Anderson’s Bookshop co-owner Becky Anderson will not be the Democratic Party’s candidate in November in the campaign to unseat U.S. Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton) in Illinois’s sixth district.
Anderson, who filed in July under her married name Becky Anderson Wilkins to run in the March 20 primary, came in fifth in the crowded seven-candidate primary. With 86% of the 64 precincts in the district reporting at press time, she received 2,728 votes, or 5.7%.
The district, in Chicago’s western suburbs, includes parts of Cook, DuPage, Kane, McHenry, and Lake counties. Roskam has been its representative for the past 12 years and is running for a seventh term.
Anderson is a sixth-generation co-owner with her brothers of Anderson’s Bookshops, which is headquartered in Naperville and has outlets in LaGrange and Downer’s Grove. It was PW’s Bookstore of the Year in 2011. Anderson served as president of the board of the American Booksellers Association from 2011-2013.
Anderson ran on a platform that touted her experience as an indie bookseller and small business owner. Many in the industry actively supported her campaign, including a group of 12 prominent indie booksellers and the ABA's Oren Teicher (acting in a personal capacity), who sponsored a fundraiser for her at the conference hotel during Winter Institute.
Anderson's FEC financial disclosure reports for the $300,000 she raised includes a list of numerous donors from the industry, with a number of notable publishers, indie booksellers and authors, among them Leonard Riggio, the founder and executive chairman of Barnes & Noble, who gave the maximum contribution, of $2,700.
