Illinois
IL-04 (Southwest Chicago and suburbs)
Jesus “Chuy” García (i) vs. Raymond Lopez
Chuy García isn’t the hero to Chicago progressives he once was thanks to his mayoral campaign last year, but he remains on the right side of the issues in Congress, which is precisely why conservative malcontents hate him. One such malcontent is Raymond Lopez, who happens to be a Chicago Alderman in his third term. Lopez, a regular Fox News guest who refuses to join the Latino caucus because one of the members was mean to him, has a hard time fitting in with the mainstream of (nonpartisan) Chicago politics, which makes his decision to enter a Democratic primary absolutely fatal. Running a strong campaign, raising a ton of money, bringing in outside spending, and just generally making his election a priority of the monied Chicago business faction isn’t enough to overcome how out of step he is with voters in the primary. Of course, he didn’t actually do any of those things, and is instead running a sad shell of a campaign that seems primarily motivated by getting more newspapers to pay attention to him when he complains about things.
IL-06 (Southwest Chicago suburbs)
Sean Casten (i) vs. Mahnoor Ahmad vs. Charles Hughes
Sean Casten, New Democrat and recipient of DMFI help in his last primary, is predictably moderate, though at least close-ish to the center of the Democratic caucus, and takes the “Israel has an absolute right to defend itself” stance when it comes to a ceasefire in Gaza (good news—he’s not entirely opposed to one, just one that doesn’t have sufficient “accountability”). The surprisingly active progressive movement of suburban Chicago was never going to warm up to him immediately anyway, but the crisis in Gaza exacerbated the tension. Public health professional Mahnoor Ahmad is running against Casten, emphasizing Medicare for All and ending military aid to Israel. While she’s a disciplined and capable candidate, the reality is that her campaign had only raised a few thousand dollars until February, and has raised less than $100,000 total, which makes winning basically impossible—but sending a message is still plausible. Charles Hughes is a former Chicago Ward committee member and current perennial candidate.
IL-07 (Chicago’s West Side, the Loop, and suburbs)
Danny Davis (i) vs. Nikhil Bhatia vs. Kina Collins vs. Melissa Conyears-Ervin vs. Kouri Marshall
Danny Davis isn't going to be in Congress for much longer—you can quote us on that. His age has caught up with him in a big way, leaving him less able to campaign. In one extraordinary instance, his campaign used AI-generated imagery of Davis in lieu of photographs on his website because they couldn't get him to look presentable for the photographer. Additionally, his Black, Westside voter base is shrinking over time. While the assumption was for some time that Davis would exit via retirement, that assumption is looking less and less likely. Davis performed surprisingly weakly against a trio of underfunded challengers in 2020, barely cracking 60% of the vote. In 2022, one of those challengers, gun control activist Kina Collins, teamed up with Justice Democrats, and Davis chose not to join his fellow ex-Black Panther radical Bobby Rush in retiring, leading to a tight 52-46 victory for Davis. Now, the sharks are beginning to feed. Collins isn't the only serious opponent Davis has this year, thanks to the presence of Chicago City Controller Melissa Conyears-Ervin.
As a legislator, Davis has been a reliable vote and frequently in the right side of issues that divide the party. But he’s left his past radicalism behind, and has so thoroughly lost his desire to push on anything of substance that he quit the Progressive Caucus w few years ago. Outside of his day job, he's known for a lack of judgment that includes an embrace of both Louis Farrakhan and the South Korean Moonies cult. Collins, by contrast, is full of youthful energy, but her politics aren't guaranteed to be that much better—gun control is an issue that approximately 95% of Democratic politicians and 99% of urban Democratic politicians agree on. The previous Justice Democrats endorsement makes us feel a lot better, but we still don't expect her to be part of the ascendant Chicago left. Chicago DSA endorsed a Davis challenger in her first run against Davis, and it wasn't her. But if Collins is ambiguously better than Davis, Comyears-Ervin is unambiguously worse. Chicago politician who are on good terms with the city establishment are suspicious enough, but retaliation against a whistleblower makes her an unambiguous danger in office, not to mention that running an issues-free campaign against a progressive incumbent is an unmistakable red flag.
The campaign itself, oddly enough, hasn't focused much on Danny Davis, with Conyears-Ervin’s ethical troubles taking up more space. Collins’s campaign was relegated to the background after she failed to fundraise for months, right up until The Strokes held a concert to benefit her campaign, an event that raised over $200,000 for her, but didn't actually put that money into her hands until literally the last week of the campaign, way too late to use it on anything but a single last minute ad buy. Given his opponents’ troubles, and given that the Westside establishment eventually came around to backing him again, we’re forced to conclude that Davis is a favorite for reelection, but it's anyone's guess if he gets a majority of the vote again.
