6/28 Primary Preview Part I
Illinois
Today is a very busy day for us here at Primary School. Either one of Illinois or New York alone would guarantee a lengthy list of races in need of a preview, so, naturally, both are voting today, along with Colorado, Utah, and Oklahoma. For readability’s sake, we’re sending Illinois and New York each as their own previews, with a third one for Colorado, Utah, and Oklahoma. First up is Illinois.
Illinois has one statewide primary of note, so we’ll get into that first before wading into any of the state’s congressional primaries (there are a whopping seven seriously-contested primaries in Democratic-leaning congressional districts in Illinois, thanks to a combination of redistricting, retirements, and primary challenges.)
Secretary of State
Alexi Giannoulias vs. David Moore vs. Sidney Moore vs. Anna Valencia
You may remember Alexi Giannoulias as the only Democrat who managed to lose a US Senate seat in Illinois this century. His fateful (ill-fated, that is) matchup with Mark Kirk in 2010 was a major national embarrassment for the party, as it well should have been. He was the bright young thing to whom the party inexplicably handed a Senate nomination after only a single term as treasurer, and he blew it. Don’t worry, we hate him for plenty of reasons unrelated to losing elections too, like that time he endorsed a Republican for state treasurer in 2014 because the (totally standard, typical) Democrat wasn’t nice enough to Israel.
And yet, he’s the candidate progressives are siding with in this race. It makes no sense, really, why Our Revolution, Chuy García, and most of the state’s labor unions would endorse Giannoulias unless they expected him to win, and win big. Come to think of it, maybe that does make sense. He’s outraised his only real competition, Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia, $6 million to $2 million, and snatched the Cook County Democratic Party endorsement out from under her. Despite a lack of any public polls showing her down, Valencia clearly believes she is, and is going on a frantic last minute attack. Somehow, she’s been endorsed by both US Senators (Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth), the governor (JB Pritzker), and the outgoing Secretary of State (larger-than-life 24 year incumbent Jesse White). Honestly, given how little policy there is involved in running for Secretary of State, we can’t say who’d be better at it. We can’t even be sure what factions of the party would benefit from a particular result here.
Great start to the Illinois preview, huh? We promise stronger conclusions for the rest of the races.
IL-01
Chicago’s South Side and suburbs, Channahon, Bourbonnais
[deep breath] Kirby Birgans vs. Chris Butler vs. Jahmal Cole vs. Jacqueline Collins vs. Steven DeJoie vs. Pat Dowell vs. Cassandra Goodrum vs. Jonathan Jackson vs. Terre Layng Rosner vs. Marcus Lewis vs. Karin Norington-Reaves vs. Ameena Nuur Matthews vs. Robert Palmer vs. Nykea Pippion McGriff vs. Jonathan Swain vs. Michael Thompson vs. Charise Williams
What a mess this race is. Seventeen candidates are competing for this seat, left open by the unexpected but overdue retirement of longtime Rep. Bobby Rush, who has represented this seat for the past thirty years. The apparent frontrunner is Jonathan Jackson, the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and brother of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who represented a neighboring district in Congress until his resignation (precipitated by a corruption investigation that ultimately resulted in Jackson Jr. pleading guilty to felony fraud and serving seventeen months in federal prison) right after winning election to a tenth term in November 2012.
Jackson is the frontrunner for a number of reasons—he’s led the only public poll of this race, he’s benefited from the most media attention and high-profile endorsements (largely from progressives like Bernie Sanders and Chuy García), his family still has a loyal base of support in the district…and he’s backed by more than a million dollars in advertising paid for by pro-cryptocurrency PACs, far more outside help than any of his opponents have received.
That last one is gross, but it might be forgivable for other candidates; the vast majority of that money has come from one billionaire, Sam Bankman-Fried, whose personal super PACs (he has multiple) have made some truly inscrutable choices in selecting which candidates to aid, including multiple candidates who are more progressive than any other Democrat running. That’s not the case here, however. Jackson is getting crypto money for a very simple reason: he’s ardently pro-cryptocurrency. Bankman-Fried isn’t making a bizarre investment here, but a nakedly self-interested one: as CEO of the giant cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Bankman-Fried has a financial stake in ensuring his scam-infested, climate-killing industry remains as unregulated as possible. Unlike a lot of Bankman-Fried’s super PAC spending, which is often either hard to explain or completely illogical, this attempt to buy a congressional seat is just doing what’s good for business. (This is also why Jackson, unlike a lot of the beneficiaries of Bankman-Fried’s massive amounts of spending, is getting aid from within the universe of other, smaller cryptocurrency PACs; in his case, it’s six figures’ worth of mailers paid for by DAO For America. DAO for America is even more openly pro-crypto than Web3 Forward, which itself is the only one of Bankman-Fried’s PACs that is explicitly about advancing the cryptocurrency industry’s interests.)
If you’re still willing to cut him some slack, consider how unapologetic about the crypto money being spent on his behalf: his response to criticism of the deluge of money was not to call on the super PACs to pull out of the race, nor even a cynical denunciation of super PACs without repudiating the PAC or a hollow promise that his actions in Congress won’t be influenced by the industry that spent more than a million dollars to elect him. Instead, his response was to release a page-long letter which can be fairly and accurately summarized in one sentence: “Well, it’s legal, so you losers can go cry about it some more.”
But Jonathan Jackson is far from the only one with a real shot at winning this seat; honestly, just about anyone could theoretically win in a race with seventeen candidates. There are six other candidates who we think stand out as plausible winners. We’ll discuss them in alphabetical order, for lack of a better way to sort them.
State Sen. Jacqui Collins has raised relatively little for a competitive congressional campaign, but given the compressed timeline of this race (Rush only announced his retirement in January), her preexisting name recognition (she’s been a state senator since 2002), and her support from local progressive heavyweights, she’s a contender for sure. Jackson has national progressive support, including endorsements from Bernie Sanders and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, thanks to who his father is and his own ties to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign. However, it’s extremely apparent that many Chicago progressives don’t trust him (with the notable exceptions of Chuy García and the Chicago Teachers’ Union, who both endorsed him.) They do seem to trust Collins, who as a state legislator has focused on passing laws to make it harder for predatory financial institutions to screw over unsuspecting consumers. (This is especially relevant when contrasting her with Jonathan Jackson, given the crypto stuff.) Along with Pat Dowell, who tied her, Collins was Jackson’s closest competitor in the earlier-referenced poll, which showed Jackson at 19% and Collins and Dowell tied at 14%. While that poll was conducted on behalf of Collins’s campaign, its results make sense: the three best-known candidates are a pair of elected officials and Jesse Jackson’s son.
