The retired judge vs. former meteorologist for Illinois' 17th congressional district

(25News Now) - Illinois’ 17th Congressional seat has been filled by a Democrat since 2013, but the races have been competitive ones. In the last two elections, the winner received 52% of the vote to claim the seat.

In 2022, Democrat Eric Sorensen beat Republican Esther Joy King with 52% of the vote.

In 2020, Democrat Cherri Bustos beat Republican Esther Joy King with 52% of the vote.

The 17th congressional district of Illinois includes parts or all of Peoria, McLean, Tazewell, Fulton, and Knox counties.

Former TV Meteorologist Rep. Eric Sorensen and retired judge Joe McGraw are fighting to represent those areas.

25News met with each candidate for about 45 minutes at our East Peoria studios on the country’s most divisive topics.

Meet the Candidates

Incumbent Eric Sorensen entered the political area two years ago after a long career in broadcast meteorology, both in the Quad Cities and Rockford. The Democrat said he made the switch to politics in an effort to serve the community in a different way.

“As a kid, all I wanted to be was the weatherman on Channel 13 in Rockford, Illinois, and I got to live my childhood dream. And I worked, you know, for the community that I was born and raised in for more than a decade,” Sorensen said.

Sorensen said he settled down in Moline, where he bought his first home.

“It wasn’t so much that anybody here in this TV station works for the corporation. We work for the community,” he continued. “We have to provide good information for the people that we serve. So, I always kind of thought of myself as working for the people that were in harm’s way.”

Eventually, he said, his ambitions turned to Congress.

“We can’t be pushing that off to our kids and our grandkids and so that’s what really called me to do this job,” he said.

Joe McGraw wants to bring his experience as an attorney, prosecutor, and judge to Washington D.C., saying his ability to hear both sides of an argument and make a ruling can help him make decisions.

“When you’re in court, you always have advocates from opposite sides urging opposite outcomes all the time, and each presents their own evidence,” McGraw said.

“You have to listen very, very carefully to be fully present, not thinking about anything else, not thinking about what came before or came after, coming after. And then you have to make a decision. Judges can’t vote present, you know, so we have to make a ruling,” he continued.

He said that neutrality and impartiality could be helpful in Congress.

“I’m also a trained mediator and a trained arbitrator, so I’ve settled cases where the sides were far apart. I’ve also handled everything from the death penalty case to a child custody case, so I’ve had to make some tough decisions,” he said. “I think the process of decision making, finding out where the truth is, mediating, working with others will stand me in good stead.”

Bipartisan Border Security

Both men share the desire to work in a bipartisan manner for Illinois and better secure the U.S./Mexico border.

“We need to secure the border,” Sorensen said. “There should be no way that we’re allowing people to come into our country and we don’t know who they are. But then, on the flip side, we also need to make sure that there is a pathway for people who want to legally immigrate to our country because we are a land of immigrants.”

Sorensen is calling for reform of the immigration system, suggesting the immigration process be modernized and streamlined.

“If someone wants to immigrate to the country, guess what? Everybody has one of these phones. You could do a face-to-face interview on a phone from Central America, right? You can upload the documents to your phone, to your file, and then when you get a green light, my visa has been processed,” Sorensen said.

“Now I can come to the country, ok? So, we can stop a lot of what’s going on today just by using technology, and technology plays a big role in my Stop the Fentanyl at the Border Act, where we’re going to use technology to our advantage, to safeguard our communities, and that’s what we need to do,” Sorensen said.

McGraw said he is focused on improving security at the border, first and foremost. He claimed the current administration has created or contributed to those security problems.

“Good border security, as the name implies, begins with security. Right now, there is no security on the border,” McGraw said.

“The current administration and my opponent denied it’s been a problem. Just recently, my opponent finally made a trip to the border,” he continued.

“I’ve been there twice. I’ve seen it myself. He finally got down there and took a few pictures and came back and said, we need more border patrol and more services, and I’m thinking that’s pretty obvious. That should have been obvious before you got to the border.”

McGraw argued securing the border would in turn improve immigration processing.

“As it was during the previous administration, we used our substantial foreign policy influence to require countries like Mexico and others to use their military to help secure their side of the border and also to create a sanctuary within their country where our Secretary of State folks could go and interview asylum seekers in that country,” McGraw said.

