Running in Illinois’ new southwest suburban 11th congressional district are longtime 13th district Republican Congresswoman Judy Biggert and former 14th district Democratic Congressman Bill Foster.

A Democrat-controlled state legislature redrew the 11th district to include portions of Kane, Kendall, Will, DuPage and suburban Cook Counties. It most notably contains the mega-suburb ties of Naperville, but ominously for Biggert, the Democrat-laden mini-cities of Joliet and Aurora.

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Biggert Basics

Judith “Judy” Biggert, 75, was born in Chicago but grew up in Wilmette and attended New Trier High School. She went to Stanford University for her bachelor’s degree in international relations, then to Northwestern for law school where she was an editor of the law review.

Biggert started her legal career as a clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and began her political career in 1992 when she was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. She was first elected to Congress in 1998 after defeating Peter Roskam in the Republican primary for the 13th district. In 2008 she won re-election to her sixth term.

According to her campaign website, she served as President of the Board of Education of Hinsdale Township High School, chairman of the Hinsdale Plan Commission and other local leadership positions. She is also a member of the American Bar Association, the Illinois State Bar Association, the DuPage Bar Association and the DuPage Association of Women Lawyers.

Biggert lives in Hinsdale with her husband Rody. They have four children and nine grandchildren.

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Foster Facts

George William “Bill” Foster, 57, earned his bachelor’s degree in physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his PhD in physics from Harvard. Foster was a young entrepreneur at age 19 when he started Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc., with his brother and friends. According to the company’s website, they “now manufacture more than half of the theater lighting equipment in the United States.”

Foster moved to Illinois in 1984 to work for roughly 24 years at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, commonly known as Fermilab, as a physicist and particle accelerator designer.

In March of 2008, Foster ran for and won a special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert after he resigned to become a lobbyist. He then won re-election in November 2008, served a full term, and then lost to Republican Randy Hultgren in 2010.

Foster married and later divorced his first wife Ann in the mid ’90s. She is still a software engineer at his company. According to his campaign website, they had joint custody of their two children and decided to live close to each other in Batavia in order to raise them.Foster remarried and now lives in Naperville with his wife Aesook.

Biggert and Foster are running to replace Republican Adam Kinzinger, who decided to run in the 16th district instead of seeking re-election as the incumbent in the redrawn 11th. The district contains approximately half of what was previously Biggert’s 13th district.

The 11th district was drawn to be dominantly Democratic. According to Foster’s website, the new district is approximately 60 percent Caucasian, 22 percent Hispanic, 11 percent African American and seven percent Asian.

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Story from DePolitics2012.com, featuring work by DePaul communications graduate students.