Socialist 'Machine' Challenges Rep. Andrade’s Independence
Rising democratic socialists test 'the last' independent holdout on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
(First of several articles on the House District 40 race)
At Brothers Restaurant in Avondale on a recent Saturday morning, Democratic state Rep. Jaime Andrade gestured toward two young couples who had arrived for breakfast.
“I guarantee you they’re members of DSA,” he said, using shorthand for Democratic Socialists of America.
The moment captured a political reality that has reshaped Chicago’s Northwest Side. Andrade, a five-term progressive representing the 40th House District, is facing a primary challenge from the city’s ascendant democratic socialist movement — a force that has turned Albany Park, Avondale and Irving Park into one of its strongest bases and threatens to unseat the district’s last independent holdout.
A month earlier, at a People of East Albany Park neighborhood association meeting, Andrade had called his district the nation’s “ground zero of socialism” and the “mecca of socialism.”
In Chicago, prominent DSA members include 33rd Ward Ald. Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez and 35th Ward Ald. Anthony J. Quezada, both of whom are endorsing Andrade’s opponent.
So is state Sen. Graciela Guzmán, who has been backed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the main leaders of the democratic socialists. Also endorsing Andrade’s opponent are Cook County Commissioner Jessica Vásquez and U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, whose platforms and endorsements align with the progressive/socialist wing of the Democratic Party.
“You have young white progressives and longtime Latino immigrant families agreeing very broadly on things like rent control, the need to raise the minimum wage, the need to support public sector unions, and the rights of workers generally,” one DSA member has said of the district’s residents.
The left-wing, pro-worker alliance also champions causes like universal healthcare; free college; “defunding” or divesting from traditional policing in favor of community services; the Green New Deal, and recruiting, training, running and winning with Black and brown candidates. Some members call each other “comrades.”
Andrade’s challenger is Puerto Rican native Miguel Alvelo-Rivera, 36, an Albany Park resident and executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago. He identifies as a democratic socialist but is not a member of the DSA.
Supporters of Alvelo-Rivera portray Andrade as a corporate, old-school, status-quo, establishment politician, a holdover from Chicago’s old political machine who has accepted campaign donations from billionaire Democrat Michael J. Sacks and numerous political action committees; whose wife got a state job with the help of corrupt Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and a corrupt lobbyist; who opposes rent controls, and who accepted contributions from the anti-trans Illinois Policy Institute and pro-charter Stand For Children.
They also criticize Andrade for not belonging to the House Progressive Caucus and for what they say was his late public response to the federal immigration crackdown in Chicago. And they remind voters that Andrade was first appointed to his seat before winning election.
“We do believe this race is a choice between people vs. corporate power,” I was told by Gabrielle Bienasz, a young Alvelo-Rivera supporter who buzzed my apartment one recent night — several days after Andrade also had buzzed. “You only have to look at Jaime’s historic positioning of himself as a moderate, as well as recent donations to see a litany of the country’s biggest corporations — Amazon, Lyft, Intuit.”
Andrade, 53, of Irving Park, rejects that framing.
“I say he has the machine,” he told me at Brothers, referring to the five powerful elected officials backing Alvelo-Rivera, as well as the organizations and small army of young volunteers canvassing and phone-banking for him almost daily. “He says that’s not a machine? Call it what you want. It’s an organization that has now taken over every seat in the neighborhood (including precint captains). You tell me what government seat they don’t control in the neighborhood. I’m the last one … It’s almost like high school. Jamie’s not one of us.”
Alvelo-Rivera’s campaign headquarters at 3248 W. Montrose Ave. shares an address with 33rd Ward Working Families, a political group affiliated with United Working Families. Formed with the support of the Chicago Teachers Union, UWF is a “left-wing social democratic platform to empower working class people” and “to fight against Black and brown oppression.” A similar organization, United Neighbors of the 35th Ward, which also has endorsed Alvelo-Rivera, shares an address with Alderman Quezada’s office. Volunteers gather almost daily at both locations to organize.