One final mystery of this campaign is AIPAC, who haven't brought down the multi-million dollar ad hammer like in other contests, but they have spent high six-figures on mailers and a digital ad, both attacking Collins. The mystery is this: Davis acting quite progressive on issues of Israel-Palestine, to the point where it's one of the few places we don't feel assured Collins is going to be as good as him if she wins, so why target just her instead of Davis as well, or why not promote Conyears-Ervin? We have two theories: one is that they're trying to consolidate the anti-Davis vote behind Conyears-Ervin by knocking down Collins, but don't want to promote Conyears-Ervin directly, probably because the AIPAC name doesn't poll well in a district like this; and the other is that they also believe that Davis is on his way out sooner rather than later and are more frightened of another insufficiently pro-Israel politician getting locked in for decades by some electoral fluke than they are if Davis getting another two years. We favor the second explanation over the first, since AIPAC has never been hesitant to launder their efforts through a front group (as they just did with Adam Schiff) but either way, both possibilities feel unlikely, as they involve AIPAC trying to get clever with it when they’ve always been believers in the bluntest possible tactics.
IL-11 (Outer Chicago suburbs)
Bill Foster (i) vs. Qasim Rashid
We're never going to forget the memory of seeing the first Illinois primary results roll in in 2020, and immediately going “wait, Bill Foster is in trouble?” While much of Foster being held to a 59-41 victory can be attributed to then-Will County Board Member Rachel Ventura’s strength as a candidate (in fact, the next cycle she stomped an appointed state Senate incumbent), Bill Foster’s weakness as an incumbent played a pivotal role. The centrist 16-year incumbent is unwilling to go through the motions of trying to inspire enthusiasm in the same way that, for instance, Sean Casten loves to do. So while signs may point to Foster being on track for a blowout, we’re keeping a more open mind. Qasim Rashid, an attorney and minor celebrity in online Democratic spaces, is Foster's opponent this year. Like Ventura, Rashid is running to Foster’s left, and in particular is hammering away on the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, a major difference between him and Foster.
Since 2020, Foster scored big in redistricting, getting a substantially whiter, wealthier, and more rural district. He's also not going to have to worry about Bernie Sanders’s presence on the ballot bringing out progressive voters. There's also the matter of his opponent. While Ventura’s campaign was a marvel of no-budget inventiveness, Rashid's carries the flab associated with internet celebrity campaigns. A substantial portion of the money he’s raised has gone back into more online fundraising, and the matter of his residency doesn't register online, but running for Congress half the country away only two years ago will predictably raise the hackles of some actual voters.
Despite that, we just can’t dismiss this contest. Maybe it’s just because Foster hasn’t made any changes since 2020—Foster agreed to three debates with Rashid, blew two of them off, then only showed up for part of the third.
SD-20 (Logan Square, Chicago)
Natalie Toro (i) vs. Graciela Guzman vs. Dave Nayak vs. Geary Yonker
Midwestern Democratic parties have a reputation for making peace with their left wing factions more easily than their coastal counterparts. While broadly true (especially in comparison to the clusterfucks of New York and New Jersey), it does depend on the state, and Illinois Democrats are much more uneasy about letting the left into the state house than their neighboring parties are. Case in point: when Chicago Brandon Johnson tapped Cristina Pacione-Zayas, then-state senator for the 20th district, for his administration, the party chose to appoint in her place moderate-to-liberal Natalie Toro over the candidate favored by progressives, Graciela Guzman, chief of staff to Pacione-Zayas. This is despite the 20th district being unambiguously the most reliable progressive turf in the state.
Guzman and Toro are now engaged in the highest-profile electoral battle in the state legislature, and electing Toro is the top goal of Senate leadership. Of the $2.6 million Toro has raised, the campaign fund of Senate Democrats is responsible for $1.8 million, and another $137,000 comes from Senate President Don Harmon’s personal account. Organized labor, also largely establishment-aligned, has also gone in for Toro, though, hilariously, the one exception is the AFT, the union that Toro belongs to, since she’s a teacher. This contest is much more of a focus of the senate establishment than other branches of the party, however—when Toro attempted to fake an endorsement from Gov. JB Pritzker, he made sure to clarify he was keeping out of this race.
How is Toro spending those millions? Mailers, mostly. Toro’s campaign has sent roughly 30 mailers, with more coming from outside supporters. It’s caused actual discontent from voters who are tired of months of near-daily political mail. The Guzman campaign claims it’s more focused on volunteer outreach, which is what campaigns in a densely populated area usually do when they have any amount of grassroots enthusiasm to work with. We also have to point out how funny it was that she recently talked about her thinking around accepting nearly $2 million from the senate Democrats’ campaign account to send voters in her district dozens of mailers each, helpfully explaining that it was because she’s “not your typical politician”.
Guzman has played up both her progressive policy stances, such as supporting Medicare for All, and the extent to which progressive politicians and groups, such as Bernie Sanders, U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, and United Working Families, while Toro has basically spent eight months saying “hey guys, come one, she’s not that much more progressive than me”, while also trying to call her a tool of the the Loonie Left—soft on crime, against school choice, etc. It’s a confused message when taken holistically, and uninspiring when taken as individual points. There are plenty of places where a campaign this cynical could achieve success, but in Logan Square it feels like lighting money on fire.
