With midterm elections coming up Nov. 3, incumbent State Representative Kelly Cassidy is running unopposed for re-election in the 14th District. She’s served in the position for about 15 years.

The 14th District of Chicago includes Andersonville, West Ridge, Rogers Park and the majority of Edgewater.

Cassidy sat down with The Phoenix to discuss her past experiences and outline her goals for her path to reelection.

Phoenix: Could you tell me a little bit about why you’re running for reelection, and what aspects of being part of the House make you want to return?

Cassidy: I have been in office since 2011, and in that time, I’ve really seen a lot of changes in our chamber, in a million different ways. We are more diverse. We have a greater age range. When I came in, I had my kids — my youngest was 9 — and I had the youngest kids among the women of the House. It was really jarring for me, and I was solo-parenting at the time, so it was even more entertaining. But we now have babies on the floor constantly. The progressive movement didn’t exist, and now I have this incredible opportunity to mentor young leaders who look at the work I’ve done and the bills I’ve passed and and want to sort of take that up and run with it, and so the job has changed a lot, but in ways that are really satisfying and fulfilling.

Phoenix: What are some highlights of the work you’ve done since you were elected?

Cassidy: The thing I love about the state legislature, as opposed to any other level — city, county, and especially federal — is the ability to have an immediate impact on people’s lives. The first bill I ever passed was what’s called a Good Sam law, so a Good Samaritan law that prevented prosecution of folks who called for help in the event of a drug overdose. Prior to the passage of that law, [it was] something I had worked on in my previous life, and then was able to take on and be the lead on and and bring it to passage after eight years of folks trying to pass it. Prior to that, we would see folks dumped on the sidewalk in front of an ER, and [that’s] at best. If anybody wanted to do something, they would be so afraid that they wouldn’t call the police. But that was the most humane thing you could hope for. Otherwise, people just would haul ass and leave you there. And maybe you died, maybe you didn’t. Within two days of that bill becoming law, I’d heard from two families whose kids were alive and in the hospital. That’s amazing. Pardon the tortured analogy, but that’s a high you’re going to chase for the rest of your life. It is knowing that your work had that kind of impact is a very rare thing. 

Phoenix: How does your work help serve the Loyola community and the Rogers Park community through your position?

Cassidy: I serve not just Rogers Park and Loyola, but Edgewater and Andersonville and West Ridge, which are incredibly diverse communities, and it’s a treasured thing about my ability to do this work, right? I see everything. In our district, we have the highest refugee population, the most languages spoken at home, in some cases, in the country. And we also have great institutional resources like Loyola, like a lot of thoughtful long-term care and not-so-thoughtful long-term care and cultural institutions. There’s so much to be proud of in this district, but it also means having a responsibility for maintaining it and making sure that all of those things can thrive together, and making sure that we are doing right by students generally. But obviously my Loyola students are the ones I’m thinking of when I’m doing this. Making sure that we’re funding MAP [Monetary Access Program] in a way that everybody who applies can actually get some money. When I first took office, MAP technically is a rolling program, which means you can apply at any point during the year and, in theory, still get access. But the application would open in January, and the money would be gone before the end of the month. So we’ve now got ourselves to a place where MAP is a reliable source for most students. Now, it’s not enough, it should be more. 

Phoenix: Can you expand a little bit on what the MAP Program is?

Cassidy: It’s the Monetary Access Program. It is a state level aid through the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. It grants only a couple few thousand dollars — it’s not a ton of money, and that was one of the things that was frustrating about the way it was set up before, because the folks who could most benefit from a small amount of money like that are not the folks at the big schools. So folks — non-traditional students, returning students, people who take a semester here and a semester there when they can — were not getting access to the funds. When you’re talking about a community college tuition bill versus a Loyola or [University of Illinois] or Northwestern tuition bill, a couple thousand dollars is a huge difference for sure.

Phoenix: Throughout your tenure, have you been faced with any very notable challenges? How have you worked to overcome them?

Cassidy: If you aren’t challenged every year, you’re not doing it right. So yes, I would say whether it is figuring out how to navigate a really, really big bill and get it through intact, or my challenges to leadership who don’t handle sexual harassment allegations sufficiently, and everything in between. During the pandemic, right? The challenges were daily, not just every couple weeks. Every day there was something, whether it was folks who couldn’t get their unemployment calls responded to. So it’s really from the sublime to the ridiculous. Like I said, if you’re doing it right, you’re going to find yourself up against it on the regular. 

Phoenix: What is the biggest driving factor in your desire to be a house rep., and what’s your overall mission and goal in being one?

Cassidy: My overall mission really predates my being in office. My first grown-up job in the city was working for the National Organization for Women, and I was our legislative director, never having had anything to do with a legislator or legislation or legislature. And I really, really quickly came to understand that this process is intentionally opaque and complex, overly complex to gatekeep, and so that job really set the mission in motion of demystifying the legislative process, making it more accessible to folks, creating points of access. And that, in turn, leads to accountability on the part of our elected officials. The process is difficult to navigate so that we can’t be held accountable. That has been my driving force since before I took office. Coming into office, very much being seen as a person that is going to tell you the truth, show you the path and be as accessible as I can be — that’s kind of defined how I’ve tried to approach being in the job. We also have an office motto: “Nothing about us without us.” I am not an expert on a lot of things, and the fun and challenge of being in a state legislature is you have to know a little bit about almost everything. It’s like the Platte River, mile wide and inch deep. You do become a mini-expert on a lot of topics, but you have to be humble enough to acknowledge that you don’t know the answers and bring in the people whose lives are going to be affected by what you do, and do what they need, not what you want.