Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois, who headed the House Democrats’ campaign arm in 2020 when the party unexpectedly lost seats, will retire from the House after the 2022 elections.
“Today, I’m announcing I will not seek reelection after completing this term,” Bustos said in a video statement. “It will be a new decade, and I feel it’s time for a new voice.”
Bustos was first elected to the House in 2012, after a career as a reporter and then in the healthcare sector. She got to the House by beating the late GOP Rep. Bobby Schilling in a northwest Illinois district.
Bustos was well-liked among her House Democratic colleagues and won the position of chairwoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. With then-President Donald Trump unpopular in many quarters, House Democrats were expected to expand the majority they won in 2018 after eight years in the minority. However, Democrats ended up losing a dozen seats, leaving them with the narrowest House majority since the 1930s.
Bustos herself had a closer-than-expected race in her district, which covers the northwest corner of Illinois and straddles the Iowa state line. Trump beat President Joe Biden in the district 49.7% to 48.1%. Bustos chose not to run for another term as DCCC chairwoman.
The retirement of Bustos could ease the redistricting process in Illinois, one of the few states where Democrats are in control. Illinois is losing a House seat based on the 2020 census, and with Bustos out of the way, Democratic mapmakers could potentially move some of the more Democratic territory in her current district to those of her House colleagues from the same party, Reps. Lauren Underwood and Bill Foster. State Democrats could also force two Republican House members to run against each other in the same district, helping eliminate one of them from the House.
Bustos is the fifth House member to announce his or her retirement ahead of the 2022 elections, along with Reps. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, Ann Kirkpatrick, an Arizona Democrat, Tom Reed, a New York Republican, and Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat.