Speaking of lighting money on fire, the second-highest fundraising candidate isn’t even Guzman (who raised less than $700,000), it’s Dr. Dave Nyack, a self-funding Bitcoin enthusiast, who is something of a footnote in this contest despite pouring over $800,000 into it. Geary Yonker is a journalist who will probably get some protest votes from people happy he’s not turning on the campaign mailer firehose like everyone else.
SD-40 (Southern Chicago suburbs, Kankakee)
Patrick Joyce (i) vs. Kimberly Earling
Patrick Joyce represents a unique district combining Black Chicago suburbs with outright rural towns and the small city of Kankakee. It’s a tough district to keep a handle on, and he might one day have a real fight on his hands when a more progressive Black politician from Cook County challenges him, But right now, it’s a similarly moderate opponent—Kimberly Earling, a local mother who lost her daughter to an opiate overdose—running a no-budget campaign and hoping discontent over high property taxes and opposition to a new car battery plant encourage protest votes. That battery plant sounds like a real nexus for local frustration: NIMBYs, environmentalists, environmentalism skeptics, xenophobes, and anti-corporate welfare types can all find something to oppose in a 30-year tax break to entice a Chinese manufacturer to build an EV factory nearby. If Joyce loses Kankakee County, it’s probably because of that.
HD-04 (Humboldt Park, Ukrainian Village)
Lilian Jiménez (i) vs. Kirk Ortiz
When Delia Ramirez left the state house to run for the US House, progressives picked former Chuy García staffer Lilian Jiménez, who won the primary overwhelmingly and has since served in the state house without incident. It’s especially weird, then, that there’s a last minute semi-serious challenger to her this year instead of 2022. Kirk Ortiz, who previously mounted write-in campaigns for Chicago City Council and Cook County Sheriff, is a businessman in the field of private security services who is self-funding a campaign where he emplores voters to vote for him to “make crime illegal again”. Why the hell are two Alderpersons (Chris Taliaferro and Emma Mitts) getting on board with this campaign? Why is the national UAW making only two endorsements in the IL House, and he’s one of them? What?
HD-05 (Chicago’s South Side and the Loop)
Kimberly du Buclet (i) vs. Andre Smith
Kimberly du Buclet was appointed to the state house in 2023. Previously an elected member of the Chicago water board, this will be her first contested primary. In the house, she’s been boring but basically fine, a strong contrast to her opponent, anti-immigrant activist Andre Smith, who has proudly been arrested for trying to stop migrants from arriving in the city and promoted his candidacy by going on Fox News and calling for a recall of Mayor Brandon Johnson over allowing immigrants into Chicago. Smith has scraped together a few thousand dollars for this campaign, but he should fail soundly. If he doesn’t, politics in Chicago is about to get ugly.
HD-06 (Chicago’s South Side and the Loop)
Sonya Harper (i) vs. Joseph G. Williams
In 2022, Sonya Harper was a fifth-term incumbent running in her first-ever primary—as a result of her willingness to stick with the controversial SAFE-T Act, which enacted a suite of much needed criminal justice reforms in the state, most famously eliminating cash bail entirely, the FOP lumped her in with a few other incumbents they thought they could unseat, or at least make an example of, to scare legislators into repealing the bill. They spent millions on the effort, attracted plenty of news coverage… and it flopped entirely. Harper in particular beat her opponent, cop Carolynn Crump, 72-28. The stale retread is Joseph Williams, one of the conservatives who got elected (with the help of Ald. Raymond Lopez) to Chicago’s Police Board last year. Williams is running with no money and a vague sense of wanting to be more involved in the community, and we’d almost be inclined to give him a pass and say he’d be a lateral move from Harper if we didn’t know getting that Lopez endorsement meant there’s an approximately 100% chance he’s a foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic when it comes to crime.
HD-21 (Berwyn, Cicero, Bridgeview)
Abdelnasser Rashid (i) vs. Vidal Vasquez
Speaking of sad sequels, do you remember the Rashid-Zalewski matchup of 2022? In perhaps the most competitive house primary of the year, Abdelnasser Rashid, formerly the field director of Chuy García’s 2015 mayoral campaign and a key staffer in Bernie Sanders’s 2020 Illinois effort, rallied Chicago’s progressive movement to overcome 14 year incumbent Michael Zalewski, signaling that the Madigan machine was finally dead and progressives would take its place. We bring that race up because it’s way more interesting than this year. Cop Vidal Vasquez doesn’t have any campaign funds, but he does have a lot of complaints about crime and the need for more tax breaks for religious schools. He did manage to land a spite endorsement from the Chicago Tribune, but that’s the extent of his support.
