Endorsement: Kinzler for GOP in U.S. House District 6

If you break down the race for the Republican nomination for Illinois' 6th District of Congress, you likely will come to these conclusions about the messages of candidates Gordon "Jay" Kinzler and Jeanne Ives:

Kinzler is an earnest conservative with local-government experience who is eager to focus on policy issues and leave social causes out of the equation.

Ives is an equally earnest conservative of barely contained passion with legitimate experience at both the local and state levels who would like to paint herself as an across-the-aisle consensus builder and to distance herself from an outrageously racist, sexist and homophobic television ad she launched in her unsuccessful bid to unseat Bruce Rauner in the 2018 GOP primary for governor.

On Ives, we're not convinced. For all her promises to work with Democrats to fashion workable solutions to such stubborn problems facing the nation as health care, immigration, climate change, foreign policy and more, we still see in Ives a candidate more eager for combat than cooperation. Her primary campaign all but assumes victory and rarely even acknowledges her opponent, instead focusing on harshly negative, often misleading attacks on one-term incumbent Democrat Sean Casten, whom the winner of the GOP primary will face in November. Although her record as a three-term Illinois state representative included some noteworthy examples of bipartisan enterprise, it was more typically marked by contentious obstinacy and bouts of hyperbolic insults.

Kinzler, on the other hand, points proudly to a record as Glen Ellyn Park District commissioner that emphasized pragmatic cooperation over partisan bickering with a body made up largely of members whose politics generally departed significantly from his own. He makes an unqualified distinction between social causes and policy constructs and demonstrates a sincere promise to leave the former to the dictates of personal conscience and to concentrate solely on the latter as matters for the attention of government.

That's an important approach, and suggests Kinzler, a kidney transplant surgeon, would be a more appropriate Republican representative for the richly diverse 6th District, which winds in an arc stretching northwest from Hinsdale through Elgin to Long Grove.

As a former Wheaton City Council member and three-term state representative, Ives has compelling political leadership experience that would suit her for stepping into the role of a U.S. congresswoman. But Kinzler's less-divisive disposition makes him better suited to bear the GOP standard in the 6th District, and he gets our endorsement.