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The homes of candidates inside the 5th congressional District are marked with a green pin; those outside are red. Click  the pins to find out more. 

Each morning, Jon Stewart wakes up in north suburban Deerfield, eight miles outside of the congressional district he hopes to represent.

By about 7:30, the Republican running to fill Rahm Emanuel’s empty House seat is listening to AM radio as he drives south along I-294. Twelve minutes later, he finally crosses into Illinois’ 5th congressional district, a place he has spent countless hours and his own hard-earned money trying to represent.

Some might call Stewart a carpetbagger, but the car salesman and ex-professional wrestler likes the term “commuter candidate.”

“I’m not just, like, somebody from Tallahassee, Florida, moving up here and running for Congress,” said Stewart, who lives in Illinois’ 10th District. “The 5th District is near and dear to my life.”

Stewart isn’t the only candidate on the March 3 primary ballot who hopes to commute his way to win the special election. He’s one of five people in the running who make their beds outside of the 5th—and it’s all perfectly legal.

The federal Constitution lays down some requirements for would-be U.S. representatives, as does Illinois law. But though you must be a certain age (25) and must have lived in the state for a certain period of time (30 days), there is no legal roadblock preventing qualified candidates from running in a district outside of their own.

“It does not exist at the federal level and it never has,” said Dawn Clark Netsch, a former Illinois state senator and comptroller who teaches law at Northwestern University. “[But] it seems to me it’s usually a pretty good idea to get into the district, because you could be called a carpetbagger forever.”

But most of the candidates on the special primary ballot who live outside of the 5th still claim strong connections to the district.

Even though Stewart has lived in Lake County for nine years, he grew up in the 5th, and his family has owned a car dealership there for nearly 30 years. If elected, Stewart said he plans to move into the district.

Green Party candidate Simon Ribeiro grew up in Evanston, where he now lives and works as a kindergarten teacher. But he said his college years at Northeastern Illinois University and his work in the Chicago Public Schools system have more than qualified him to represent Emanuel’s former district.

“We see carpetbaggers a lot in politics, but this isn’t me going from one region of the country to the other,” Ribeiro said. “This is literally, like, two or three miles. I don’t feel that me not living in the district should show that I don’t have any real connection to the district.”

Another out-of-district candidate, Republican Tom Hanson, said being able to represent the 5th District while living in the 7th would be a sort of luxury.

“I’d have my time to go home at night and relax and get my peace of mind, and then there are nights that I would have to go out and go to town meetings or whatever,” said Hanson, who lost to Emanuel in November. “I can work in the 5th District, but I won’t have somebody hassling me about politics in the elevator in my own building.”

The last candidate on the special primary ballot who lives outside of the 5th District, Democrat Cary Capparelli, did not return a phone call for comment.

Despite the possible perks Hanson listed, the politics of place have contributed to much mud-slinging in Illinois elections past.

Last November, Democrat Dan Seals drew flak from his opponent, Republican Mark Kirk, because Seals lived a mere block outside of the 10th congressional District he was running to represent.

A more geographically flagrant example comes from the 2004 race for Illinois’ U.S. Senate. After Republican Jack Ryan left the race, the GOP imported Alan Keyes from Maryland to run against Barack Obama.

Keyes, who had never lived in Illinois, lost by a landslide.

Several 5th District candidates dismissed their non-residency, saying that congressional district lines are the result of political gerrymandering, and often don’t conform to social or geographical boundaries.

“The district used to go all the way down to North Avenue and California,” said Democrat Victor Forys, who lives in the 9th District but keeps a medical practice in the 5th. “It moves around. In a year or two [after the census and redistricting] they might switch it again.”

And because the districts are redrawn every 10 years, Netsch said things can be confusing—even for the candidates running in the 5th.

“One of the candidates in the district, who shall go nameless, called specifically to ask for my support and didn’t know that I don't live in the district.” Netsch said. “But at one time I probably might have been, and I might be again.”

And in an era of high-speed transit and higher-speed communication, a candidate’s home address may not mean much, she said.

“Would I prefer that my congressman or -woman live in the district? Yeah. But would I consider it absolutely fatal if he or she did not? Not necessarily.”