North Cook News

Illinois, which is in the middle of a fiscal crisis, remains without a balanced budget and is among the slowest states to recover from the recession. This is the reason why Jessica Tucker -- after some encouragement from her community -- is running for District 18 of the Illinois House of Representatives.

“The state hasn’t had a balance budget for how many years?”she recently told North Cook News. “It’s been 20 to 25 years. We’re still waiting for a balanced budget. Credit ratings are in the tank. Everything at the state level … they should be doing what we do at the local level, but they’re not doing it. So that fiscal frustration is very real and something that has been very frustrating for me.”

Tucker is familiar with the frustrations and triumphs of politics. She served as Winnetka’s village trustee and its president, totaling eight years of servitude to her local community. She helped Winnetka through the height of the recession by being fiscal focused. However, as she finished her second term as village president, she witnessed Illinois hitting the bottom.

Tucker believes Illinois can be something more -- something greater.

“You hear the words ‘race to the bottom,'’’ she said. “Well, we are at the bottom. We are at the bottom and we shouldn’t be. We’re a great state. We have all the tools and we have all the resources to be at the top of the list and yet we have been decimated by the super majority status quo. And that is what makes people mad and frustrated. So voters will have a choice. If they want the status quo, hey, they can vote the status quo back in."

Illinois has a chance and a choice: the status quo or change.

“But if you want a change, if you want to really try to make a difference then vote for the outsider who is not the entrenched establishment candidate whose first vote was putting Madigan back in office for speaker, which is not the first vote I would ever make,” Tucker said. “I would never vote for him for speaker again after his years in office.”

The entrenched establishment candidate to whom she is referring is current Democratic State Rep. Robyn Gabel, who is serving her third term representing District 18.

Tucker, a lawyer and mother of three, went to the University of Michigan and came out with a bachelor's degree in business administration. She attended law school at Thomas M. Cooley in Lansing, Michigan. It was there that she got interested in government, as her school was across the street from the state capital of Michigan.

Tucker met her husband at the Daley Center as an opposing counsel in a lawsuit. Now married with three kids, she asserts that she understands the need for compromise, collaboration and cooperation. Her experiences, she insists, have helped give her a unique perspective on the state of Illinois.

“I am a working mom and have been practicing law for probably 27 years now,” Tucker said. “I think having a job in the private sector (makes) you appreciate what is going on economically because you see it. You see it in operating a business.”

This business is her husband’s firm at Tucker Robin & Merker LLC, in Chicago, for which she is a counselor. Living in the city, she has seen how important small businesses are to the economic welfare of Illinois.

“The small businesses are really the economic engine of our state, and when you see worker’s comp cost and other costs of doing business (along with) the regulations … that can be burdensome on business whether it is a service or product,” Tucker said. “It makes it difficult. It makes it challenging.”

Tucker admits that running a business has made her appreciate the implications of legislation and what happens in Springfield and how those policies affect day to day life -- whether it is at home or in business. Tucker claims that she is aware of the hard fight ahead of her and ready to overcome the challenge.