HD-22 (Southwest Chicago and suburbs)
Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar (i) vs. Joshua Hernandez vs. John Topps
Most members of the Chicago delegation are actually quite progressive, even the appointed ones. Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, however, was selected by disgraced former House Speaker Mike Madigan to replace him in the house after he resigned because it was clear he was going to get indicted, but before he was actually indicted and it would be a little harder for him to unilaterally select his own replacement. She was actually his second choice—his first choice got three days into the job before Madigan told him to resign, and he did. It’s the set-up for a progressive candidate to swoop in and finally defeat the machine in the heart of Madigan’s territory, but it looks like we’ll be waiting on that. Her opponents are city sanitation worker John Topps, who’s running on anger over immigrants and the SAFE-T Act, and Joshua Hernandez, who is, by contrast, running instead on anger over immigrants and the SAFE-T Act. Neither have raised any real money or have any endorsements.
HD-23 (South Lawndale, Brighton Park)
Edgar Gonzalez Jr. (i) vs. Joseph Mercado
Edgar Gonzalez was appointed to the state house at only 23 years old, (yes, he’s a Jr in Chicago politics who was appointed to something for reasons other than who Sr. was—times are changing) at the behest of his then-boss, Chuy García. As a member of the house, Gonzalez has done well, supporting progressive bills, and is currently attempting to get Illinois to adopt California’s stringent emissions standards. Sure, it would save lives, but what if you didn’t want any of that nonsense and instead preferred someone spend all of their time yelling about crime. Well, you’d be in luck: college student Joseph Mercado has you covered. Sure, he hasn’t raised any money, couldn’t even swing a Tribune endorsement, and is running against a member of the Extended Chuy Cinematic Universe in prime Chuy territory, and is campaigning on the side while attending college full time, but…
HD-24 (Pilsen, Chinatown, Bridgeport)
Theresa Mah (i) vs. Lai Ching Ng
Theresa Mah is one of the most valuable members of the state house. She helped form the chamber’s Progressive Caucus, and was a rare state House incumbent who endorsed Brandon Johnson in the 2023 runoff even though she had to have known her district was about to vote for Vallas by a significant margin.
Lai Ching Ng wants to “fix” the state’s pension by privatizing it, and partner with hedge funds to “bring in private financial consultants” to the district. This may sound like we’re parodying Chamber of Commerce candidates because she used to be a secretary of her local Chamber, but we can assure you, this woman is real, and she’s out there, somewhere. Who knows, maybe she’s even standing behind you right now.
While we’d normally point to Ching Ng’s poor fundraising as a reason she’s nonviable, she’s clearly been very active in community organizations for decades, so we don’t want to make it sound like she’s a joke candidate. She’s making a serious effort, and if she by some chance succeeded, it would be the biggest downgrade in the entire legislature.
HD-27 (Chicago’s South Side and Orland Park)
Justin Slaughter (i) vs. Tawana Robinson
Justin Slaughter was the chief sponsor of the SAFE-T Act. he had to have expected he’d take major flak for that, and while in many ways he did, it doesn’t appear to have affected his electoral prospects at all. He wound up with a nobody of a challenger in 2022, and it’s actually this year that he’s had to fight more for reelection, and against a candidate who’s not focused on the SAFE-T Act at all. Teacher Tawana Robinson is actually a blast from Slaughter’s past—she was his opponent in his first election in 2018, an election he won 55%-45%.
Robinson has been a longtime advocate for bringing a trade school into the district, and isn’t harping on the SAFE-T Act, even as she promises to be “tough on crime”. It’s clear that she’s a real candidate actually attempting to get more votes than the person she’s running against and not an living embodiment of conservative discontent, unlike plenty of other candidates in this preview. That’s not to say that she wouldn’t be worse than Slaughter—she obviously would be on the “tough on crime” aspect alone, and she wants to cut state pensions. The good news is that she’s not as strong of a candidate as she was in 2018. She may be self-funding significantly more, but Slaughter is a real incumbent with name recognition now, not the recent appointee he was in 2018, and Robinson has less of a reason to be running.
HD-29 (Chicago’s south suburbs to Kankakee outskirts)
Thaddeus Jones (i) vs. Gloria White
Last cycle we shrugged our way into concluding that Thaddeus Jones, both a state representative and the mayor of Calumet City, hadn’t actually done anything bad enough to warrant replacing him with a corrections officer who hadn’t promised to be any better.
That was before he gave multiple members of his immediate family high-dollar city jobs, fined a reporter for asking too many questions, went to war with his city’s aldermembers for no reason, and was federally investigated for campaign finance issues. So even though financial advisor Gloria White can’t think of anything she’d actually do differently in office compared to Jones, she’d probably be less of an ethical nightmare. It’s too bad she hasn’t raised any money.