Andrade’s reference to “our grassroots, passionate group of volunteers as a ‘machine’ reflects poorly both on his understanding of our community’s priorities, and on why rejecting corporate donations is so critical to transparency and honest leadership,” an Alvelo-Rivera supporter said.
“I have no volunteers or precinct captains,” Andrade went on, adding “mine is Queen,” pointing to an elderly customer at Brothers who told me Andrade helps constituents like her, for example when she needed masks during the pandemic.
Andrade dismisses criticism over having been appointed to his seat in 2013, noting that several of his critics benefited from similar political transitions. He pointed to what he called “political musical chairs,” including Commissioner Vásquez’s appointment to her current role after Quezada was named alderman to replace Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who was appointed head of the Chicago Park District. Vasquez was Ramirez-Rosa’s chief of staff.
Asked about his ties to former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, Andrade said that if he had done anything wrong, “the FBI would have knocked on my door” or “I would have been called as a witness.” Madigan’s campaign support, he said, was “peanuts” compared to what the longtime speaker gave other lawmakers.
Regarding questions about his wife’s state job, Andrade noted that she is an immigrant from Peru whose law degree cannot be used in the United States and that she works as an administrative assistant in the secretary of state’s office.
“Was Anthony Quezada the most qualified?” Andrade asked. “How did he get his job? Was Jessica Vasquez the most qualified? Carlos Ramirez-Rosa?”
Pointing out that Alvelo-Rivera’s partner, Veronica Tirado-Mercado, serves as chief of staff to Rodríguez-Sánchez, Andrade asked, “That’s not inside politics?” Alvelo-Rivera’s campaign responded that Tirado-Mercado “is an organizer in her own right with a separate career.”
Andrade also accused Rodríguez-Sánchez of benefiting from favorable ward remapping following the 2020 Census, a charge Alvelo-Rivera’s campaign called “ludicrous.” “The biggest example of machine politics is how her 33rd Ward was re-drawn,” Andrade said. That’s “just another ludicrous accusation from an incumbent who knows his district has changed and that he has not changed with it,” an Alvelo-Rivera spokesperson responded.
Meanwhile, “if I was the machine politician, my map would have stayed the way it was, but my base (including Old Irving Park) got taken away,” Andrade said.
The district stretches roughly between Foster and Fullerton avenues and from the Kennedy Expressway to the North Branch of the Chicago River.
Andrade says his efforts to collaborate with officials backing Alvelo-Rivera have been rebuffed. For instance, he was instrumental in securing hundreds of thousands of dollars for Patrick Henry Elementary School’s playground but was excluded from the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“I guess my invitation got lost in the mail,” Andrade said. A press release from 33rd Ward Working Families credited the project as “a triumph” for Rodríguez-Sánchez and noted that Guzman “joined in the festivities.”
Similar tensions arose during protests against federal immigration enforcement. Alvelo-Rivera’s campaign said that their guy was “on the front lines” while Andrade was “completely absent.” But Andrade said those dangerous battles were organized by Rodríguez-Sánchez and that he was not invited.
“My invitations got lost in the mail, again, just like it did for Patrick Henry,” Andrade said. “I’m never invited. They don’t invite me, plain and simple.”
And when Andrade invites them, they brush him aside. For example, when he and another lawmaker hosted a virtual panel for immigrants on “How to Talk to Kids During Times of Fear and Uncertainty,” Rodríguez-Sánchez and Sen. Guzman disregarded the invite to participate. “They don’t want to be seen working with Andrade,” he said. Two weeks later, the two woman hosted a similar event.
Andrade considered protesting at the The Broadview ICE Detention Center, which is outside his district, but decided against it. “Maybe that was a mistake, but I’ve always been hyper-local,” he said. “I can’t save the world. I go protest, I get run over, beat up and get good press.”
Instead, he focused on hyper-local support, including selling tamales for an undocumented constituent who was afraid to leave her home.
