GOP hopes to recapture the House this November hinge on the success of a few underdog challengers to Democratic incumbents. One such candidate, entrepreneur Bobby Schilling from Moline, Illinois, is running to unseat second-term Democrat Phil Hare in Illinois-17. A 46-year-old father of no fewer than ten children, Schilling was raised and educated in the 17^th district, where he and his wife operate a successful Italian restaurant they opened 13 years ago.

Schilling, though, has greater concerns than his pizzeria — he’s worried about rapid government expansion of the past 17 months and years of out-of-control spending in Washington.  By comparison, his opponent, Hare, seems unconcerned with the enormous federal deficit, bragging on his website about his successful efforts to secure earmarks and his “plum assignment” to the “powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.”  He voted for last year’s pork-laden stimulus bill that over two-thirds of his constituents, according to a We Ask America poll, believed had not improved the western Illinois economy as of last November.

Schilling promises that if he is elected, “Nancy Pelosi won’t run our district anymore.” Having earned 100 percent ratings from the far-left Americans for Democratic Action and ACLU, Hare has sided with his party leadership on virtually every issue from Iraq to gay marriage, and has been a reliable vote on key Obama administration initiatives. He voted for the president’s health care bill, even though last November’s We Ask America poll indicated that 61 percent of his district’s residents thought the House version of the bill would not improve the American health care system.  Asked at a town hall meeting which part of the Constitution authorized Congress to pass such a law, he said he didn’t know, adding, “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this.” As Schilling sees it, a vote for Hare is a vote for Pelosi.