Chicago’s governor’s race tightens over transit fares as Kaminski seeks a rare third term

Chicago Governor Theodore Kaminski is still favored to win a third term on November 3. But a fare increase that took effect on the state’s commuter trains this month has turned what Democrats expected to be a formality into a race, and Republican nominee Diane Voss is campaigning as if she knows it.

Voss, a downstate state senator, has spent September at train stations handing out flyers shaped like fare cards. Her message — pension reform, a property-tax freeze and “a governor who rides the train he’s charging you for” — is aimed at suburban voters who have backed Kaminski twice.

Kaminski defended the increase as the price of keeping the system solvent while the state pays down its pension debt. “I could have frozen the fares and frozen the trains,” he said at a lakefront event on Saturday. His campaign points to the state’s partisan lean: Chicago has not elected a Republican governor this century.

Nationally, the race is a test of whether the affordability message that has worked for Republicans in closer states can travel to deep-blue territory in a midterm year. Third terms are rare, and voters have punished incumbents over transit costs before. CNN’s full forecast for the race is on the Elections page.