Ald. Pat Dowell is the choice of the conservative faction of Chicago’s political class, and her record reflects that. She was an ally and supporter of Rahm Emanuel. She called for the National Guard to come in and suppress the George Floyd protests, an idea so bad Lori Lightfoot told her it would only inflame the anger fueling the protests. She thinks it’s already hard enough for landlords to evict tenants. You get the deal. Pat Dowell is the worst plausible winner.
What local businesswoman Karin Norington-Reaves lacks in preexisting name recognition, she makes up for with money and endorsements—including the early support of Bobby Rush. In addition to her own relatively strong fundraising giving her the resources to get her name out directly, she’s benefited from substantial outside spending from establishment-friendly PACs, and the Rush network is also capable of moving a lot of votes. Along with the following three candidates, Norington-Reaves has a path to victory not because she was already popular with voters (she scored 5% in the aforementioned poll), but because she has the money to get her name out.
Nykea Pippion McGriff is a realtor running a vague but decidedly moderate campaign; the only concrete policy stance on her website is raising the federal SALT deduction, which already disproportionately reduces taxes for the rich. She’s got enough money (especially from fellow realtors) and political connections (she was on Rush’s staff for a few years) to run a serious campaign. She wasn’t included in the poll at all, but the rest of her campaign appears strong enough to be a competitor.
Businessman and nonprofit president Jonathan Swain polled the lowest of anyone named, at 3%—but he’s raised and spent more than any other candidate. Like the other candidates outside of the top tier of Jackson, Collins, and Dowell, he’s vague on policy and lacks a track record to evaluate.
Charise Williams, also unnamed in the poll, most recently served as the deputy director of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, which conducts research, compiles criminal justice data, and provides some social services related to the criminal legal system (but does not have authority over policing or prosecution.) Before that, she worked for the Chicago Federation of Labor. While she’s vague on policy, the fact that she’s worked in the labor movement and not the business world seems to indicate she’s probably better than the other vague-on-policy candidates (and, obviously, better than Dowell.) Her fundraising has been modest, but—especially in light of her resume, which guarantees she has some useful political connections—it’s good enough to group her with Swain, Norington-Reaves, and Pippion McGriff.
The field also includes activist Jahmal Cole, 2020 IL-01 candidate Ameena Nuur Matthews, and anti-abortion pastor Chris Butler, among others; we’d be shocked if any of them won, but because of either fundraising (Cole and Butler), name recognition (Matthews), or the extra time they’ve had to campaign (Cole began his campaign months before Rush announced his retirement), they have the potential to at least get a few percentage points and be a factor in this race.
About half of the population of this district is Black; most of the rest of the district is white, largely because of the inclusion of swingy suburbs and solidly Republican exurbs and rural areas. However, Chicago and its bluest innermost suburbs will cast the overwhelming majority of the primary votes; the more conservative, overwhelmingly white outlying areas of this district will only matter if no candidate has a substantial lead in Cook County.
IL-03
Chicago (Logan Square, Humboldt Park) and suburbs (Elmwood Park, Wheaton, Addison)
Juan Aguirre vs. Iymen Chehade vs. Delia Ramirez vs. Gilbert Villegas
This race hasn’t received the level of media attention you might expect of a competitive race with an ideological divide this stark, especially considering how expensive and nasty the campaign has gotten. This is a newly-created district; IL-04, a district which is currently more than two-thirds Hispanic by population, was carved up in order to create a second Hispanic-plurality district in the Chicago area, so this district includes heavily Hispanic neighborhoods previously represented by García and other Chicago representatives as well as a lot of outlying suburbs previously represented by suburban Reps. Sean Casten and Raja Krishnamoorthi. The center of gravity is still firmly within Chicago, though; both leading candidates are Chicago politicians, and Chicago and its innermost suburbs will cast far more votes than the sparser and less Democratic suburbs of DuPage County that make up the majority of this district’s land area.
State Rep. Delia Ramirez is the leading progressive candidate. She has just about every national progressive endorsement you can think of, except for a small handful of groups that are especially selective about where they get involved. AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Our Revolution, WFP, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC have all weighed in for Ramirez; WFP has spent more than $600,000 on ads and other help for Ramirez, and Bernie made the trip out to Chicago to hold a joint rally for Ramirez and Jonathan Jackson. She also has the enthusiastic support of the local progressive scene. IL-04 Rep. Chuy García, who currently represents much of this district, has supported her from the beginning, and his extensive network of allied politicians and activist organizations have followed suit; they’re joined by just about everyone who might be described as progressive or leftist in Chicago politics, from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle to every member of the Chicago City Council with a past or current affiliation with DSA.
Ramirez’s main opponent, Chicago Ald. Gil Villegas, is running hard to the right, staking out centrist policy positions (a public option, decarbonization by 2050, increasing the already-bloated budgets of American police departments,) and sticking to them. Often, moderate candidates will be evasive on policy specifics to avoid making it too obvious they’re moderate. Villegas is doing the opposite, and his supporters reflect that—alderpersons who are part of the Chicago City Council’s conservative bloc, super PACs like DMFI that seek to elect more conservative Democrats, even a union representing Chicago police sergeants. (Mind you, it has been a matter of public record since 2015 that the Chicago Police Department has an actual CIA-style black site for torture and secret imprisonment, and they’re not sorry about it.)
Villegas has raised and spent far more than Ramirez—not because her fundraising has been weak, but because his has been very strong. Ramirez has benefited from more outside help, however; in addition to the WFP, Indivisible, the CPC PAC, and EMILY’s List have each spent six-figure sums either attacking Villegas or promoting Ramirez. There hasn’t been a public poll since March, when Ramirez narrowly led Villegas with the vast majority of voters undecided; this race could easily go either way, and it’s not clear who has the upper hand.
