CQ Politics

The 3rd covers the southwest corner of Chicago and adjacent suburbs, part of a working-class region known as the Bungalow Belt that is stocked with voters of Eastern European, Italian and Irish descent.

Chicago residents make up about 40 percent of the district population. The 3rd includes the historically Irish neighborhood of Bridgeport, which is the political base of the powerful Daley family, and southwest Chicago neighborhoods such as Beverly, West Lawn, Clearing and Garfield Ridge, where Midway Airport is located. The largely Hispanic West Lawn and West Eldson neighborhoods have experienced rapid growth.

Crisscrossed by highways, railroads and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the 3rd has historically served as a manufacturing and distribution center. The district is home to the Nabisco bakery, the largest “biscuit” bakery in the world, and the Nabisco Distribution Center, responsible for nearly 30 percent of all Nabisco product shipments. Expansion at Midway in the early 2000s broadened the district’s retail and service base and created new jobs for district residents. Although several “legacy carriers,” such as American Airlines and United Airlines, scaled back operations here to concentrate on nearby O’Hare International Airport (in the 6th), Southwest Airlines has expanded to fill the void.

In national elections, the 3rd typically votes Democratic, but not by the same wide margins as other Chicago-based districts — John Kerry won 59 percent of the 2004 presidential vote here. Many working- and middle-class voters lean to the right on social issues, and there is an ample GOP vote in the district’s more affluent western Cook County suburbs.

Major Industry

Transportation, warehouses, manufacturing

Cities

Chicago (pt.), 266,264; Oak Lawn, 55,245; Berwyn (pt.), 51,179; Burbank, 27,902

notable

Berwyn is home to the world’s largest laundromat, with roughly300 washers and dryers combined, which runs on solar power; The South Side Irish parade, in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, calls itself the largest neighborhood-based St. Patrick’s Day parade outside of Dublin.