“If they were suitable and eligible, then they could be paroled into the US, not like now, where everyone comes across, everyone’s paroled. They have no IDs. We don’t know where they’re from. We don’t know what their intentions are. We don’t know where they’re going. That includes military-aged males from Middle Eastern countries and military-aged males from China. So, the first thing is to secure the border,” McGraw said.

Abortion

Women’s access to abortion has been a contentious topic this election season, and since the overturn of Roe V. Wade in 2022.

McGraw feels this should be a state call.

“It goes back to the 50 states for each state to make rules, regulations, legislation, as each state sees fit, and I believe that’s the proper role the states should be making that decision,” he said.

McGraw said he doesn’t consider abortion to be a federal issue anymore. As such, he said he would not support a national abortion ban or a law codifying the rights of Roe v. Wade into law.

“I would not support a national abortion ban. I think that’s outside the jurisdiction of the federal government, nor would I support something akin to codifying Roe, as some have suggested, because again, that’s outside of our jurisdiction, outside of authority,” he said.

“I think there’s wisdom and having local legislators, those are closest to the people, hear from them, hear from their constituents, and craft laws conforming to what their citizens, their constituents, tell them understood,“ said McGraw.

Sorensen wants to push back on states making the call on abortion because he argues it makes for different levels of care depending on where someone is.

“This is life and death. This is the difference between a woman being able to get health care in her hometown or bleeding in a parking lot somewhere. This is something so important because now we have some extremists in government today that they want to politicize this. They want to say it’s state’s rights,” Sorensen said.

“I’ve talked with women who live in Des Moines, who have to drive all the way across the state of Iowa. They have to see the Welcome to Illinois sign before they’re allowed to get their health care,” he continued. “That is absolutely wrong. We have to push back against that everywhere.”

Sorensen said he would codify Roe v. Wade into law if Congress brought it to a vote.

“It’s a right. It’s a right to make the decisions that you need to make in the confines of your doctor’s office,” he said. “You shouldn’t have a judge who wants to be in Congress in that office with you, and that’s what’s at stake here.”

“I just look back to civil rights. I look back to the civil rights in the 1960s what would have happened if this country would have been so divided and said that only certain people get rights in certain states,” said Rep. Sorensen.

Lower Birth Rates in America

Meanwhile, the United States is seeing fewer babies. In 2023, births fell to the lowest count in 40 years, something the National Library of Medicine credits to the cost of living and availability of childcare.

Sorensen said a start would be universal preschool.

“We need to get to a point where that is offered in our country. Education should start earlier,” Sorensen said.

He also warned of potential extremists who want to get rid of the Department of Education.

“They want to get rid of it entirely. They want to privatize education. Well, when we privatize it, there’s only now certain people that are going to be able to have the pathway to be educated, and we’ve got to push back against that,” Sorensen said.

The issue is personal for Sorensen.

“When I was a kid, I never thought that I was ever going to have a chance to be the meteorologist on TV, let alone be the Congressman of the community of Peoria, where my dad’s a Bradley grad, met my mom in Peoria. They were married in Peoria, they had their first place in Peoria, and then they moved to Rockford, where they had us kids. Then I moved to Moline.”

“Now, I represent the place that my family has always called home. But who is going to be the person to take my place, or who is going to be the person that is going to take my place 20, 30 years from now? It’s somebody who’s sitting in a classroom today. You know very well, right now we could have the first person that sets foot on the surface of Mars in a second-grade class in 61605, what are we doing to make sure that child has the ability to succeed?” Sorensen asked.

McGraw said three of the overarching problems relating to the lower birth rates are, “an extremely high rate of inflation, an extremely high tax rate, [and] extremely high interest rates.”

“I was just talking to a guy who was talking about kids or adults his age that was delaying getting married because of the expense associated with it, delaying buying a home because of the expense associated with it, and so they get kind of caught in the rental trap. They’re putting thousands into the landlord’s hands every month, and not building any equity. That’s a vicious cycle,” McGraw said.

In addition to tax cuts and reducing the rate of inflation by lowering government spending, McGraw said a more significant child tax credit would help would-be parents.