IL-06
Southwest Chicago suburbs
Sean Casten (i) vs. Marie Newman (i) vs. vs. Charles Hughes
It’s such a shame, isn’t it? We all rooted for Marie Newman, watching her longshot effort against Dan Lipinski, the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House begin as a longshot effort in 2018, turn into a last-minute sensation, narrowly fail, pick back up again in 2020, and finally win. Since then, Newman has been one of the most progressive members of Congress, especially on foreign policy, and importantly has been outspoken about it, not just a reliable vote. Then everything went wrong.
First, they fucked with her in redistricting, joining her district with that of well-financed Sean Casten, making sure to give him more of the primary voters, and incidentally putting her home just across the boundary in another district. Then came the scandal. She’d offered rival candidate Iymen Chehade a job to get him off the campaign trail in 2020. It worked, but subsequent disagreements led him to sue her for breach of contract. Yeah, there was a contract, with signatures and everything. Newman’s case got sent to the House Ethics Committee, where it will sit, unresolved, until the primary. She struggled to find the kind of donors that Sean Casten, who had just fought through two tough general elections, already had connections with, and found progressive organizations too skittish to help her given the ethical cloud. To make matters worse, DMFI came in during the last few weeks to air the dirty negative ads that Casten’s team preferred to keep their hands clean of.
It’s the perfect storm, too. Newman could have survived any of these problems by themselves, even most of them. But together? She’s a deep underdog, which she seems to know, despite her own internal having her optimistically tied at 37%. It especially sucks that she had to face Casten, a deeply uninspiring New Dem who only won his initial primary owing to a deeply split field of women running to his left.
(Yes, the Iymen Chehade who Newman sorta bribed out of running for the old IL-03 is the same one who’s running in the new IL-03. However, he’s going to be a bigger factor in IL-06 than in the congressional race he’s actually running in, as IL-03 has become a two-person race.)
IL-07
Chicago (West Side, South Side, the Loop) and inner western suburbs (Oak Park, Maywood)
Danny K. Davis (i) vs. Kina Collins vs. Denarvis Mendenhall
Talk about late-breaking news. When we decided to put out our most recent regular issue early, on Friday, the intention was to make sure everyone knew about all of the last-minute developments that were occurring, before our actual Election Day preview. How foolish we were.
This is the kind of race you used to see a lot more of, before our current generation of Democratic leadership took power and decided that no incumbent should ever be allowed to lose a primary election. Danny Davis, a radical in his youth (and even his middle age) has, over his decades in Congress, steadily grown slower, more complacent, and more disengaged. Though his record of roll call votes remains better than most Democrats in Congress, it's been years since he's been active in fighting for a bill, an issue, or…anything, really. Kina Collins, a gun violence activist, is presenting herself as an energetic alternative to a Congressmember who votes the right way but does little else. Collins challenged Davis in 2020, and though she lost 60-14 she did emerge the top vote getter against Davis in a year where the softness of Davis's support against three virtual unknowns was demonstrated. For her rematch, Collins was able to pull in the support of Justice Democrats, who have provided her much-needed help, even as her own fundraising has been middling. She also had the good fortune of being the only serious candidate against Davis this time; last time, she split the anti-Davis vote with well-funded attorney Kristine Schanbacher and socialist repeat candidate Anthony Clark, who both campaigned energetically.
Davis began campaign season by calling in a number of local endorsements, among them embattled Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and even got a Nancy Pelosi fundraiser to happen. But his general lack of showing up extended to his own reelection. Davis hasn't, as far as we can tell, hired a campaign manager or done any campaign events in months. Before a few days ago, he wasn't even running advertisements—TV, digital, radio, or even newspaper—or sending out mailers. Collins, by contrast, has been campaigning 24/7. Her efforts have paid off. In addition to a strong grassroots organization that is bolstered by Indivisible, the Working Families Party, and Sunrise, she is supported by socialist Chicago Alds. Byron Sigcho Lopez and Daniel La Spata. She even won the Chicago Tribune endorsement. Justice Democrats, cautiously at first, have been running ads accusing Davis of being asleep at the wheel as problems in Chicago mount, while promising that Collins will do better. About a week ago, someone began taking notice of this race, and the Davis team went up with their response to JD's ads: 30 seconds of unedited Zoom footage showing Davis mumbling through a few lines about legislation he supports. It would be a stunningly amateurish digital spot for a state legislative campaign, but this was an incumbent member of Congress putting it on TV. You could almost imagine someone telling Davis’s team (does he have a team? staffer? intern? nephew?) that Davis needed to be on TV immediately, with no one on hand who really knew how to make that happen.
Which brings us back to Friday, when we thought we’d caught the last developments of this race. Since then, something has awakened. Mysterious, pro-establishment Super PAC Opportunity for All Action Fund dropped $300,000 on TV ads that day, which is also the day the Congressional Black Caucus began a digital campaign and the Davis campaign created their Facebook page. They started running ads the next day. Finally, on Sunday, he called in the big one: an endorsement from Joe Biden. One of Biden’s two other endorsements from this cycle, of Kurt Schrader, already failed to convince Democratic voters to reelect the incumbent—and at least that one was three weeks before the primaries, so it definitely had the chance to sink in and benefit Schrader. This one came two days before the primary, leaving Davis’s campaign very little time to make sure voters know about it. The Danny Davis campaign says that it’ll be putting that Biden endorsement into a TV ad in “the final days of the primary”, but there aren’t many of those left, and besides, we’ve seen their video editing capabilities. But if there’s one state they could pull it off in, it’s Illinois, where a culture of early voting simply doesn’t exist. So far, between both parties, fewer than 24,000 voters have returned ballots in all of Cook County. In 2018, total turnout in Cook County was close to 1,000,000.
IL-08
Northwestern Chicago suburbs
Raja Krishnamoorthi (i) vs. Junaid Ahmed
Just north of IL-07 is a challenge that didn't take off. Local IT firm owner Junaid Ahmed is running on a great progressive platform that includes Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, and has posted a string of impressive fundraising quarters. But, while some local grassroots organizations have endorsed him, no one at the local or national level thinks that Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has more money than god in his campaign account by now, is beatable in this suburban district. Krishnamoorthi, though he is overly corporate and his foreign policy leaves much to be desired, is rarely overtly terrible, and it would be hard enough to formulate an argument to the typical voter why they should dump him, even if he couldn't flood the airwaves at any second.
