Rockford Sun

Jake Castanza knows he doesn’t have much of a resume.

He’s hoping Winnebago County voters help him start building one.

The 28 year-old Boylan Catholic alumnus was still a college student until earlier this year. Now, rather than hunting for a job, he’s instead asking voters to send him to Springfield to represent them.

Mug shot from Castanza's May 2008 arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia.

In May, Castanza graduated from Purdue University in Indiana with a master’s degree in communications. A month later, he started campaigning.

He is challenging three-term incumbent Republican state Rep. John Cabello (R-Machesney Park), a 47-year-old Rockford police detective, to represent the 68th Illinois House District.

The 68th includes most of Machesney Park, Loves Park, Roscoe and parts of the far north side of Rockford, including Owen Township.

That’s where Castanza lives with his father, Dominic, 60, a public pensioner and retired bridge operator who worked for the Illinois Army Corps of Engineers.

Before he retired four years ago at age 56, Dominic Castanza was an officer of Laborers Local 32’s Political Action Committee, which has actively supported dozens of local politicians.

His dad’s former committee provided the first, $5,000 seed donation last fall to kick start Castanza’s run.

The "Montessori philosophy"

Castanza told the Rockford Register-Star that he "went to Montessori Magnet for grade school, and I attribute the way I navigate in my daily actions to the Montessori philosophy."

His political ambition has been longer than six months in the making, and not without hiccups.

As he was graduating from Boylan, in May 2008, Castanza was arrested and pleaded guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia, according to Winnebago County records. He was sentenced to 12 months probation and paid a $953 fine.

He'd attend Rock Valley College for community college before transferring to Western Illinois University to study political science.

Returning to Rockford, he was hired as assistant to the CEO of the Rockford YMCA before landing his only private sector job, a 2016 stint as an account specialist with Rockford B2B software company Cleo.

That only lasted six months before Castanza left and was appointed as the "executive director" of a labor union-funded Rockford non-profit that advocates for job training, a role in which he served while simultaneously attending Purdue.

The group, "Project First Rate," spent $130,640 in 2017, according to its public filings, handing out $17,505 in grants while advocating for a one percent Rockford sales tax, backed by the unions.

At his father’s knee

Castanza’s career experience might be minimal. But his political views were forged over years of observing his father, a laborer and left-leaning Winnebago County political activist who has aggressively opposed efforts to get public employees like himself to contribute substantive amounts to their own pensions.

In 2012, Dominic Castanza publicly backed Rockford Alderman Jim Hughes in an unsuccessful bid against incumbent independent Mayor Larry Morrissey, after he became outspoken on the subject.

A report by the Illinois Policy Institute had found that Rockford taxpayers were suffocating due to overpromised pensions, paying higher taxes today for dollars spent, if secretly, by elected officials decades ago.

It said that “Rockford taxpayers put three times more money toward city pensions than government employees do, but the city’s police and fire pensions are only funded 60 cents for every $1 promised for city workers’ retirement.”

Morrissey called for reforms to the city and state’s pension systems, warning payments to them would eventually make it impossible to fund current-day government services, including police and fire protection.

Morrissey’s candor then was met with fierce resistance from public employee union leaders like Castanza loathe to pay more, much less admit their pay packages had effectively bankrupted Rockford and many other municipalities across the state.

They argued higher taxes would cover any shortfalls, but Morrissey said tax hikes wouldn’t make a dent.

"The math, in fact, is easy," he said. "The politics, unfortunately, is hard."

Morissey defeated Hughes in 2012, winning 44 percent to his 38 percent. He completed his final, third term in office in 2016, but his predictions have proven prescient.

The city of Rockford announced earlier this year that it was exploring a sale of the city water system and significantly downsizing of its police and fire departments, eliminating as many as 67 positions, to pay growing retiree benefit costs. 

Current Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara, a Democrat, is now himself even calling for pension reforms, predicting that six in ten Rockford tax dollars will go to pensions in 2025. He has called the state system ludicrous.

Resistance to “math”

Jake Castanza disagrees with Morrissey and McNamara.

Castanza says he opposes all pension reforms, like ending double-dipping, requiring employees to contribute more to their own retirements, raising the retirement age or ending automatic, three percent cost of living increases for retirees.

In the current system, Illinois public pensioners save approximately three percent of what stand to collect, typically earning more in retirement than they do working. Some retire as early as age 51.

Instead of structural reform, Castanza supports raising income taxes and instituting a one percent, statewide property tax and using the money to fund public employee retirements.

Cabello vehemently opposes the tax hike proposals.

Predictably, Castanza’s positions have drawn support from pension status quo supporters in Springfield and Chicago, namely Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-Chicago).

According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, Castanza has raised $308,000 since Sept. 30, two-thirds of which came from Madigan, now his largest donor.

Madigan hopes Castanza will be part of the House supermajority he will need to pass tax hike proposals in the legislative session set to start in 2019.

CORRECTION: The initial version of this story incorrectly said Morrisey completed a "fourth: and final term in 2016. IT was actually his third and final term. This has been corrected.