At the Statehouse, Andrade says, he is “standing up to ICE and Donald Trump’s lawless raids and attacks on our rights and civil liberties” by working to pass legislation protecting immigrants in hospitals, schools, daycare centers and courthouses, and allowing people to sue federal agents who violate civil rights.
Andrade is not a member of the House Progressive Caucus because he objects to its $500 membership fee. A progressive caucus should be open to everyone, not just those who can buy their way in, he said.
He notes that he is endorsed by state Rep. Anna Moeller, the progressive caucus’s co-chair, as well as by Citizens Action/Illinois, Planned Parenthood’s PAC, the AFL-CIO and other labor groups. He has a 100% rating from the Illinois Environmental Council.
“Ballotpedia called me left of Bernie Sanders,” Andrade said. “That’s not me, that’s the formula. I have a proven voting record.”
Unlike Alvelo-Rivera, Andrade doesn’t advertise the names of various elected officials who are supporting him, saying: “I don’t want to put my colleagues in that position. If I go down, I go down by myself. Everyone that goes against them gets taken out. I haven’t even gone against them and they’re taking me out.”
Andrade said he donated the $15,000 he received from pro-charter Stand for Children to local schools and rejects claims that accepting money from the Illinois Policy Institute makes him anti-trans.
He points to his endorsement from Equality Illinois, an LGBTQ+ civil rights group, and his work as a union stagehand at the organization’s annual gala. Andrde is a journeyman at Local 2 of the Chicago Stagehands union.
On rent control, Andrade said, bluntly, “They don’t have the votes to lift the ban,” and “right now, every city that has rent control has the highest rents in the country. There are studies for and against it.”
Instead, Andrade for decades has advocated for affordable housing. As a top aide to former longtime Ald. Richard “Dick” Mell, “I was the lead staff person on a city ordinance to keep Chicago rents affordable,” he said, referring to zoning tools to increase affordable housing supplies.
(After Mell, a political powerhouse, resigned, Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed Mell's daughter Deb as Mell's successor as alderman from the 33rd ward. In the 2019 election, a big one for democratic socialists, Rodríguez-Sánchez knocked Mell out of office).
The ‘New Machine’
The son of Ecuadorian immigrants, Andrade spoke only Spanish until kindergarten and is a member of the House Latino Caucus. He grew emotional recalling the personal toll of public service.
“You can’t be a good father and a good legislator,” he said. “Or a good husband.”
The holder of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from DePaul University, Andrade racked up $235,000 in college loans needed for family expenses during his lengthy enrollment.
If he loses, said Andrade, who has served as assistant majority leader, the district will lose an independent, and experienced, voice. “I only answer to voters, not any organization,” he said. “Secondly, my experience does bring funds to our district, more than practically every (other) district. I bring above and beyond what is allocated to each individual state rep or senator. I bring the experience that brought the Independence Branch Library to our district. Experience does matter … That is why they asked me for help to cover the cost of the playground that they could not do on their own.”
Andrade predicted during our breakfast interview that the powerful elected officials who have endorsed Rivera would prevent some key endorsements or sway them away from him to Alvelo-Rivera.
A week after the interview, Andrade texted to say the Chicago Teachers Union had joined forces behind Alvelo-Rivera.
“They now have the full machine against me. CTU & ITF (Illinois Federation of Teachers) are now putting their endorsements and money behind the campaign to take the last independent seat, the 40th House District. CTU just put in 40k to Graciela Guzman’s campaign, which will be used against me and help Miguel …
“If that is not a machine, then what is? I am not giving up, but looks like it is going to be an uphill battle to beat the NEW machine.”
(Note: ChatGPT proofread this article)
(Next: An article focusing on Miguel Alvelo-Rivera and his campaign)
Previously:
Thanks for another in-depth article. We're lucky to have you covering our neighborhood, and I'm very much looking forward to the follow-up on Alvelo-Rivera.
Chat GPT missed a misspelling of precinct: "It’s an organization that has now taken over every seat in the neighborhood (including precint captains)."