Illinois lawmaker Sean Casten announced Monday night that his 17-year-old daughter, Gwen, had died, CBS Chicago reported. “The Casten family is seeking privacy and we will not comment further during this time of crisis,” the Casten office said in an email. She had just graduated from high school, according to a tweet from her father in late May. Her CV on Twitter says she was co-director of the Illinois chapter of March for Our Lives, the youth gun control group. FILE: Gwen Casten biographical photo Twitter Shortly before Casten’s congressional office announced his daughter’s death, Casten’s campaign urged all Illinois television stations to immediately remove his commercials from the air until further notice. Democrat from Downers Grove, 50-year-old Kasten is vying for his third term in Congress in the recently drawn 6th District, which he has represented since defeating incumbent Republican Peter Roskam in 2018. Casten is running against fellow fellow Marie Newman, a freshman, and Charles Hughes, a Nicor mechanical surgeon. “My heart goes out to the Casten family for the devastating loss of their daughter. My prayers are with Sean, Kara and the entire Casten family,” Newman said in a statement. Newman also immediately suspends all ads in its campaign. Newman chose to challenge Casten in the 2022 primaries after a Democratic-approved congressional reshuffle in Springfield’s capital put her in the 3rd Circuit with a large Spanish descent, represented by Chu. Garcia. Hughes, who is also a former candidate for councilor in the 23rd District of Chicago, ran against Newman in 2020 in the 3rd District of the state Congress, but finished a long fourth with only 2.3% of the vote in this race. Representatives of Hughes’s campaign were not immediately available for comment.