HD-31 (Far South Side and southwest Chicago suburbs)
Mary Flowers (i) vs. Michael Crawford
Mary Flowers has been in the state house for four full decades, and might be about to become a cautionary tale on leaving public service on your own terms before you get pushed out. Last year, Flowers, for reasons that are only clear to her, told a staffer that he looked like Hitler. The staffer worked for state House Speaker Chris Welch, and she refused to back down, saying that the staffer’s insufficient visual difference from Adolf Hitler made her feel “disrespected”. Because she refused to stop being weird about how one of his staffers looked, and because she was apparently throwing slurs around at the time, Welch took her off his leadership team, and evidently decided it was time to sunset her out of the house.
The replacement state leadership has chosen is Michael Crawford, Campus Dean at The Chicago School. Between Welch and organized labor, more than $1,000,000 has been poured into Crawford's coffers. We’re not going to speculate on his political leanings beyond “establishment”, but he’ll obviously be an improvement on Flowers should he win. Flowers’s loss is by no means guaranteed, of course, and if she hangs on it’ll be a huge black eye to Welch.
HD-35 (Far Southwest Side and southwest Chicago suburbs)
Mary Gill (i) vs. David Dewar
Appointed incumbent Mary Gill is a normal Democrat who was appointed last year. We’re going to hold off on asking if the 35th District could do better for now, because David Dewar is asking them to do so, so much worse. He’s against abortion, trans rights, immigration, criminal justice reform, and teacher unions. Why exactly is he a Democrat again? And who does he think is going to be voting for him? Both are truly unanswerable questions.
HD-36 (Southwest Chicago suburbs - Oak Lawn, Palos Hills)
Sonia Anne Khalil vs. Rick Ryan
After more than a few elections that boiled down to “here’s a boring incumbent and here’s a conservative crank”, the Chicago area is willing to proffer up one single good old-fashioned moderate vs. progressive open seat contest. The moderate is lawyer Rick Ryan, who ran for state Senate in the year 2000. Ryan probably wishes he hadn’t done that now, because it means he has to, in a post-Dobbs environment, explain why he was an anti-choice candidate in the past. The progressive is Sonia Anne Khalil, who has been in and out of politics her entire adult and teenage life. She’s the daughter of Samir Khalil, who runs the powerful Arab American Democratic Club, which has led Ryan to call her a nepotism case. We’re not going to claim that we’re confident that she’d be in this election without her father, but in a state where dozens of politicians were literally handed their current office by a parent, getting a parent’s help to run as the outsider candidate hardly ranks.
That’s a small taste of how negative and personal this election has gotten. Another is the press conference Khalil held to reveal that Ryan at one point owed the IRS over a quarter million dollars for 15 years of back taxes and to re-publicize the news that Ryan had been censured by the state Supreme Court in 2013.
Ryan has received over $500,000 from the building trades unions and should be considered the favorite, if not for the money then for this part of the Chicago area’s generally pro-establishment bent. However, abortion is the most electorally difficult issue to have to say you’ve “evolved” on, and Khalil is a tough, persistent candidate who has union power of her own in the form of the SEIU.
HD-76 (Small central IL cities - Dekalb, Ottawa, and Peru)
Cohen Barnes vs. Amy “Murri” Briel vs. Carolyn Zasada
Be Lance Yednock:
Flip a Republican-held rural Obama-Trump district in 2018
Hold on in 2020 despite Trump carrying it again
Get the legislature to gerrymander your district into a Safe D squiggle in central IL
Retire in 2024 anyway
Refuse to elaborate
Yednock would prefer to be succeeded by his chief of staff, Amy “Murri” Briel, though politicians in the college town of DeKalb, which was added into the district in 2022, disagree. Both the mayor, Cohen Barnes, and a DeKalb alderwoman, Carolyn Zasada, are also running. Briel sounds a lot like her boss—cautiously on board with the state Democratic legislative agenda, but willing to break right from it whenever and however it feels convenient. More willing to own being a moderate is Barnes, who can’t even bring himself to act like he supports Illinois’s current assault weapons ban, and is stridently anti-tax. Zasada says she believes she’s “the most strongly progressive candidate”. We’d say she’s the only candidate who should even be calling herself progressive. While Barnes and Briel are different degrees of distant from the state party goals, Zasada is out there calling for another crack at Pritzker’s progressive income tax referendum, and universal free preschool. She’s not perfect (she is a realtor with some bad feelings about corporate taxes) but she’s the only one of the three who might be leading as opposed to being made to follow.
Zasada is also the underdog. The establishment split two ways, and neither were for her. Yednock’s network is of course backing Briel, who should win the parts of the district that were in Yednock’s original district. Meanwhile, building trades labor unions are pushing for Barnes, and the business establishment is as well.
HD-83 (Outer Chicagoland - Aurora, Batavia)
Matt Hanson (i) vs. Arad Boxenbaum
In 2022, both train engineer Matt Hanson and college student/library board member Arad Boxenbaum ran substance-free campaigns for a newly created Democratic district in the suburbs. We figured Hanson had the edge because organized labor endorsed him. We were correct about that—Hanson won 67% to 33%. Hanson was sworn in, and, less than a year later, got pulled over and blew a 0.186% blood alcohol reading. Boxembaum is running explicitly against Hanson this time around, and is at least willing to draw a policy contrast, saying that Hanson has taken anti-environment votes instead of focusing solely on the DUI.
