Representative Robert T. Schilling

Robert Todd Schilling (January 23, 1964 – April 6, 2021) was an American businessman and politician who served as a Republican U.S. Representative from Illinois’s 17th congressional district from January 3, 2011, to January 3, 2013. During his single term in the United States House of Representatives, he represented a largely industrial and agricultural district in western Illinois and participated in the legislative process at a time of significant national debate over federal spending, health care, and economic recovery.

Schilling was born and raised in Rock Island, Illinois, in the heart of the Quad Cities. He graduated from Alleman Catholic High School in Rock Island and went on to attend Black Hawk College, a community college serving the region. He grew up in a Democratic family and initially identified as a Democrat himself, but over time his political views shifted rightward. Influenced by the policies and rhetoric of President Ronald Reagan, he came to describe himself as a “Reagan Republican,” a change that would later shape his political ambitions and public positions.

Before entering elective office, Schilling built a career in both industrial labor and the private sector. From 1983 to 1987 he worked at Container Corporation of America, where he was a union steward for the local chapter of the United Paper Workers International Union, gaining early experience with organized labor and workplace issues. He then became an insurance agent with Prudential Insurance Company, serving from 1987 to 1995. In his final year with Prudential he ranked in the top 5 percent of all agents nationwide, and during this period he also served as treasurer for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union for four years. In 1996, Schilling and his wife, Christie, opened Saint Giuseppe’s Heavenly Pizza in Moline, Illinois. The family-run restaurant became both a local business fixture and a central element of his public identity. Schilling managed the restaurant until his election to Congress, at which point he left its operation to his son. Public financial disclosures later showed the restaurant’s reported value declining in the early 2010s from an estimated range of $100,000–$250,000 to $50,000–$100,000, a change his son and campaign manager Terry Schilling publicly attributed to the weakened real estate market in East Moline as evidence of the broader economic challenges facing the region.

Schilling’s move into politics was closely tied to his evolving conservatism and his engagement with grassroots movements on the right. He was influenced by radio and television personality Glenn Beck and became one of the “9–12 Candidates,” a group associated with Beck’s 9–12 Project, signing a contract affirming its principles and values. Schilling later said he was inspired to run for office after watching then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tell “Joe the Plumber” that government should “spread the wealth around,” a comment that led him to abandon plans to franchise his pizza business and instead seek public office. He announced his candidacy for Illinois’s 17th congressional district in April 2009 and officially filed for the Republican nomination in October 2009. Unopposed in the Republican primary, he campaigned as a Tea Party–aligned conservative, pledging not to participate in the congressional pension program, to keep his private health insurance instead of joining the congressional plan, to donate any pay raises he received, to limit himself to no more than eight years in Congress, and not to vote for any bill he had not read, declaring, “I’m not going to make a career out of this.”

The 2010 general election in Illinois’s 17th district drew national attention. Initially rated “safe Democratic” by political handicappers, the race shifted over the course of the campaign; by Election Day, RealClearPolitics, the Cook Political Report, CQ Politics, and The New York Times all rated it as “leans Republican.” The contest was profiled by CNN as one of the country’s top 100 House races. Schilling’s campaign, which relied heavily on individual donors—who provided about 80 percent of the roughly $1 million he raised—set an off-year fundraising record for a challenger in the district, amassing about $89,000 in 2009 alone. Incumbent Democrat Phil Hare depended more heavily on political action committees, which contributed about two-thirds of his $1.3 million total. Schilling was endorsed by the Quincy Tea Party group, the John Deere PAC, the United States Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Representative Aaron Schock of Illinois, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Newspapers were divided, but the Chicago Tribune and the Sauk Valley News were among those endorsing Schilling, with the Tribune issuing a high-profile endorsement in October 2010. During the campaign, Hare criticized Schilling for living 0.99 miles outside the 17th District, though the Constitution only requires members of Congress to reside in the state they represent; Schilling’s wife responded that their restaurant, which employed people and paid taxes in the district, lay within its boundaries and that gerrymandering had placed their home just beyond the district line. In the November 2010 general election, Schilling defeated Hare by an unexpectedly large margin, winning 53 percent of the vote to Hare’s 43 percent and carrying Hare’s home base of Rock Island County—a traditionally heavily Democratic county and home to the district’s largest cities, Rock Island and Moline—by nine points. By the end of the campaign, Schilling’s committee had raised $1,095,167 and spent $1,078,911, later relying more on PAC contributions from entities such as Wal-Mart, the American Medical Association, Caterpillar Inc., and Archer Daniels Midland Co. to retire campaign debt.

Schilling took office as a member of the 112th Congress on January 3, 2011, representing Illinois’s 17th congressional district. His wife and ten children attended his formal swearing-in on January 5, 2011, drawing national media attention and an interview with Diane Sawyer. In Congress, he served on the Committee on Agriculture, including the Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management and the Subcommittee on Rural Development, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture; the Committee on Armed Services, including the Subcommittee on Readiness and the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities; and the Committee on Small Business. His early legislative actions reflected both fiscal conservatism and a willingness at times to break with party leadership. He joined 25 other freshman Republicans in voting against extending certain provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, arguing that the 45 minutes allotted for floor debate were inadequate for such a significant measure. In February 2011, he joined 130 House Republicans in voting against a $450 million budget cut for an extra F-35 fighter-jet engine, a project the Department of Defense had repeatedly sought to terminate and that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had called “a waste of nearly 3 billion.” He also voted for a broader package of spending cuts that eliminated a $230 million federal grant for an Amtrak line from Chicago to Iowa City, a project he had previously supported during his campaign as “critically important to both the economy and the environment of the Midwest.” Schilling defended his changed position by saying that, in light of the national debt and deficit, he had to distinguish between wants and needs and that his constituents had elected him to confront federal spending rather than maintain “business as usual.” In June 2011, he introduced legislation to prevent members of Congress from receiving their congressional pensions before reaching the Social Security retirement age. During the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, he voted to raise the federal debt limit. On October 29, 2011, he delivered the Republican response to the President’s weekly radio address.

