New Life Christian Church in East St. Louis got a visit on April 15 from a current congressman and a congressional candidate hoping to win their votes in the 2018 congressional election in Illinois’ 12th district.
Brendan Kelly is running as the Democratic challenger to Mike Bost, the Republican currently occupying the seat. Kelly, a U.S. Navy veteran currently serving at the St. Clair County state attorney, said the concerns of Southern Illinois were being neglected by the national political conversation.
“Here in the heart of the country there’s a feeling that the country’s been hollowed out, and the center of the country, both geographically and politically, has disintegrated,” Kelly said. “That’s not a good thing at all for the health of our country and the health of our democracy.”
Like the parishioners of New Life, residents of East St. Louis are predominantly black. And his campaign has a message of outreach for them.
Kelly said he wants to bring economic development to communities like East St. Louis and Cairo, including by encouraging the construction of new and better public housing. He said he also wants to invest in “trauma-informed education” that can help break up the school-to-prison pipeline and treat drug offenses as symptoms of addiction rather than serious crimes.
“These are communities that have had things done to them and have had things done for them – neither of those has worked,” Kelly said. “You have to do things with the people of East St. Louis, not to the people of East St. Louis or for the people of East St. Louis.”
Kelly was joined at New Life by U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-New Mexico), who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which works to elect Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives.
The DCCC recruits candidates and helps them fundraise and campaign. This election cycle, it hopes to turn the Republican-dominated House back to blue. Democrats currently have 193 seats in the House; to regain a majority, they need 218.
“We have about 100 districts across the country that we’ve identified as the most competitive,” Lujan said. “We need incredible candidates in all of those districts. And here in the 12th, we have a great candidate in Brendan Kelly.”
Kelly is part of the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program, a group of candidates the committee is supporting in hopes of flipping currently Republican-held seats for Democrats. The DCCC’s website notes that Barack Obama won the 12th District twice, and though Donald Trump secured a victory there in 2016, the district also voted for Tammy Duckworth, a liberal Democrat, for U.S. Senate.
Kelly has also already out-fundraised his Republican opponent.
Kelly’s projects as a state’s attorney include creating a violent crime unit that increased the prosecution of domestic violence and prosecuting major pharmaceutical companies for deceiving customers about the dangers of opioid painkillers. The Southern Illinois Law Enforcement Commission named Kelly  “Southern Illinois Prosecutor of the Year” in 2012.
Kelly was recruited to run for office in both 2012 and 2014, but did not feel ready to leave behind the state’s attorney office until this year.
“As a prosecutor, I worked with law enforcement but also worked with members of the community here,” Kelly said. “I’m a prosecutor who strongly supports law enforcement, but I’m also a lifetime member of the NAACP. And those two things are not exclusive.”
Kelly falls into the DCCC’s ideal profile, but he is also the type of candidate the committee has been criticized for throwing too much of its support behind.
In March, Politico reported on the DCCC’s role in a political divide between the progressive and more centrist wings of the Democratic Party. The piece noted that the DCCC had come under fire for getting involved in primaries between Democrats, including publishing opposition research on a progressive candidate in Texas to favor her more moderate opponent. Internal DCCC memos cautioned candidates to avoid bold stances on gun control and single-payer health care.
Kelly himself defeated a primary opponent, David Bequette, whose campaign focused on universal health care and campaign finance reform, though Bequette attracted relatively little grassroots fundraising and organizing.
Lujan said he saw a parallel between New Life Pastor Kendall Granger’s sermon, on the topic of finding the strength to forgive people who have hurt you, and the Democrats’ 2018 efforts.
“We’ve all gone through trials and tribulations, we’ve all had our faith shaken at one time or another,” Lujan said. “We have to work to restore that faith and earn the trust back of the American people. And it happens one community at a time, one person at a time.”
Lujan said this mission also applies within the party.
“Everywhere that we’ve lost any trust, we have to go back and earn it,” he said. “And that’s not just people from across the aisle, it’s people from this side of the aisle as well.”
