Tag Archives: J.B. Pritzker

Stratton, Bean Win; Jackson, Jr. Loses

By Jim Ellis — Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Illinois Primary

The important Illinois primary produced the 2026 election cycle’s first full slate of partisan nominees last night. The Land of Lincoln hosted the nation’s fifth regular primary election, but the first allowing plurality finishes.

In the four previous March primaries, from Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas, only candidates who secured majority support were nominated. In the campaigns where all finishers were under the majority threshold, the top two vote getters advanced into runoff elections.

Senate

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, with strong support from Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s political machine, defeated two sitting members of the House, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Schaumburg) and Robin Kelly (D-Matteson/Chicago) in last night’s Illinois open Senate Democratic primary.

Throughout the great preponderance of the primary campaign cycle, Rep. Krishnamoorthi had developed what appeared to be dominating polling and fundraising leads. In the Past two weeks, however, momentum clearly shifted to Stratton and this closing effort propelled her to a 39.7 – 33.3 percent victory over Krishnamoorthi.

Rep. Kelly, who was never a serious factor, pulled 18.4 percent of the vote. She did better in Cook County, garnering 23 percent, and won her home county of Kankakee, but otherwise, Kelly failed to make her mark throughout the rest of the state.

Stratton carried Cook County, which was expected, with just over 40 percent of the vote. The surprise was her strength downstate, basically running at parity with Krishnamoorthi outside of Cook County.

This race’s final publicly released poll, from FM3 Research (March 10-12; 678 likely Illinois Democratic primary voters), proved spot on. Its survey result from a week ago found Stratton leading Rep. Krishnamoorthi 38-33 percent.

On the Republican side, former state party chairman Don Tracy won his party’s nomination with 40 percent of the vote. He will be a decided underdog to Stratton in November. The winner will replace retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D).

Governor

Incumbent J.B. Pritzker was unopposed in the Democratic primary as he seeks a third consecutive term as the state’s chief executive.

On the Republican side, former state Senator and 2022 gubernatorial nominee Darren Bailey won renomination setting up a re-match in November. Four years ago, Gov. Pritzker defeated Bailey by a 55-42 percent count. We can expect a similar result later this year.

House

All of the significant House primary action was on the Democratic side because the party is risking five seats through incumbent retirements and with Reps. Kelly and Krishnamoorthi running for the Senate. While the four hotly contested open seat primaries had large candidate fields, three of the four came down to two principal contenders.

The fifth open seat, that of retiring Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Chicago), featured only one candidate, the Congressman’s chief of staff, Patty Garcia (no relation to the Congressman). We expect to see several prominent Democrats qualify as Independents to force a competitive general election, however.

In the Chicago-anchored 2nd District where former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was attempting a comeback, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller instead defeated the former 10-term incumbent, 40-29 percent. Jackson, son of the late civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson, was forced to leave office in 2012 after being convicted of bribery and misusing government and campaign funds. Miller is now a lock to win the general election.

The second comeback attempt, from former Congresswoman Melissa Bean, was successful. She defeated businessman Junaid Ahmed 32-27 percent. Bean was originally elected in 2004 but defeated in 2010. She now returns to succeed Rep. Krishnamoorthi in the state’s Chicago suburban 8th District. This version of the 8th, unlike the seat to which Bean was originally elected, is safely Democratic.

Turning to the 7th CD, the seat that retiring veteran Chicago Congressman Danny Davis represents, state Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) defeated Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin 24-20 percent. He will now advance into Congress with what is predicted to be an easy general election win. This is a good example of why some states employ a runoff, because the final winning percentage in this situation is likely to be under 25 percent.

Ninth District Rep. Jan Schkowsky (D-Evanston) is retiring after serving what will be 36 years in the House at the end of this Congress. Her successor will be Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who won the Democratic primary with a close 29-26-20 percent win over free Palestine activist Kat Abughazaleh and state Sen. Laura Fine (D-Glenview). All other House incumbents from both parties who faced primary opposition won easily.