“Probably, with few exceptions, kids are best raised and best inculcated with values by their parents,” McGraw said. “ If parents could get a much greater per child tax credit and have it adjusted to inflation so that mom and dad would know, and they do their taxes, they’re going to be able to get a deduction, or not have to pay taxes, more accurately.”

Regarding childcare and related issues, McGraw said medical expenses would be another deduction for parents to get when doing their taxes.

“Child care is a lot of medical expenses. Again, rather than trying to have a government agency trying to dole things out and decide who gets what and who’s eligible for what, let people manage their own finances and give them the ability to make the decisions that are best for them and their families. Give them the tax credits associated with that, healthcare, childcare, child tax credit,” said McGraw

Gun Control

But for the kids we do have, how do we better protect them?

The Gun Violence Archive reports there have been more than 420 mass shootings nationwide so far this year. Many of these are happening at schools.

Guns remain the leading cause of death of children and teens.

When Rep. Sorensen was asked if he would support a ban on assault weapons, he said yes.

“Sure, absolutely. And I’m proud to say that, because you know what, those assault weapons should have no place in our society,” Sorensen said.

“Our schools should be a safe environment for our kids, so we have to make sure that we are not allowing in this country these weapons of war to get in the hands of people who are going to do the worst harm to our kids. When we talk about assault weapons, let’s talk about the fact that the ammunition is designed to decapitate. Think of Uvalde, Texas, and the fact that they had to use these children’s shoes to identify them. This should have no place in our society today,” Sorenson said.

“I’m not talking about lawful gun owners. My in-laws, they’re lawful gun owners, but also they want to set themselves apart from the people that want to use firearms for bad,” said Sorensen.

McGraw, on the other hand, sees stricter punishment as a solution.

“The issue that I saw as a prosecutor, and I saw many cases where there were felons in possession of guns, is obviously a harsher penalty for those that shouldn’t legally have guns. Also, as a judge, I saw that, but oftentimes those charges are reduced pursuant to plea bargaining agreements,” McGraw said.

“The laws that we have, in my opinion, are adequate, and they’re simply a question of the personnel in the State’s Attorney’s Office to focus exclusively on these bad guys as guns,” he continued. “These gang members that have guns, these people that have stolen guns, you know, those people that have so-called ghost guns. Criminals will always find guns because they’ll do burglaries, straw purchases, you name it.”

McGraw said the issue is not a question of absence of laws, but rather, “prioritizing the issue as a number one threat to the public safety of the community, and then having the law enforcement and the prosecutors to be able to spend the time that it takes.”

“You might focus on drugs at different times or other issues, but gun crime is a serious problem. I haven’t seen a serious approach by either the state or the federal government in terms of utilizing the resources that they have. The laws are there. They’re just not pursuing these cases effectively and aggressively,” said McGraw.

Economy

Among the top concerns for voters this year, the Pew Research Center points to the economy.

Both candidates explained what they would fight for to make life more affordable.

Sorenson said one way he is addressing the issue is by working to lower gas prices, specifically by pushing legislation allowing the sale of E15 gas year-round in Illinois and other states. The sale of E15 gas is currently restricted in summer months across the U.S. due to environmental concerns, but in February, Reuters reported the government is changing its tune on that issue.

Gas prices aren’t the only economic concern on Sorensen’s plate.

“We have to make sure that we don’t have big corporations and the big grocery companies that are gouging people when they go to the grocery store, just by corporate greed, just to make sure that their stock price stays up. But then also, we have to understand that one of the most inflated costs is prescription drugs. I have the Stop Games Act in Congress, and so I am going to work as hard as I can in the 119th Congress to get this through,” said Rep. Sorensen.

McGraw said he would work to address the housing shortage in America by increasing the supply of homes

“How do we do that? We bring down inflation. Homes cost less. We bring down the interest rate, homes cost less. And when homes cost less, the price of insuring it costs less. The down payment isn’t as big,” McGraw said.

“Right now, we’re in a real housing shortage in America because those that would normally be transitioning into purchasing homes cannot afford to do so. Interest rates are so high that people that would be in a position of, let’s say, downsizing and making that housing stock available, they’re afraid to do it because they can’t afford to buy a replacement home,” said McGraw.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.