IL-13
St. Louis suburbs, Springfield, Decatur, Urbana-Champaign
Nikki Budzinski vs. David Palmer
This race was over before it started. Nikki Budzinski, a former Pritzker staffer who’s worked at the intersection of Democratic politics and the labor movement, locked down just about everyone in state and national politics before entering (and before Protect Our Future PAC aired some ads for her just to be sure), while military veteran David Palmer…exists. He’s running to Budzinski’s left, but he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. This seat is currently held by a Republican, Rodney Davis, but redistricting changed the district significantly; previously a Republican-leaning swing district, the new district voted for Joe Biden by a wide margin in 2020 and is fairly safe for Democrats. (Davis chose to run in IL-15 instead.)
IL-17
Quad Cities, Peoria, Rockford, Bloomington
Jonathan Logemann vs. Jacqueline McGowan vs. Angie Normoyle vs. Eric Sorensen vs. Litesa Wallace vs. Marsha Williams
Democrats drew themselves a much bluer version of Cheri Bustos’s IL-17, then promptly forgot about it after she decided to retire, it seems. No candidate was able to raise much money, and the big national groups have largely passed this election over, despite its ripeness for the ideological battles tearing through the party right now.
Ex-state Rep. Litesa Wallace of Rockford is running as the progressive. A two-time Bernie supporter, and one-time LG running mate for progressive gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss, Wallace seemed primed for progressive backup, but she never got it outside of Democracy for America and Indivisible. The gap left by her frighteningly low fundraising is partially being covered by the state SEIU and AFT chapters. Her best chance may come from the multi-way pile-up in the white moderate lane, but in a district that has no less than five significant and distinct geographic groups of voters (the four listed cities plus the rural areas connecting them) the fact that she’s the only one who’s previously introduced herself to voters outside her home could be a big help as well.
Eric Sorensen, a meteorologist from the Quad Cities, has raised the most money so far (only $450,000), and benefitted from over $600,000 in TV ads from 314 Action. Litesa Wallace’s fellow Rockford politician Jonathan Logemann isn’t far behind, with $345,000 raised, and while he lacks in outside spending compared to Sorensen (only $132,000 from Democrats Serve), he may make up for with support from the AFL-CIO and most of the Rockford establishment. However, both Sorensen and Wallace internals from May had them in the lead, and Logemann far back. The final “big” candidate is Angela Normoyle, a member of the Moline School Board. Moline is one of the Quad Cities, in Sorensen’s base. If one of these three wins, it hardly matters which—they’re functionally identical.
SD-02 (Humboldt Park, Chicago)
Omar Aquino (i) vs. Wilmer Maldonado vs. Wilson Vazquez
Omar Aquino’s career started with a loss to none other than Gilbert Villegas for the 36th Ward in Chicago’s Board of Alderman. He bounced back, getting narrowly elected to the state Senate over an establishment-backed charter school advocate in 2018. Aquino has resisted calls for him to make peace with the local establishment, and has remained an outspoken progressive in the Senate for four years, which is why Villegas wants him gone. Villegas’s machine, the Ward 36 organization, is supporting truck driver and Teamster Wilson Vazquez, in an effort to cleanse the ward of Villegas’s enemies as he makes the leap to national politics. For what it’s worth, Aquino is supporting Ramirez in the IL-03 race. Villegas’s gambit looks a little too outwardly cynical to be successful—not even the Chicago Tribune would bite, and they normally despise progressives.
SD-10 (Chicago’s Far North Side)
Robert Martwick (i) vs. Erin Jones
Cop Erin Jones is running because Robert Martwick doesn’t love cops enough. Okay, that’s not entirely fair, she also wants to “expand school choice”, but the cop thing is #1. The Rosetta Stone for understanding why the Fraternal Order of Police, through Jones, is targeting Martwick, is that Illinois passed a contentious police reform bill, “SAFE-T”, in 2021, and Martwick, after a period of fence-sitting, eventually voted yes on it. Because Chicago police are required to live in the city, but cops generally think of themselves as above the cities they police, most of the Chicago PD lives in one of a few suburbanish fringes of the city. Martwick represents one of those fringes, and since a substantial number of officers are represented by him, personally, they’re extra angry at him, personally. In fact, defeating him is their “top priority”, hence recruiting one of their own to run against him. They couldn’t even be bothered to drag up a Democrat for this (or perhaps couldn’t find one, who’s to say), and instead found a politically active Republican and just had her pretend (badly) to be a Democrat. That’s really Martwick’s main message against Jones, because why wouldn’t you make that your message in his situation? Her response has been playing all the crime fear-mongering hits: defund, Kim Foxx, SAFE-T. It would all be a little much even if she wasn’t so, so clearly a Republican.
SD-12 (Chicago’s Southwest Side)
Celina Villanueva (i) vs. Javier Yañez
Celina Villanueva is very skilled at getting appointed to things. In 2018, she was appointed to the state house, too late in the cycle for a primary, and in 2020 she pulled that off again in the Senate. The key to such an impressive feat is being on the good side of Chicago political boss and former state House Speaker Mike Madigan—or at least it was, until the feds finally indicted him on corruption charges in March of this year. (Federal corruption charges are also what took down the senator Villanueva replaced. Funny, that.) But Madigan was never Villanueva’s closest ally; that would be IL-04 Rep. Chuy García, the most powerful man in Chicago Hispanic politics. She is, after all, a former aide from his time on the County Commission. It’s those García connections that make Javier Yañez’s challenge so remarkable. Yañez is the chief of staff to Byron Sigcho-Lopez, one of the bloc of socialists elected to the Chicago City Council in 2019, and García’s network usually gets along quite well with them. While Sigcho-Lopez says he didn’t encourage his top staffer to run for Senate, that’s not something that would happen without his blessing, at the very least.