Schilling’s term in Congress was also marked by personal and security challenges. In October 2011, a California resident issued a death threat that specifically mentioned him, promising a reward to anyone who assassinated the congressman. The FBI and the United States Capitol Police opened an investigation, and authorities advised Schilling to “lay low” while they pursued the case. A spokeswoman for his office said the family was taking “recommended precautions,” and reports suggested the same individual might have been responsible for threats against former President George W. Bush, several senior security and defense officials, and Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado. Schilling stated that the threat appeared to be “a general threat to all members of Congress,” but noted that his name had been singled out, adding, “You just don’t know what people are thinking…It’s something we’re not going to take lightly.” In recognition of his work on agricultural and bipartisan issues, he received the “Friend of Agriculture Award” from the Stephenson County Farm Bureau in September 2012 and the “No Labels Problem Solvers Seal” in October 2012.

In policy terms, Schilling was widely regarded as a Tea Party–aligned conservative. He was staunchly pro-life and spoke at the 2011 March for Life. He argued that the federal government should withdraw from regulating education, advocating for local control of schools. He supported repealing the Democratic-backed health care reform law, which he believed was unconstitutional, and favored tort reform and allowing the purchase of health insurance across state lines. A fiscal conservative who emphasized small government, he supported term limits for members of Congress and advocated lowering the corporate tax rate. In foreign and national security policy, he supported a troop surge in the War in Afghanistan and opposed transferring detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, arguing that detainees should be tried before military courts rather than in U.S. civilian federal courts.

Schilling sought a second term in 2012 but faced a significantly altered political landscape. Following the 2010 census, Illinois’s Democratic-controlled legislature redrew the 17th district to strengthen its Democratic tilt. The redistricting removed Quincy, Decatur, and the district’s portion of Springfield, replacing them with more Democratic-leaning areas of Peoria and Rockford. The National Journal’s Cook Political Report listed Schilling among the top ten Republicans most vulnerable to redistricting in 2012. He was placed in the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Patriot Program, designed to protect endangered incumbents. By June 30, 2011, Schilling had raised $1.4 million and reported $950,000 cash on hand. His Democratic challenger in the general election was Cheri Bustos, a former East Moline City Council alderwoman. While major political ratings initially classified the race as “lean Democrat,” by September 2012 Roll Call, the Cook Political Report, and the Rothenberg Political Report had all shifted their assessments to “toss-up,” with Cook suggesting Schilling held a slight advantage. Schilling received endorsements from the Chicago Tribune, the Rockford Register Star, former Congressman Tom Railsback, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the Galesburg Register-Mail, among others. In the November 2012 election, however, Bustos defeated him by a margin of 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent. Following his defeat, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Schilling looked forward to refocusing on his pizza business after losing his bid for a second term.

After leaving Congress, Schilling remained active in electoral politics. Political observers widely expected him to seek a rematch with Bustos, and on July 8, 2013, he formally announced his candidacy for his former seat in the 2014 election, accusing Bustos of failing the middle class and criticizing her for not supporting any budget plans in Congress. According to The Hill, Schilling was regarded as a skilled grassroots campaigner but “historically has not been a strong fundraiser.” Fundraising figures reflected this assessment: in 2013 Bustos raised approximately $1.1 million, while Schilling raised about $297,000. He again received the endorsement of the Chicago Tribune. In the November 4, 2014 general election, Bustos defeated Schilling by a margin of 55.5 percent to 44.5 percent, ending his efforts to reclaim the Illinois seat he had held in the 112th Congress.

Following his Illinois campaigns, Schilling relocated with his family from Illinois to Iowa, settling in LeClaire, Iowa, along the Mississippi River. After Democratic Representative Dave Loebsack, first elected in 2006, announced his retirement from Iowa’s 2nd congressional district, Schilling declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for that open seat. In the 2020 Republican primary, he faced state senator Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who had previously been the Republican nominee for the district in 2008, 2010, and 2014. Schilling lost the primary to Miller-Meeks, marking the final electoral contest of his political career.

Schilling’s public life was closely intertwined with his large family and Catholic faith. He was married to Christie Schilling, and together they had ten children, the youngest of whom was born in February 2010, as well as several grandchildren. His family’s presence at his 2011 swearing-in ceremony became a notable human-interest aspect of his brief congressional tenure. In May 2020, Schilling was diagnosed with cancer. He died from the disease on April 6, 2021, at the age of 57, while residing in LeClaire, Iowa. His passing marked the end of a career that spanned industrial labor, small business ownership, and service in the U.S. House of Representatives during a period of intense partisan and ideological conflict in American politics.