When Republican voters in Illinois' 8th Congressional District go to the polls on Feb. 5 for their state's Super Tuesday presidential primary, they also will decide who will represent their party in one of its most important House races this year -- its bid to take back the seat in this typically Republican-leaning suburban Chicago district, which Democratic moderate Melissa Bean won in a big 2004 upset and then successfully defended in 2006.

It appears highly likely that those voters will select Steve Greenberg, a wealthy entrepreneur and former minor league hockey player who has raised much more campaign money than either of the other businessmen seeking the Republican nomination, Ken Arnold and Kirk Morris.

If this sounds like a familiar scenario to 8th District residents, it is because the Republicans followed a similar path in 2006, nominating wealthy investment banker David McSweeney as their challenger to Bean. Although McSweeney was one of the few challengers to outspend an incumbent over the course of the 2005-06 campaign cycle, Bean won by 51 percent to 44 percent, with liberal independent candidate William C. Scheurer taking 5 percent.

But Greenberg contends that his mixture of economic conservatism and centrist views on social issues is a better approach to unseating Bean than the down-the-line conservatism that McSweeney presented in 2006. McSweeney staked out positions on issues such as abortion that "were far too conservative for this district," Greenberg said.

Greenberg also speculated that the political atmosphere in the 2006 elections -- which cost the Republicans control of both chambers of Congress -- was much worse in general for GOP candidates than the 2008 general election campaign will be.

The 8th District is one of the top takeover targets for national Republican campaign strategists, who must figure out a way to recapture some of the seats the party has recently lost if they are to cut into the Democrats' current majority, or at least hold their own in this November's elections.

But the fact that Bean was able to win election and re-election in the 8th suggests that she will again be very tough to beat. CQ Politics currently rates the district's general election race as Leans Democratic.

The 8th District takes in a section of Chicago's northwestern suburbia, includes parts of cities such as Schaumburg, Palatine and Hoffman Estates, then spreads out to the Wisconsin border to the north and Lake Michigan on the east. Its largely white-collar population is the third most-affluent in terms of median income among Illinois' 19 districts -- and its electorate has long had a conservative lean.

President Bush, who lost the statewide vote by a wide margin in 2004, took 55 percent of the vote in the 8th. Republican Rep. Philip M. Crane, who long dominated district politics after first winning his seat in 1969, voiced such undistilled conservatism that some activists on the right viewed him as a younger alternative to Ronald Reagan during his short-lived bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. Bean, a telecommunications consulting firm president, lost her initial House bid to Crane by 57 percent to 43 percent.

But Bean, a vigorous and likeable campaigner, won her rematch with Crane by 52 percent to 48 percent, then extended her margin to 7 points over McSweeney in 2006. Republicans attributed their 2004 setback to a sense that Crane had grown bored with the job and distant from his constituents, and the 2006 defeat to a national political atmosphere that was toxic for their party. But Democrats credited Bean's campaign skills and centrist positions on issues such as taxes and spending for her success.

Bean has continued to try to burnish her moderate credentials. She is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats. In Congressional Quarterly's "party unity" vote study for 2007, Bean voted with most House Democrats against most Republicans on mainly party-line votes 84 percent of the time, by far the lowest score among the 10 Democrats in Illinois' U.S. House delegation.

This is a record that doesn't thrill some in the liberal wing of Bean's own Democratic Party. Randi Scheurer -- an artist, political activist and wife of 2006 independent candidate William Scheurer -- filed to run in the Feb. 5 Democratic primary.

Scheurer, on her Web site, calls Bean "Republican-Lite." The challenger labels her own top three issues as "Peaceful Security," "Health Care For All" and "Working Families." She supports rapidly withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and has criticized Bean for voting to continue funding for the military intervention in that nation. In addition, Scheurer considers Bean's votes as too far to the right virtually across the board -- on issues ranging from fair trade and energy to health care and immigration.

It does not appear, however, that Scheurer has the resources to deliver her views to Democratic primary voters. She has not filed a campaign finance report with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), something that is required of any candidate who has raised or spent at least $5,000 on a campaign for federal office. Bean, on the other hand, has built a sizable campaign treasury, with $1.9 million in receipts and $1.3 million cash on hand through Jan. 16

Republicans, however, take an opposite tack from Scheurer, arguing that Bean's reputation as a centrist is overrated. Greenberg, for instance, characterizes Bean as a "tax and spend Democrat." He said that Bean has been disingenuous by calling herself a moderate, citing a number of Bean's 2007 votes, including those he described as not tough enough on illegal immigration. Arnold and Morris have also spent time talking about a need for immigration reform. All three support the Iraq war and the troop "surge" instituted last year by Bush, though for Morris, it is a personal as well as political matter: His oldest son, Geoffrey, was killed in Iraq in April 2004 while on duty as a Marine.

As for their primary contest, Greenberg said his "support and resources" are what separate him from his Republican opponents. In addition to a primary endorsement from the Chicago Tribune, Greenberg touted the support he is receiving from "all four GOP state senators in the 8th District," as well as from former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who resigned late last year from his seat in Illinois' 14th District, and the remaining eight Republican members of the Illinois congressional delegation.

Greenberg totaled $410,000 in campaign receipts through Jan. 16, the end of the FEC's pre-primary reporting period. The $70,000 he put into his campaign from his own pockets was nearly as much as the totals that Morris ($40,000) and Arnold ($37,000) have raised combined. Greenberg also had $62,400 in cash on hand as of Jan. 16 to just $2,900 for Arnold and $1,200 for Morris.

Each of the underdog candidates is, nonetheless, contending that he is better suited to be the Republican nominee. Arnold said that his experience in the private sector managing health care and retirement issues -- two areas he said "are in crisis" nationally -- best prepares him to take those hot-button issues on in Congress.

Morris pointed out that his experience within the district out-matches his opponents'. Having lived in the 8th District his entire life, or "longer than both of my opponents combined," Morris said, "I understand and share the concerns of the people of this district better than my opponents."