We have no idea how badly the voters of suburban Chicago will punish Hanson for drinking (and drinking and drinking) and driving.
Illinois Supreme Court District 1 (Cook County)
Joy Cunningham (i) vs. Jesse Reyes
Judicial elections can be tough to parse from an ideological standpoint, and that’s absolutely the case here. The odd thing is that it isn’t a result of this election having a low profile in the local press—it’s been quite well watched—but rather that no one involved seems much interested in the ideological aspects. Basically the issue is this: Cook County elects 3 of the 7 members of the Illinois Supreme Court. Cook County is roughly ⅓ each white, Latine, and Black, but the three members it elects to the court are one white judge and two Black, leaving the court without any Latine judges. If that sounds overly simplistic to you, know that it isn’t. The underrepresentation of Latines in Chicago and Cook County government has been a hot topic for a while, and Chicago ward redistricting resulted in a massive fight because of it.
Both Joy Cunningham and Jesse Reyes have spent decades working as judges, and both come highly recommended by the bar association, but Cunningham is Black and Reyes is Latine. For all the fervor over this election, it really does sound like the judges don’t have much disagreement in how they’d rule, which is our central focus here, so there’s not really a right or wrong choice in this contest. Though, if we wanted a tiebreaker, we’d say that Cunningham has zero police union endorsements and Reyes has one.
Cook County State’s Attorney
Clayton Harris III vs. Eileen O'Neill Burke
Few figures in Chicago politics are more polarizing than outgoing State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Foxx, unlike most prosecutors, has adjusted to Illinois’s bail reforms and defended them vigorously—many of those reforms were in line with preexisting policies of her office, and her office is generally reform-oriented, prosecuting retail theft as a misdemeanor for stolen goods valued below $1,000. Her office is generally reluctant to seek pretrial detention without good reason, and has no blanket policy of seeking pretrial detention in any particular class of cases.
The choice of Cook County progressives and County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Clayton Harris III, would continue Foxx’s approach: while he promises to be “aggressive” with violent crime cases, he clarifies that that does not mean a blanket policy of pretrial detention, and he’d maintain Foxx’s posture towards retail theft. Eileen O’Neill Burke will undo Foxx’s reforms, promising blanket pretrial detention in all violent crime cases, as well as all gun possession cases covered by Illinois’s assault weapons ban; she’ll also return the office to prosecuting retail theft as a felony in every case where state law allows (which means a threshold of $300, not $1,000.)
The campaign has gotten incredibly nasty, with the candidates trading blows over O’Neill Burke’s record as a prosecutor (which includes a case in which a young Black boy was wrongfully convicted of murder) and Harris’s day job as Lyft’s chief Midwestern lobbyist (which means he was probably involved in Lyft’s decision to leave Minneapolis rather than pay its drivers a minimum wage.) If that makes you recoil from the idea of wanting either of them to win, we get it—but we’d advise you that every progressive in Cook County went out and voted for Harris so that the arch-conservative Fraternal Order of Police president’s endorsed candidate (O’Neill Burke) doesn’t win and take Cook County backwards.
Cook County Clerk of Court
Iris Martinez (i) vs. Mariyana Spyropoulos
It was a million little things that convinced progressives that they should stop putting up with Iris Martinez and do something about her. There was her vocal support of Paul Vallas, her fundraisers with the FOP, endorsing Republican Erin Jones when Jones briefly switched over to the Democrats to try and primary out state Sen. Robert Martwick over the SAFE-T Act, her support of Gilbert Villegas in the IL-03 primary in 2022, and other, smaller, slights, but the last straw was when she helped appoint Natalie Toro over Graciela Guzman in SD-20. Previously a state senator with nearly two decades of progressive reputation, Martinez’s sharp right turn after narrowly winning the Clerk of Court primary in 2020 caught everyone off guard, which is why everyone seems to be backing former water board member Mariyana Spyropoulos. “Everyone” may be an exaggeration, but the endorsement list on her website includes basically every North side politician, organized labor, and the county Democratic party.
Martinez’s supporters are thinner on the ground, although she does appear to be in better shape in the South Side than elsewhere—she cites Rep. Robin Kelly as her biggest supporter. Humorously enough, Northwest Chicago is some of her worst territory despite being her home turf, because the elected officials there are all progressives now, and Martinez has run candidates against most of them.
Cook County Board District 1 (Chicago’s West Side, Oak Park, Maywood)
Tara Stamps (i) vs. Zerlina Smith
This is Brandon Johnson’s old County Board seat. Once he was elected to mayor, the seat became vacant, and CTU staffer Tara Stamps was appointed to fill his place. Stamps, affiliated with Johnson and the CTU, is of course a progressive and on the side of Board President Toni Preckwinkle. No one serious is even trying to challenge Stamps and the CTU here—the only other name on the ballot is repeat candidate Zerlina Smith, who is going after Stamps for raising taxes and giving money to immigrants.
