CHICAGO — Independent would-be candidates for a Southwest Side congressional seat are uniting against two targets as they look ahead to November, one a familiar enemy, the other much less so.

President Donald Trump must be beaten, each independent in Illinois’ 4th Congressional District said Wednesday during the campaign’s first town hall.

And the five hopefuls, many Democrats themselves, agreed: Patty García, the Democratic nominee, needs to go down too.

Nobody in the group that appeared at a forum put on by the College Democrats at the University of Illinois Chicago has major party backing. And they all face the daunting task of collecting thousands of signatures in order to make the general election ballot, at which point they would be underdogs against Patty García.

But their nascent campaigns are animated by their disdain for the way Patty García was handed the party’s nomination. When retiring U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García announced at the last minute in March that he would not run again, only Patty García, his chief of staff, had time to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot for the Democratic primary, thanks to a heads-up from her boss, they said.

“It was the most undemocratic act that you can do as an elected official,” Lyons Mayor Chris Getty said of the congressman’s attempted handoff during the Wednesday town hall.

Most of the candidates at the event said the insider move inspired them to enter the race as independents, teeing up a rare potential competitive general election for the Latino-majority district that stretches from Pilsen to Oak Brook and from Franklin Park to Burbank.

Jumping in after the ploy: Getty; Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, an outspoken City Council progressive; Mayra Macías, a former Planned Parenthood Action Fund member with deep ties to the Democratic Party; and Lindsay Church, a former Navy linguist who runs a nonprofit serving minority veterans.

Each steered questions back to Rep. García’s set-up maneuver.

Macías, who recently won an endorsement from Planned Parenthood, brought it up in her first shot at the mic, stretching while answering a question about the role age plays in politics by first praising the college student organizers for hosting the event.

“This is how democracy should function. We should be able to have a variety of tactics, debate ideas,” Macías said. “Unfortunately, because of the way the current congressman decided to leave office, we are not able to do that.”

Later, Sigcho-Lopez invoked the formal reprimand Rep. García received when the U.S. House of Representatives voted 236-183 to censure him for the stunt.

“The censure is not enough. We have to make sure that they don’t get away with it,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “That’s when democracy dies.”

Like Getty, Macías and Sigcho-Lopez, Church committed to considering dropping out and supporting another candidate if they appeared better positioned to beat García.

“I entered this race knowing that winning for me was Patty García losing,” Church said.

Patty García, who is not related to Rep. Garcia, was not invited to the UIC event. Her campaign spokesperson, Kait Sweeney, released a statement Thursday in response to questions about the criticism, saying García “has been out connecting directly with voters.”

“We’re hearing real concerns about immigration, cost of living, and standing up to this federal administration — and that’s where our focus is,” Sweeney said. “We’re confident that Patty’s message and experience will resonate with the community.”

Among those who did appear, only Ed Hershey, running under the banner of the leftist Working Class Party, said he would not drop out if he was poised to lose. Hershey had already decided to run for the seat when Rep. García stepped down — and was even in line to drop off his petitions when he first learned about the controversial scheme, he said.

“I am running against the system,” Hershey said while criticizing both parties for deporting immigrants and spending heavily on wars. “Our rights are being decreased by the Democratic Party also, and so I don’t think keeping the Democrats here or nationally is going to solve that problem.”

The five independents, all left of center, could split votes alongside Patty García to create a rare opening for Republicans in the Democrat-dominated district. GOP nominee Lupe Castillo ran in 2024 and lost with 27.3% of the vote.

Castillo, a four-decade Little Village resident and former pharmacy technician, told the Tribune Thursday morning that she was glad the independent candidates had criticized Patty García.

“Because what Chuy did wasn’t fair and Patty should be ashamed of herself,” she said.

She said the district had worsened during Rep. García’s tenure. Businesses must be better supported and houses fixed, she added. Castillo generally supports Trump’s actions in office and believes immigrants should come to the country, but must do so legally and not take benefits away from American citizens, she said. And she was not all opposed to the actions of federal immigration agents in Chicago last fall.

“They should have been a little bit nicer in the way they did it. But the problem is, you got people here hiding them, that’s not fair,” Castillo said.

It was those sorts of sharply diverging views that led Macías and others to point to a Republican win as a danger.

“The biggest threat to this seat, other than obviously having someone with no integrity represent us, is making the seat flip red,” Macías said.

But while most candidates Wednesday promised they would weigh dropping out if Patty García or Castillo were closing in on victory, they provided few details on when and how decisions to get out of the race would be made.

Sigcho-Lopez waffled when asked by the debate’s moderators who he would vote for if not himself. He said later the first step would be seeing who collected the 10,816 valid voter signatures required to get on the ballot.

“It seems like everyone is in agreement that an anointing is unacceptable,” he told the Tribune.

Macías agreed on waiting to see who earns a spot on the ballot.

“There could be two of us that make it on the ballot. There could be four of us. We don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s who has the resources to run a campaign, because, at the end of the day, it requires resources to talk to voters, whether it’s money or people power.”

During the debate, the candidates showed far more political similarities than differences as they bashed Trump and called for greater affordability.

Getty, however, separated himself as the most centrist candidate at the forum. He diverged from his opponents when he said Israel’s war actions in Gaza do not constitute a genocide, and again when he expressed a willingness to receive money from super PACs.

“Any one of us, if we want to be realistic about getting elected, we are going to have to align with outside groups, we are going to have to align with other entities to make sure our message is heard, make sure our message is communicated,” he said.

The Lyons mayor also broke from the field when he said he would not support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He added that there should be a “clear process” for immigrants to become citizens and that federal immigration agents should not “come into neighborhoods to snatch people.”

For her part, Macías also broke from Church, Hershey and Sigcho-Lopez by stopping short of calling for ICE’s abolition, but said federal immigration agents who overstepped should be quickly prosecuted.

Asked if she would accept money from super PACs, Macías also touted an endorsement from End Citizens United, a group advocating for campaign finance reform to reduce the influence of undisclosed money in politics.

Sigcho-Lopez followed suit, saying Congress must tax “the 938 billionaires” and rich corporations, and Church agreed.

“I’d rather walk away with my morals and values,” Church said.

And it was an “easy no” on super PAC money for Hershey.

“They haven’t been asking,” he said.

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