening multiple sclerosis and the sudden need to adopt his grandson after his daughter’s death.

“I didn’t want to be forced into going into another term if I would have won, knowing my new urgencies as it relates to my health, my wife’s health and my family responsibilities,” Rep. García told the Tribune last year. “Given that the window was closing, I wanted to ensure that there was an option for someone in the progressive lane to get on the ballot, not knowing who would wind up filing.”

Since then, he has remained in office as he finishes his term.

The timing was bad for Patty García, who had no savings, a new car and a recent surgery, she said. She conceded the circumstances have given her a “scarlet letter.”

“But I also knew that we needed to make sure that that district remained progressive, and that we needed to make sure that we had a good representative in office,” she said. “It was not your typical process. … I wish I would have had more time.”

Still, she argued that no one was blocked from the Democratic primary: “Anyone else could have applied to run for office.” But because the congressman’s decision did not become public until filing had closed, other would-be candidates were unaware they would not need to square off against a well-established incumbent.

In one weekend, she said, she organized 75 volunteers who collected 2,500 signatures — almost five times the number needed for the March primary ballot, but a fraction of the 10,816 signatures independent candidates had to submit to make the November ballot.

“We didn’t do a whole media frenzy out of it. We focused on making sure we actually had the valid signatures,” she said, a jab at Macías and Sigcho-Lopez, who complained about the García-tied efforts to knock them from the ballot.

Macías and Sigcho-Lopez simply did not have enough valid signatures, García said. At the same time, she distanced herself from the challenges, calling them “part of the political process” and something “any voter has the right to do.”

But several people who played key roles in knocking the two candidates off the ballot have close ties to the congressman’s political operation. Two of the three objections against Macías and Sigcho-Lopez were filed by people who had circulated primary petitions for Patty García. And Manny Diaz, a senior staffer for Rep. García now serving as Patty García’s campaign manager, testified in support of the objections.

In a June hearing, Diaz’s testimony helped invalidate hundreds of Macías petitions collected by a woman whose license address and petition address did not match. The woman’s license listed the address of a domestic violence shelter.

Despite the controversy and Getty’s well-funded independent bid, García has a clear path to victory in the “heavily gerrymandered” district, Elmhurst University political science professor Constance Mixon said.

The controversy has hurt García, Mixon said, but she still fits the district and has a bevy of endorsements.

“I do get that he may see a lane there because overall there’s a lot of dissatisfaction all across the United States with both political parties right now,” Mixon said of Getty. “But looking at this district, this is a solid Democratic district. This is a Latino district. It’s a pretty progressive district.”

The party’s pick

García has led the field in fundraising, far outpacing Hershey and Castillo and edging out Getty with support from congressional Democrats, left-leaning political action committees and labor unions.

Through September, her campaign had raised $468,209 and had $172,570 on hand. Getty had raised $400,433 and had $138,500 left, though he outraised her over the summer, $212,263 to about $116,000.

She said she entered the race with that support, and earned it.

“I came with support from organizations, from community members, from elected officials, because they saw the work that I was doing before I was a candidate,” she said. “I wasn’t doing the work for a title. I was doing the work because it was rewarding to do the work for my community.”

U.S. Reps. Bill Foster of Naperville and Eric Sorensen of Moline both voted for the resolution that chastised Rep. García. But few, if any, other prominent Illinois Democrats publicly criticized the congressman or the candidate over the race’s controversial start.

At the September volunteer rally, Rodriguez, 22nd, introduced García as someone long “behind the scenes.”

“You don’t see them. I don’t see them sometimes,” he said. “But they got our backs when we don’t know.”

He then revealed to the crowd that García led the immediate response when federal immigration agents detained two of his staff members last October.

Later, she recalled hearing about their disappearance. They hadn’t been seen in hours. Then their car was found abandoned, a purse still inside.

She called their parents to get copies of their passports and had their mothers sign release forms. She drove to Rodriguez’s office, then to a federal immigration processing center in west suburban Broadview, then to the FBI’s Chicago headquarters.

Her emotions guided her, she said, but they didn’t paralyze her. The two were released hours later.