Ohio
SD-06 (Dayton)
Willis Blackshear Jr. vs. Jyl Hall vs. Jocelyn Rhynard
Kettering City Councilmember Jyl Hall is the daughter of former Congressmember Tony Hall, and could be a recipient of moderate white suburban voters, but will probably finish in third because she’s had to spend her entire campaign trying to convince voters that she won’t actually vote to restrict abortion despite personally opposing abortion, and also previously accepting the endorsement of anti-abortion group Democrats for Life.
That leaves the real drama between Willis Blackshear Jr., a sitting member of state house, and Dayton Board of Education member Jocelyn Rhynard. Both are similarly focused on fighting Republicans and promoting some big picture Democratic values like gun control and abortion rights, but, of the two, Rhynard appears more progressive by having policy goals she wants to work toward instead of just saying she opposes Republican extremism.
This race is Blackshear’s to lose: he’s a sitting state rep with the endorsement of former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley, and the only Black candidate in a district where the primary electorate should be well more than one-third Black.
HD-03 (Central Columbus)
Ismail Mohamed (i) vs. Abdirizak Diini vs. Julie Trabold
Four years after nearly unseating a state representative in a similarly-configured district, Ismail Mohamed won his way into the state House by winning a crowded primary in 2022. Neither of his opponents is spending anything in their effort to unseat him, according to their most recent campaign finance reports, and we couldn’t even get Julie Trabold’s website to work. Mohamed should be just fine.
HD-05 (Southeast Columbus, Canal Winchester, Reynoldsburg)
Leo Almeida vs. Meredith Lawson‐Rowe vs. Marco J. Miller
Marco Miller is a retired firefighter and union president who founded a political consulting firm, Grassroots Strategies, used by many Columbus Democratic campaigns for their printing and mailing needs. Labor is excited to get one of their own in office; Miller carries endorsements from the state and local AFL-CIO and several local unions, which have contributed generously to his campaign. At 72, Miller will only be around for a few terms. Leo Almeida, 36, could be around for a while, which is why the $2,000 he received from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce PAC gives us pause. Reynoldsburg City Councilwoman Meredith Lawson-Rowe draws some support from her Reynoldsburg colleagues and Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin. None of them have any policy positions for us to find beyond broad-strokes Democratic priorities like protecting abortion rights and general concern about housing costs. We tried; this race is just damn boring.
HD-06 (Columbus’s West Side)
Brandon Barcus vs. Patrick Barnacle vs. Eli Bohnert vs. Christine Cockley vs. Adhanet Kifle vs. Kawther Musa vs. Elijah Williams
Who doesn’t love a good clown car primary? (Us.) Thankfully, two candidates (Patrick Barnacle and Elijah Williams) seem to have been left behind by the rest of the pack—narrowing the field of obvious contenders to a more manageable five. Brandon Barcus, a community organizer and former legislative staffer, is running without many endorsements and with less money than the other four top contenders, and his top policy priorities are a property tax cut and the expansion of Ohio’s single-family housing development tax credit. Businesswoman Adhanet Kifle wants to increase public education funding and raise Ohio’s $10.45 minimum wage; at 48, she’s somehow the oldest candidate in the field, and 48 is still on the younger side for a politician. Kawther Musa is a Somali-American community activist and healthcare professional supported by state Rep. Ismail Mohamed and Columbus city councilor Nancy Day-Achauer; she has the most money in the home stretch. Along with Musa, Eli Bohnert and Christine Cockley strike us as the likeliest winners; both have some local politicians in their corner, and Bohnert also has the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and some local Democratic clubs, while Cockley has organized labor endorsing and funding her. Cockley and Bohnert both highlight similar themes as to why they’re running—they want to fight back against the Ohio GOP supermajority and defend baseline Democratic Party values—but Cockley’s far more detailed policy platform makes us feel better about her.
HD-20 (Downtown and eastern Cleveland)
Terrence Upchurch (i) vs. Nathaniel Hartfield
When voters in HD-20 get their ballots today, they’ll find nobody listed for the state house contest. Terrence Upchurch, despite being an incumbent who should be able to easily get on the ballot, was booted after messing up his nominating petitions. Upchurch is running a write-in campaign, which could be a huge boon to the only other certified write-in candidate, Nathaniel Hartfield, if there was any evidence that Hartfield was running a campaign.
