In Illinois’s 17th District, everyone, including Democratic candidates, have treated Esther Joy King as the as-good-as the Republican primary winner. There’s good reason for that. She ran in 2020, when she came close to beating the current outgoing congresswoman, Democrat Cheri Bustos. And, currently, King has more money — by a long shot — than anyone, including all the Democratic candidates. All that said, she’s leading with 1 percent of expected votes in, but not by much: 51.3 percent to first-time candidate Charles Helmick’s 48.7 percent.