Next, we will see the special congressional election runoff in Georgia on April 7, followed by New Jersey’s 11th District special general election on April 16. The next regular primaries are not until May 5 in Indiana and Ohio. The month of May will feature 11 regular primaries and the Texas runoff election.

More on the Illinois Primary Results

By Jim Ellis

March 22, 2018 — Tuesday night’s big stories in the Illinois primary were Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) having a difficult time in winning a close Republican primary, and Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Western Springs) just barely surviving his Democratic primary challenge. Venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker successfully captured the Democratic gubernatorial nomination with a margin greater than polling had predicted.

Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) | RGA

Gov. Rauner scored only a 51.5 – 48.5 percent win over state Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) in a primary result that finds the state chief executive’s GOP political base eroding. While spending over $60 million in the primary campaign against just $3 million-plus for Ives, the 20:1 resource advantage only proved good for a three percentage point win with still 294 precincts not fully reporting as of this writing. The 351,086 to 330,227 vote totals represent 97 percent of the recorded voting universe. Mathematically, however, there are not enough uncounted votes remaining in Ives’ areas of strength for her to overcome the current statewide deficit.

In the 3rd District House race, seven-term Rep. Lipinski appears to have scored a narrow victory with almost all Cook County precincts reporting. Lipinski carried Cook County with 51.7 percent, a total that will likely rise a bit once all the votes are counted. His opponent, media consultant Marie Newman, won Will County with 58.6 percent of the vote and took the district’s sliver of DuPage County with a mere 55 to 34 vote margin. But, her 1,256 vote lead coming into Cook County was not substantial enough to defeat Lipinski there, which resulted in her district-wide loss.

Lipinski is one of the few remaining Blue Dog Democrats, while Newman enjoyed support from the Bernie Sanders’ wing of the Democratic Party along with major backing from national liberal organizations. The turnout will exceed 90,000 voters once all of the ballots are recorded. When all totals are official, the voter turnout percentage here will hover somewhere in the 45-50 percent range.

In other key congressional races, the Democratic primary in the state’s 6th District has flip-flopped back and forth in a very close contest between financial advisor Kelly Mazeski and clean energy company executive Sean Casten. Mazeski initially was in the lead but in the end, Casten pulled ahead when all 640 precincts were able to report vote totals. Casten captured about 30 percent of the vote (18,863) to Mazeski’s 26.5 percent (16,686). Five other candidates were on the ballot, and cumulatively they garnered 44.2 percent of the vote. Now Casten will challenge veteran Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton) who was unopposed in his primary.

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Yesterday’s Illinois Primary

By Jim Ellis

March 21, 2018 — Land of Lincoln voters went to the polls yesterday to vote in the nation’s second primary of the 2018 midterm election season.

The headliner of Election Day was the gubernatorial primary, as Gov. Bruce Rauner (R), sporting poor job approval ratings but having virtually unlimited financial resources, squared off against conservative state Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton). Ives received early support in the form of a $2.5 million donation from mega-donor Dick Uihlein, but her standing did not greatly improve in the past weeks, meaning her long-shot campaign remained as such entering Election Day.

Because of significant dissatisfaction with Gov. Rauner within the GOP base constituency, Ives was projected to perform better than a typical candidate challenging a sitting governor in a party primary. Yet, her performance was not strong enough to deny Rauner from advancing into the general election. Rauner scored only a 51.5 – 48.5 percent win over Ives in a primary result that indicates the state chief executive’s GOP political base is eroding.

Yesterday’s most competitive race wasn’t the one most had predicted — on the Democratic side of the gubernatorial primary. Venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker had spent over $65 million of his own money in this campaign, and was fortunate to have drawn two equivalently strong intra-party opponents.

A new poll from Victory Research (March 13-16; 1,204 registered Illinois voters) — the last before the vote — found Pritzker with only a 32-26-22 percent lead over Chicago businessman Chris Kennedy, who had advertised heavily and featured footage in his promotional ads of his late father, US attorney general and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and state Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Chicago). Biss had shown surprising strength for a legislator without statewide name identification. But Pritzker won the party nomination with 45.4 percent of the vote, a much larger total than the polling had predicted.

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