HD-21 (Inner eastern Cleveland suburbs)
Elliot Forhan (i) vs. Eric Synenberg vs. Angel Washington
State Rep. Elliot Forhan has been stripped of his committee assignments and hit with a restraining order over numerous allegations of abusive and intimidating behavior (though the incident underlying the restraining order was investigated and dropped by the local prosecutor’s office for lack of evidence after the fellow state representative who obtained the restraining order, Juanita Brent, failed to turn over evidence.) Forhan denies all the allegations, including the ones that led Democrats to provide Brent with a security detail—but other allegations abound, including an outburst directed at a constituent who came to testify against a bill Forhan supported and another outburst directed at a colleague over the Israel-Palestine conflict. Local and state Democrats are united by a desire to get rid of him, but they can’t agree on who to beat him with—Beachwood City Councilman Eric Synenberg or businesswoman Angel Washington. Synenberg won an initial screening vote of the Cuyahoga County Democrats, while Washington nearly won the party endorsement at the full convention, falling just shy of the 60% threshold required for a party endorsement. They’ve split endorsements as well: labor mostly prefers Synenberg with some for Washington, and local politicians are split between the two. Oddly, the Working Families Party, the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce agree on preferring Washington. Against either candidate individually, Forhan would most likely be cooked, but with split opposition, name recognition and a dogged field campaign could be enough for the incumbent to eke out a plurality.
HD-24 (Cincinnati)
Dani Isaacsohn (i) vs. Stephan Pryor
Local activist Stephan Pryor doesn’t seem to be going anywhere in his primary challenge to state Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, who is at least going through the motions of running a campaign anyway.
HD-34 (Akron and suburbs)
Dina Edwards vs. Derrick Hall vs. Nathan Jarosz
Why bother having three different candidates if they’re all going to act basically the same? Teacher and Munroe Falls City Councilmember Dina Edwards, nonprofit leader Nathan Jarosz, and healthcare services executive Derrick Hall are all opposed to Republican extremism in general and school vouchers in specific, but not so much that they don’t support the spirit of bipartisanship and compromise. Everyone in this election seems like a middle of the road Democrat and we have no strong feelings on who wins or loses. Jarosz is a minor favorite because he carries the endorsement of Akron Mayor Shammas Malik and generally seems like he has the most establishment support, as well as being a strong fundraiser. Hall is also a strong fundraiser, but his supporters include the Chamber of Commerce and no politicians, whereas Edwards is raising very little money but seems to be running an energetic campaign regardless.
HD-38 (Dayton)
Derrick Foward vs. Desiree Tims
Either Dayton NAACP president Derrick Foward or 2020 congressional nominee Desiree Tims could win this open, deep-blue seat. While both are vague on the issues, painfully so, their campaign finance reports shed a bit of light on what to expect from each: all three of the Dayton City Commission’s moderate majority donated to Foward, who also touts endorsements from some local retired legislators, while progressive commissioner Shenise Turner-Sloss donated to Tims. Tims has been able to leverage a small national donor base built up from her congressional run, allowing her to outraise and outspend Foward despite the latter’s establishment support.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor
Michael O'Malley (i) vs. Matthew Ahn
This race has a familiar feel to it: a longtime tough-on-crime prosecutor faces a younger, reform-oriented challenger who thinks mass incarceration is bad and would like to do something about it. Here, the tough-on-crime prosecutor is Michael O’Malley, who argues that a steady hand is needed as Cleveland grapples with rising crime. Challenger Matthew Ahn argues that O’Malley’s hand is steadily making things worse. Cuyahoga County prosecutes more children as adults than any other Ohio county—a practice that has sharply increased under O’Malley, almost solely impacting Black children. Ahn outraised O’Malley in two successive quarters, though the incumbent has outspent him thanks to having cash stockpiled from past elections; financially, this looks like a competitive race. O’Malley has just about every endorsement one could want, including the unified support of organized labor and local politicians, but Ahn would not be the first reform candidate to shock the political world in such a fashion if he won, and O’Malley is (smartly) running scared. The O’Malley camp has attacked Ahn for previously tweeting about defunding the police and for alleged inexperience; the latter in particular falls flat, considering Ahn did a stint as a federal public defender before becoming a law professor.
Franklin County Prosecutor
Shayla Favor vs. Natalia Harris vs. Anthony Pierson
Columbus City Councilmember Shayla Favor is dipping a toe into the waters of running as a progressive/reform prosecutor. While she talks often about minimizing jail and contact with the courts for low level offenses, she hasn’t outlined what that would actually look like in practice: when she would seek bail, if she would dismiss low-level drug crimes, that sort of thing. Still, she’s the only one in this race who’s trying to go down that path, and she has the Working Families Party endorsement. Prosecutor Anthony Pierson takes the opposite approach, hammering home that he’s been a prosecutor for over 20 years and that he loves to prosecute violent crime. This race could go for any candidate, but Pierson has the inside lane—he’s the hand-picked successor of outgoing prosecutor Gary Tyack, and has support from the Franklin County establishment in general, who want continuity above all else in the office. The cop unions also love him, a bad sign. Finally, there’s Delaware City Attorney Natalia Harris, who suggests that she wants to broadly move in a less punitive direction than the current office, but is even more wishy-washy about what that means than Favor. She’s trying to thread the needle of focusing on experience like Pierson while promising change like Favor, which seems to have left her squeezed out rather than capitalizing on broad appeal.