CHICAGO—Strong ties to community groups, civil rights organizations, and her support for Medicare for All and abolishing ICE, as well as other issues important to labor, civil rights, and immigrant rights groups helped Lt. Gov. Julianna Stratton overcome a huge fundraising gap to win the Democratic nomination Tuesday for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.
Her victory reinforced the idea among many that a candidate can win when they are unafraid to take strong progressive positions, like her call for raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour and her call to abolish ICE.
In heavily Democratic Illinois, the winner of the Democratic primary is virtually certain to be elected in November. Her election then would bring the total number of African Americans in the U.S. Senate to six, a historic number. She is expected to join two Black women already there, Sen. Angela Ashbrook of Maryland, and Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, and three African American men, Raphael Warnock of Mississippi, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Tim Scott of South Carolina. All except Scott, a Republican, are Democrats.
With 92% of the vote counted, both statewide and in politically dominant Cook County, Stratton had 473,355 votes (40%) to 391,984 (33.2%) for Rep. Raj Krishnamoorthi, whose district includes parts of Chicago and western suburbs. Veteran Rep. Robin Kelly, 69, who holds a South Side-based U.S. House seat, was third with 213,293 votes (18.4%).
Stratton will face former GOP State Chair Don Tracy in the fall. He won that primary with 39.8% of the total vote. Vote totals in the GOP primary were far lower than those in the Democratic primary.
Most Illinois unions, including the state AFL-CIO, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and the Chicago Teachers Union/AFT Local 1, stayed neutral during the primary race but are expected to strongly back Stratton in the general election. SEIU did, however, endorse Stratton in the primary and operated a phone banking operation in support of her campaign.
Many of those campaigning for Stratton actually were unionists who remembered her role in support of a successful union-backed campaign to write the right to organize and a ban on right-to-work-for-less into the state constitution.
Krishnamoorthi spent $30 million in the race for the Democratic nod to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin. That was more than all the other candidates, Democratic and Republican, in the U.S. Senate race combined.
Stratton won big in Cook County, especially in Chicago. Her Cook County margins: 262,568 (40%) to 186,359 (29%) for Krishnamoorthi. Kelly, who is giving up her 2nd District congressional seat, was third in Cook County with 150,247 (23%). Kelly also has a strong pro-labor voting record. Both she and Stratton have 100 percent AFL-CIO ratings. Kelly’s vote, combined with Stratton’s, showed that a strong turnout in the African American communities of Chicago’s South Side can command a majority of the Democratic primary vote across the entire state of Illinois.
Even though Stratton’s support was particularly strong in Chicago’s Cook County, her appeal appeared downstate, too. Among her wins outside Chicago were the counties around East St. Louis, the state capital of Springfield, and Champaign County, home of the University of Illinois. She defeated Krishnamoorthi there, 52%-37%.
Those two leading candidates split other Chicago counties, with Stratton taking Will County—again heavily urban and with people of color in Joliet and Chicago Heights. Krishnamoorthi won the others, but by smaller margins. That includes his share of populous DuPage County.
Though Stratton raised less than $4 million as compared to the more than $30 million raised by Krishnamorthi for the race, all of it in small contributions, she wasn’t totally strapped for financial backing. Some $5 million came from a SuperPAC which her boss, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), established and funded.
Her victory is showcasing Pritzger’s clout, according to people who support the idea of him running for president. The governor, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, but very pro-worker in all his major statements as governor, was unopposed in his primary. Stratton’s win, his backers say, shows that Pritzker can not only fund his own campaigns, but has coattails, too.
Not all victories were in the progressive column on Tuesday night. One big spender, the controversial far-right American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), wound up with mixed results after first its individual givers and then the PAC itself pumped a combined $20 million into four open-seat House races.
AIPAC is a hard-line supporter of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war on Gaza and now on Iran. It demands absolute fealty on those issues—and also pumps millions of dollars into ads opposing anyone “soft” on Israel.
In the 2nd District, dominated by the South Side, AIPAC’s endorsed candidate, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, won 40%, far ahead of her nearest challenger, former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Miller emphasized her support for Planned Parenthood.
The other hopefuls in the race, notably State Senate Labor Committee Chair Robert Peters, raised the AIPAC issue. Peters, who is both Black and Jewish, has questioned Israeli policies and wars. AIPAC spent some money on anti-Peters ads, but more on pushing Miller. Peters finished third, at 11.8%.
In the Northwest Side and suburban 8th District, former Rep. Melissa Bean (D) edged a progressive hopeful and war critic, Junaid Ahmed.
In the 9th District, which covers Chicago’s Lakefront and northwest suburbs, AIPAC donors, individually, backed State Sen. Laura Fine, since AIPAC has become toxic among Democrats. She finished third, with 20.8% of the vote.
The winner was Evanston Mayor Dan Biss, a political veteran, with 30%. He’s also somewhat skeptical about Trump-Netanyahu ties, having had to deal with the impact on his city of pro-Palestinian protests—and Trump’s threats to pull federal grants—at Northwestern University, its dominant institution.
Finishing between them was 26-year-old Kat Abughazaleh, with 26%. She’s Palestinian-American and was openly and extremely critical of the wars. AIPAC ran negative ads against her.
One more progressive emerged from the primary and again beat an AIPAC-backed hopeful in the 7th District, which stretches west from the Loop. State Rep. La Shawn Ford beat Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, 29%-24%, with a multitude of candidates splitting the rest of the vote.
Ford told reporters he would “spend his first 100 days in Congress building up progressive congressional districts and working with community groups to set priorities for federal funds.”
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