Yañez, who is a former García staffer himself, started his campaign late (in March, just before the filing deadline), is being heavily outspent, and is facing an opponent backed by both labor and big names like Chuy García and JB Pritzker. His sole advantage is the district, which was redrawn to include much denser, more urban territory closer to the lake, where the left has been strong lately.
SD-16 (Chicago’s South Side and suburbs)
Willie Preston vs. La’Mont Raymond Williams
Jacqui Collins is leaving this seat to run for Congress. The consensus choice to replace her, among both the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party in Springfield, is lawyer and Cook County Commission staffer La’Mont Raymond Williams. Construction business owner Willie Preston is running on a platform of longer criminal sentences and cutting taxes, which makes it so frustrating that several of Chicago’s more conservative South Side Aldermen are behind him. Did we mention his largest donor, Cheryl Uremovich, is a Trump-supporting longtime Republican fundraiser? We probably should mention that, considering how little that fact gets brought up in conjunction with this race.
SD-31 (Lake County, far north Chicago suburbs, including Zion)
Mary Edly-Allen vs. Sam Yingling
With the retirement of incumbent Senator Melinda Bush, this once-swingy district is now open for the first time as a truly blue district (Lake County took forever to figure out it was full of Democrats), and gets to have its first real primary. Both candidates have been state reps from swing districts, and both have particularly bad records on criminal justice issues.
During the 2019-2020 legislative session, the only one both were in the House for, a series of criminal justice reform measures were signed into law, and both opposed nearly all of them. Their records look even worse upon further investigation: Mary Edly-Allen opposes marijuana legalization and $15 minimum wage (Yingling was a yes on both), while Sam Yingling’s record pre-2019 includes gems like opposing raising the income tax in favor of cutting the state budget.
That tax increase vote was significant for this race. Illinois has a flat tax income tax requirement written into the state constitution, which means any tax hike is a tax hike on everyone. After a painful battle in 2017 to raise taxes to avoid budget cuts—the one Yingling opposed—Democrats decided they needed to end the flat tax and begin progressive taxation. The constitutional amendment ballot measure was Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s big project in 2020. Edly-Allen supported it, while Yingling was opposed. The ballot measure failed narrowly statewide, and while we’re not going to calculate it, it was also clearly close in SD-31 and failed badly in Edly-Allen’s state House district, potentially costing her reelection.
This month, Pritzker endorsed Edly-Allen over Yingling, and Yingling freaked the fuck out. He released a statement which began “It is ironic that on the first day of LGBTQ+ PRIDE month Governor Pritzker attacked the only openly LGBTQ+ legislator outside of the City of Chicago, State Representative Sam Yingling”. The “attack” here being that when Yingling ran for Senate, Pritzker endorsed someone else. The cynicism of this strategy was noticed immediately by the state’s political world, especially given Pritzker had actually made the endorsement in May and it was local newspaper editors who held it for the weekend, after which Pride (and it is Pride, not PRIDE, Sam. It’s not an acronym) had begun.
Yingling, who has been running a negative campaign from the start, also had an intense blowup at Edly-Allen’s mailers attacking his record on guns. She correctly noted that he got an A rating from the NRA, took their money, and voted with them on an important bill. He ran an entire ad condemning her for “politicizing” the tragedy, which you may recognize as the NRA’s response to everything.
The two candidates are fairly evenly matched in fundraising, and, while Yingling may have the Lake County establishment in his corner, Eddy-Allen has the state establishment in hers. While Yingling started out with an advantage, representing nearly half the district for a decade while Eddy-Allen only had a small slice for a couple years, he’s clearly been running a worse campaign (see the last two paragraphs), and it’s anybody’s guess how this race goes.
SD-43 (Joliet and surroundings)
Eric Mattson (i) vs. Rachel Ventura
Hey, Rachel Ventura’s back! You remember her, right? Joliet resident and Will County Board member whose progressive, extremely low budget 2020 campaign for Congress wound up at a shockingly close 41-59 loss to incumbent Bill Foster in a primary that absolutely no one was paying attention to? Glad to see her back. She’s running against another incumbent here, but only technically. Eric Mattson wasn’t just appointed without winning an election, he was appointed a mere month ago. He couldn’t even claim incumbent status until the final days of the campaign. His coworker, the chair of the Will County Democratic Party, did appoint him to the Senate though, and the typical closing of ranks around incumbents has occurred. Whether this is customary, or because Ventura is a DSA-endorsed outspoken opponent of the status quo, was never made explicit (it was the latter.) Organized labor has put in almost $400,000 for Mattson (over $80,000 of which was firefighters, of which he is one) and nearly $250,000 has come from the Senate Democratic caucus. Progressive and leftist groups have made getting Ventura elected a priority, and it’s easy to see why. Electing someone like her, and in a fully suburban district no less, sends a powerful message. Ventura has the support of DSA, Our Revolution, the Sierra Club, and Marie Newman, among others, but her campaign budget is much smaller. Can she replicate the grassroots door-knocking magic of 2020? We can only hope.
HD-04 (Humboldt Park)
Lilian Jimenez vs. Manuel Jimenez Jr. vs. Hector Villafuerte
This is Delia Ramirez’s seat, which she’s vacating for a congressional run. This isn't Chuy García’s most loyal territory, but it is Chuy García territory, so we'll start with his pick: former staffer Lillian Jimenez, who is currently employed at the state Department of Human Services. The Chicago machine is fine with her—all the big labor players are in her corner. Her opponents are charter school-supported Manuel Jimenez Jr. and Hector Villafuerte, who serves on the embattled Humboldt Park Advisory Council, and, based on his endorsement of Carolynn Crump (see HD-06, just below) is also clearly to Jimenez’s right.
HD-06 (one of several strips from central Chicago down into the South Side)
Sonya Harper (i) vs. Carolynn Crump
Robert Martwick in SD-10 (see above) isn’t the only incumbent the FOP is gunning for as retaliation for voting in favor of the SAFE-T Act last year. Sonya Harper also voted for it, and now she has a FOP-backed cop running against her. Unlike that election, they did manage to find a real Democrat. Carolynn Crump is a Black police officer (with multiple use-of-force complaints against her, naturally, or else she wouldn’t be so steamed about the SAFE-T Act) who is, by every indication, not a Republican. It’s like the FOP is actually trying to win this one, or something. Trying they are—they dumped $55,000 into her campaign account (basically the only money she’s raised) and set her loose. This prompted a “break glass” moment in early June, when the House Democrats and a couple close union allies chucked about $150,000 at the race. It seems like Harper has to be favored here, and House Democrats are acting like this mostly because they know how bad it would look if she lost, or even came close, but it does seem like they think the race is competitive, unfortunately.
