Endorsement: Villa for state Senate Dist. 25
This endorsement is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.
The candidates for the 25th District of the state Senate, Democratic incumbent Karina Villa and Republican challenger Heather Brown, have some overlapping goals for their diverse communities: improving education, supporting small businesses, providing proper health care, helping immigrants.
The two West Chicagoans also have some wildly diverging goals: Villa lists the environment and the creation of green jobs, while Brown wants to repeal the SAFE-T Act, fight further gun control laws and restrict abortion.
On the SAFE-T Act, Villa expresses complete support by seeming to recite Democratic talking points and downplaying the risk of further crimes as a result of the no-cash-bail component of the law, while Brown repeats fearmongering that crime will run rampant under the law in its current form.
Brown touts impressive work translating school board meetings for Spanish-speaking residents, but she also repeats tropes saying immigrants in the country illegally add to crime in neighborhoods and hints without evidence that asylum-seeking migrants transported from Texas to the Chicago area could be out committing crimes.
Villa has served in the state House as well as the Senate and on the West Chicago school board, and she has been a school social worker. Brown has served on the West Chicago City Council since 2017, been otherwise involved in the community and touts home-schooling her children.
But it's Villa who brings more professionalism and experience to the campaign, compared to Brown, who presents sometimes disjointed views and ideas. Villa is endorsed.