Nekritz ‘grateful to the voters’

State Rep. Elaine Nekritz appeared Tuesday to have hung onto her seat in the 57th House District.

With 63 of 65 Cook County precincts counted, unofficial vote totals showed that Nekritz, a Northbrook Democrat, had 17,602 votes, or about 55 percent of the total.

Jonathan Greenberg, her Republican opponent and also a Northbrook resident, had 14,206 votes, or about 45 percent.

Unofficial totals in the Lake County portion of the district showed Nekritz receiving 1,115 votes to Greenberg’s 879, with all four precincts counted.

“I’m so grateful to the voters, especially with so much of the district new this time around,” Nekritz said late Tuesday. “I had to meet a lot of people for the first time.”

Nekritz, a former real estate attorney, has been a member of the General Assembly since 2003. Like others who won or retained seats in the General Assembly on Tuesday, Nekritz identified pension reform as the big issue facing state leaders. She also looks forward to future discussions of ways to get the state’s budget in line.

Nekritz favors a number of changes that would lower the cost of pension benefits, from raising the retirement age to reducing cost-of-living increases.

She also supports the idea of shifting responsibility for future teacher pensions to local school districts.

Nekritz voted in favor of the state income tax hike in 2011, a measure that Greenberg blasted as an insult to taxpayers. Nekritz said she didn’t take political considerations into account when she cast that vote.

“I voted for it because I believed it was the right thing to do,” Nekritz said. “We needed new revenue. You always know there could be some political repercussions, but I didn’t let those worries sway me.”