HD-13 (Chicago’s North Side)
Eileen Dordek vs. Hoan Huynh vs. Sergio Mojica vs. Andrew Peters vs. Joseph Struck
The most overstuffed House race comes courtesy of Chicago’s wealthy Northside. The candidate to beat is Eileen Dordek, who sits on the board of pro-choice group Personal PAC-Illinois. Thanks to swimming in political circles for years, she’s gotten on the good side of plenty of powerful Democrats like JB Pritzker and both members of Congress that represent HD-13 (Mike Quigley and Jan Schakowsky), who are now supporting her here. She is also backed by the AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, and two Ward organizations in the district. There’s not really a “machine” up this far north, but she’s still the establishment pick. Most of the North Side's representatives are progressive, albeit never enough to anger anybody in leadership, and Dordek fits into that mold well. Hoan Huynh, founder of a small technology company, is probably the leading competition to Dordek, who is a strong favorite.
Huynh was challenging Mike Quigley from the left until he dropped down to this race in January, a good sign for both his ideological orientation and likely level of deference to party leadership. While he has largely similar policy views to Dordek, he does stand out by calling for a state-level single payer healthcare system. He’s supported by smaller, on-the-ground progressive groups and organizations dedicated to electing more Asian-Americans. Sergio Mojica is a public school principal, and would be the state’s first out queer Hispanic lawmaker. He is running on a similarly progressive platform, and is backed by Chuy García’s extended network, though neither García’s district nor historic Hispanic political strength extends east of the Chicago River. Cafe owner Andy Peters would be a nonfactor in this race if he hadn’t somehow gotten the Chicago Tribune endorsement, and insurance salesman Joseph Struck hopefully will be, after not raising much money and hoping that being the most tough-on-crime candidate would carry him (Peters, who supports a police hiring spree, is #2 in that regard.)
HD-15 (Chicago’s North Side and suburbs)
Michael Kelly (i) vs. Michael Rabbitt
We’re back to the world of incumbents-in-name-only. Michael Kelly was appointed last year by ward and township bosses, something his opponent, “business transformation leader” Michael Rabbitt, loves to point out. (No, we have no idea what “business transformation leader” means either.) Rabbitt is leaning hard on good government and ethics reforms, but this is an ideological primary as well—Rabbitt is widely recognized as the more progressive candidate, both against Kelly and against his predecessor in this seat, John D'Amico, until D'Amico resigned. Kelly’s strategy, if you can call it that, has been to not really do much other than coast on the hundreds of thousands of dollars that House leadership has spent on his behalf (more than was spared for Sonya Harper, despite the explicit directive from Speaker Chris Welch being that leadership would be helping candidates more the more they fought for reelection—funny, that), while Rabbitt’s grassroots campaign has relied on him attending every event and forum he can find to get his name out there.
HD-16 (West Ridge, Chicago and Skokie)
Denyse Wang Stoneback (i) vs. Kevin Olickal
This is a rematch, sort of. In 2020, primary voters ousted state Rep. Yehiel Kalish, who had been appointed to the seat only to immediately enrage the Democratic political machine that appointed him by voting present (instead of yes) on a major abortion-rights bill, the Illinois Reproductive Health Act, that Illinois Democrats had made a high priority. While the bill passed anyway, the damage was done. The local party machine backed gun violence advocate Denyse Wang Stoneback, and progressives who didn’t support Wang Stoneback backed a more progressive candidate in Kevin Olickal, leaving Kalish with few allies. Wang Stoneback defeated Kalish 43% to 32%, while Olickal got 25% of the vote. Olickal is back to challenge Wang Stoneback as she embarks on her first run for reelection, and unlike in 2020, Wang Stoneback can’t campaign on the urgency of defeating an anti-abortion opponent.
HD-19 (Portage Park, Chicago)
Lindsey LaPointe (i) vs. Tina Wallace
While this was originally yet another FOP challenge to a Democrat willing to support minor police reform, their candidate eventually dropped out to support real estate broker Tina Wallace to maximize the odds of Lindsey LaPointe losing. Not that Wallace is that much different from your typical cop candidate, of course. She’s banging on with the same hysteria on crime, and high taxes, naturally. Wallace’s largely self-financed campaign has failed to gain the momentum you might expect. There’s some concern that LaPointe could be swept out with Martwick (see SD-10, above), but she represents the more liberal half of that Senate district, and while Wallace isn’t an obvious Republican, she still does a good job of earning herself negative headlines.
HD-21 (Western inner Chicago suburbs)
Michael Zalewski (i) vs. Abdelnasser Rashid
Michael Zalewski is entirely unremarkable—an old school machine stooge who got in office thanks to family connections over a decade ago, and has been quietly taking up space in the capitol since then. But the ground is changing underneath his feet. His district is now majority Hispanic (at least by population, don’t expect that to be true of the primary electorate), and also has a sizable Palestinian population, though that isn’t as new; and the machine, even in the working-class inner suburbs of Chicago’s Southwest Side, isn’t what it used to be. Therein lies the promise of Abdelnasser Rashid’s campaign. Rashid was the field director for Chuy García’s 2015 campaign, and heavily involved in Bernie’s 2020 campaign, both of which endeared him immensely to Cook County progressives. He’s already run for office a couple times, unsuccessfully, but that helped him build up name recognition.
The machine is scared of Rashid, as evidenced by them very overtly drawing his block out of the district, and they have good reason to be. He’s running a strong campaign and raising a lot of money. Nothing’s going to beat the million dollars Zalewski has, but Rashid’s raising enough to compete, and enough to lay out the glaring problems with Zalewski, including his ties to Madigan and his often anti-choice voting record. This campaign has gotten ugly, and the best prediction we can make is that whoever wins will get a stiff challenge in 2024 from supporters of the loser.
