Longtime Lake County Board member Diane Hewitt will apparently advance to the general election, sweeping the District 8 Democratic primary election against former Waukegan alderman and business owner Charles Rukstales.
With all precincts reporting, the incumbent received 75.45% of the 1,161 votes cast, while the challenger received 24.55% of the votes, according to the unofficial results.
“I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I’m very fortunate to have fantastic constituents,” Hewitt said in an interview earlier this month.
Hewitt has fended off multiple primary challenges since she first took office in 2008. The 69-year-old from Zion won a three-person primary in 2012, and also won in the 2016 and 2020 general elections with more than 70% of the vote.
In 2022, County Board redistricting forced an election matchup between Hewitt, at that time representing District 2, and new board appointee Steve Snarski, a 32-year-old Realtor.
The new boundaries drew Hewitt’s old district of mostly Wauconda into Snarski’s District 8, which was expanded from a Waukegan-only district to include parts of Beach Park, Zion and the northeast part of Gurnee.
Some of the most pressing issues for the candidates and residents of District 8 include the proposed Waukegan Airport expansion and the remaining coal ash at the NRG Waukegan Generating Station.
There is no Republican candidate for District 8, so Hewitt will likely retain her long-held seat come November.
Though voter turnout is typically highest in presidential primaries, participation is trending lower in Lake County, where there were few contested local elections this cycle and predetermined presidential primaries.
When early votes and vote-by-mail ballots received were combined, the pre-election turnout was approximately 43% of what it was four years ago in the last presidential primary, according to the Lake County Clerk’s Office.
As of Tuesday at 8 p.m., only 11.45% of registered Lake County voters cast a ballot in the primary election.
In 2020, 23.6% of voters cast a ballot in the primary election, according to Lake County Election and Voter Registration Board data – a relatively low turnout, but not surprising due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2016, the primary election voter turnout was 44.32% and the 2012 primary election voter turnout was 23.6%.
The highest recorded voter turnout for Lake County was in 2008, when 74.3% of registered voters cast their ballots, according to county election data.
chilles@chicagotribune.com