HD-25 (Lakefront of Chicago’s South Side)
Curtis Tarver II (i) vs. Josef Carr
Accountant Josef Carr is running a long-shot campaign against Curtis Tarver, and doing so very vocally from the left. Carr is promoting himself as supporting bold progressive policies like single payer and universal basic income, while attacking Tarver for opposing rent control and not paying attention to the poorer southern end of the district. Carr may be the underdog, but he does have whatever remains of Jesse Jackson’s organization behind him.
HD-27 (Long strip from the South Side into the suburbs)
Justin Slaughter (i) vs. Jasimone Ward
Jasimone Ward has raised almost no money, her website is down, her social media is practically non-existent… this campaign barely exists on paper, let alone in real life. That’s all fine by us, Justin Slaughter is a pretty good incumbent.
HD-29 (Long strip from Chicago into rural Kankakee County)
Thaddeus Jones (i) vs. Monet Wilson
Monet Wilson sits on the Board of Alders for Calumet City (pop. 29,000), a suburb bordering Chicago that Thaddeus Jones also happens to be mayor of. Despite the vast majority of voters not living in Calumet City, and in fact living far from it (no one does bacon strip redistricting like Chicago), this contest has turned intensely personal, negative, and local. Jones is a pretty corrupt incumbent—he used charity funds for reelection and is currently under federal investigation for a different campaign finance scheme. However, he votes the right way, and Monet Wilson is a former Department of Corrections employee who hasn’t said much about what she would do as state rep. She’s also quite likely to lose.
HD-62 (Lake County, far northern Chicago suburbs)
Laura Faver Dias vs. Thomas Maillard vs. Terry Wilke
Terry Wilke is a current Lake County Board member who recently badly lost reelection as an Avon Township trustee after intentionally deadnaming an opponent. He's also being sued for defamation over his campaign tactics in that race. Fun stuff. Thomas Maillard was a staffer on a few Democratic campaigns in the area a decade ago, and since then worked on “government affairs” (always code for PR and lobbying) for scammy for-profit university group DeVry, and did “partnership development” for Tap Room Gambling LLC, the story of which is a whole corruption case unto itself.) That leaves the “acceptable Democrat” lane to Laura Faver Dias, who seems pretty much that. Dias may be endorsed by JB Pritzker and labor, and she may be the only candidate to raise money, but Maillard can’t entirely be counted out, since, as Lake County Young Dems President, the local Lake County establishment likes him and is trying to get him elected.
HD-72 (Rock Island and Moline)
Thurgood Brooks vs. Jeff Deppe vs. Gregg Johnson
There’s a tendency for races outside of Chicagoland to be quieter affairs, or at least less covered in the media. The frontrunner is Jeff Deppe, a Rock Island County Board member and fundraising leader, who has the support of local labor unions, and even is a union leader himself. Not bad for downstate Illinois. Let’s check his competition. Gregg Johnson, the 2018 nominee for an overlapping Senate district, is a corrections officer. Okay, less good. How about Thurgood Brooks? Brooks is a racial justice and police violence advocate who challenged the incumbent mayor of Rock Island (pop. 37,000) last year, and only lost 52-48. While his website may be short on details, his past work suggests he’d be a more progressive legislator than either of his competitors. He’s raised basically no money, but that was also true of his mayoral campaign.
HD-77 (NW Chicago suburbs)
Kathleen Willis (i) vs. Norma Hernandez
Redistricting moved this district east, away from Kathleen Willis’s hometown of Addison and into the more interior suburbs of Chicago like River Gorge, River Forest, and Elmwood Park. Willis was initially against this move, fearful that Chuy García was planning to primary her. Kathleen Willis has survived as an Anglo rep in a majority Hispanic district for a decade now, and she’s been pretty agile about moving with the times, away from her initial anti-pot and anti-criminal justice reform stances. But it’s still a majority Hispanic district, and she would be vulnerable if a campaign could bring Hispanic voters together for an opponent. Amidst a frantic late-night legislative session, García personally reassured Willis that he was planning no such thing, and she relented, eventually voting for the maps.
Anyway, Chuy García’s candidate in this race is Norma Hernandez, a trustee of Triton Community College. While there are always racial politics at play when a white incumbent in a majority-minority district is challenged, this race falls along another dividing line within the party: Cook County (Hernandez) vs collar counties (Willis). Addison is just as Hispanic as the towns bordering Chicago this district stretches into, if not more so. But those towns are more tied in with the politics of Chicago, and have a more urban feel, while Willis has always been herself as a very suburban representative. That divide is deeper than you might suspect. While statewide unions are supporting Willis, so as to stay on the good side of House leadership, many locals are backing Hernandez. It's even to the point where the statewide and Cook County teachers’ unions are split on this, and teachers’ unions tend to stick together. Unlike most other García-backed challengers, Hernandez is not locked in an overtly ideological race, and battle lines over the direction of House leadership are blurry as well. Willis was part of House leadership during the Madigan era, but she's rarely branded an outright Madigan ally. Though a cynic might point out that while she did call for a new speaker far earlier than the median member did, she still waited until after the votes were there to deny him a new term and was clearly planning a speakership bid herself by the time she was still part of "The 19" that were the public face of Madigan opposition, and he was still fighting to keep his job until the bitter end. Ultimately, your perspective on this race probably comes down to whether you think the growth of the García machine is a good thing for Cook County politics. Given the alternatives, it's hard to argue it isn't.
HD-83 (far west Chicago suburbs, near Aurora)
Arad Boxenbaum vs. Matt Hanson
Technically, a Republican incumbent is running for reelection here, which normally means we don't cover it, but given that the Biden margin in the new version of this district is 19%, we think it's safe to call this a guaranteed pickup.
Arad Boxenbaum is quite young. In fact, at 21, he would be the youngest member of the General Assembly. He seems decent on policy, though he does support term limits. Matt Hanson is a train engineer and Metra board member who is running with the support of organized labor. Promising, but he has frustratingly little online presence, not even a website. We’re going to shrug and give the edge to Boxenbaum here.
HD-91 (Peoria to Bloomington)
Karla Bailey-Smith vs. Sharon Chung
This really should be a layup for Sharon Chung. She has labor behind her, has raised far more money than Karla Bailey-Smith, and even holds elected office in the district, sitting on the McLean County Board of Commissioners. But she may be complacent—she didn’t even bother seeking the Chicago Tribune endorsement, which instead went to her opponent, painter Karla Bailey-Smith, who did. Bailey-Smith is running as a progressive, and probably has name recognition left over from her 2018 campaign for a somewhat-overlapping House district. This one may wind up closer than it “should” be.
HD-98 (SW Chicago suburbs)
Natalie Manley (i) vs. Barry Haywood
Barry Haywood is a ghost candidate who filed for the election, then promptly disappeared. Natalie Manley will win easily.
Cook County Board of Commissioners President
Toni Preckwinkle (i) vs. Richard Boykin
Toni Preckwinkle is not our favorite, but she has consistently resisted the worst instincts of local politics during her long career, and that’s worth something. Despite saying she wouldn’t, she’s now running for one more term as County Board President. She won’t be great, but she’ll be thoroughly OK. Richard Boykin, by contrast, is running out of pure spite. After he served a single term on the County Board, Preckwinkle supported a primary challenger against him, and he lost reelection. This is his attempt at revenge, and it’s obvious to everyone with a pulse. He’s hoping that a mixture of the enemies Preckwinkle’s made over the last several decades and his own hysterical fearmongering on crime will be enough to beat Preckwinkle, but don’t count on it.
Cook County Sheriff
Thomas Dart (i) vs. Noland Rivera
Tom Dart is a terrible sheriff, but when fellow cop and longshot opponent Noland Rivera promises to make changes, it’s for the worse. Another fine time to begrudgingly root for the status quo.
Cook County Assessor
Fritz Kaegi (i) vs. Kari Steele
You can feel less bad rooting for the status quo here. The job of assessor sounds pretty boring—keeping a running record of property values, but is quite important, given the billions and billions of tax dollars on the line in Cook County. Unfortunately, the assessments in Cook County routinely overvalued houses in poorer neighborhoods and undervalued businesses and expensive properties, resulting in a massive transfer of wealth from the county’s poorest residents to its wealthiest. Fritz Kaegi ran for office to reverse this disparity, and, in fits and starts, he has.
Kari Steele would like to undo that. She’s running as a savior of the poor beleaguered business owner, promising to reverse the recent “unfair” assessed increases in the value of commercial property. Naturally, some of her biggest donors are developers and landlords. Infuriatingly, half her money has come from the building trades, who have come together for her to the tune of $1,000,000. It’s either because lower assessments on new buildings make construction slightly cheaper, or because the Cook County establishment hasn’t forgiven Kaegi for running as a reformer in 2018. That’s clearly why the Chicago Federation of Labor is backing Steele. The South Side Black establishment is also supporting Steele, but a countywide win that does not make. Even if she does very well on the South Side, she’ll need strong margins in the suburbs as well to make up for Kaegi’s likely advantage in non-South Side Chicago.
Cook County Commission, District 2 (West Side, South Side of Chicago)
Dennis Deer (i) vs. Andre Smith
Dennis Deer was appointed to this seat in 2017, and immediately faced a primary challenge in 2018. He won, but with only 33% of the vote. That speaks to a theoretical vulnerability, but not a material one, considering his only opposition this year has raised less than $10,000, and is running on a grab bag of conservative grievances like the gas tax, striking public workers, and police defunding. Andre Smiths among his high profile supporters only Richard Boykin, because Boykin’s only aim this year is to strike back as those who wronged him.
Cook County Commission, District 5 (South Side of Chicago and suburbs)
Jaylin McClinton vs. Kierra Williams vs. Monica Gordon vs. Vernard Alsberry Jr.
Vernard Alsberry Jr., mayor of Hazel Crest (pop. 14,000), is endorsed by most of the suburban mayors of his district and has a fundraising advantage thanks to a score of local businesses and business owners. But he is not the favorite. That would be Monica Gordon, choice of outgoing Commissioner Deborah Sims, as well as the Chicago machine. The differences between the two are an impenetrable tangle of local alliances and grievances that we’re not going to sort through. Jaylin McClinton is a hard break from all of that. A former employee in the Obama administration, and later the ACLU, McClinton wants to do more than just get his next job, he’s actually talking about what he’ll do in the Board, from environmental legislation, to raising the minimum wage and decriminalizing sex work. His outsider campaign has the support of several progressive groups, as well as Ald. Jeanette Taylor and state Sen. Robert Peters, two pillars of progressive politics on the South Side.
Cook County Board of Supervisors, District 8 (Near North Side)
Luis Arroyo Jr. (i) vs. Edwin Reyes vs. Rory McHale vs. Anthony Joel Quezada vs. Natalie Toro
Wondering about the sprawling list of challengers to an incumbent? Could be anything…but it’s probably the federal investigation. The top challenger to this seriously embattled incumbent is *sigh* ex-County Commissioner Edwin Reyes, who Luis Arroyo Jr. primaried out in 2014…from the left. Rory McHale, an Irish immigrant, former public defender, and current corruption watchdog at the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General, is a less bad option than either, but is unlikely to win, and the same can be said of public school teacher Natalie Toro.
The real alternative to corrupt and conservative politics-as-usual in this race is Anthony Joel Quezada. Quezada is a staffer for Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa. Chicago DSA, Chuy García, the more progressive labor unions, and no fewer than 8 Aldermembers are supporting Quezada’s bid. This is *the* chance to get a leftist onto the immensely powerful County Board, and the left is chomping at the bit to get it done.
Cook County Board of Supervisors, District 16 (western suburbs)
Frank Aguilar (i) vs. Leticia "Letty" Garcia
Frank Aguilar was appointed to this seat in 2020. It’s unclear why he was chosen, especially since his political career before this was as a Republican in the state house. The whole Chicago machine is behind him, but at least there’s some chance of change, with the candidacy of nurse Letty Garcia, who bills herself as a “pro-choice, women's rights advocate, and trustworthy Democrat”. The big newspapers have all endorsed her out of either a principled opposition to the backroom bullshit that selected Aguilar, or sheer astonishment that he was the result, but she’s struggled to raise money.