Judging only by the maps of congressional election results, it would appear last week’s Democratic wave bypassed Illinois as it swept across the country, turning new and unfamiliar places blue from South Carolina to northern Nevada.
After Tuesday’s transformative midterm elections, the partisan makeup of Illinois’ delegation is unchanged: Both U.S. senators and 14 of 17 House members will be Democrats.
When the new Congress convenes in January, however, six of those seats — one in the Senate and five in the House — will have new occupants. The turnover marks a generational, if not ideological, shift in the state’s Democratic representation in Washington as the party assumes its largest congressional majorities since before the tea party “shellacking” of 2010.
With two years remaining in President Donald Trump’s term, there’s a broad consensus among Illinois’ congressional Democrats, from the political center to the left flank, that their newly empowered and emboldened party must balance two responsibilities: It has to serve as a check on the administration while also addressing the economic anxieties and corruption concerns that fueled a stunning midterm rebuke of Republicans.
“Americans sent a very, very clear message: They are sick of Donald Trump’s bull−−−− … promising one thing in the morning but going back on his word by the afternoon,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth said Wednesday, a day after Democrats gained at least 41 House seats and at least seven in the Senate. “And they are done with him putting self-interest over our national interest.”
Duckworth wasn’t on the ballot, but the two-term Hoffman Estates Democrat will become the state’s senior senator next year with the retirement of five-term Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the upper chamber.
Joining Durbin in retirement will be 15-term Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago, 14-term Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston and four-term Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, also of Chicago. Two more are leaving after losing the March primary for Durbin’s seat: Seven-term Rep. Robin Kelly of south suburban Lynwood and five-term Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of northwest suburban Schaumburg.
In perhaps the starkest contrast with an outgoing member, the liberal but institutionalist Durbin will be succeeded by Sen.-elect Juliana Stratton. The two-term lieutenant governor campaigned as a progressive fighter, backed a $25-per-hour federal minimum wage and vowed not to support New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to lead the Democrats’ new Senate majority.
“We heard a clear mandate last night that we want a party that’s going to come in and fight for everyday Americans,” Stratton said Wednesday at a news conference with Duckworth and Gov. JB Pritzker, whom she ran alongside in 2018 and 2022. At the event, held at the Columbus Park Refectory on the West Side, Pritzker laid out his own lengthy agenda for congressional Democrats.
“We’re going to do what we have always done. We’ve always been the party to deliver for people,” Stratton said.
A longtime mediator before entering politics, Stratton said she would use those skills to deliver on her progressive policy promises.
“It’s going to be important that we find these unifying areas,” she said.
Not far from the tree
Illinois’ five new House members, all from the Chicago area, don’t drift far on the political spectrum from their predecessors. Three had their predecessor’s early backing, with Davis endorsing Chicago state Rep. La Shawn Ford and Schakowsky endorsing then-Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss in their respective primaries. García, meanwhile, employed old-school maneuvers to clear the way for Patty García, who was his chief of staff and is not related.
Amid their Senate campaigns, Kelly and Krishnamoorthi held off on endorsing anyone in the primaries for their seats. Nevertheless, they each will hand their seat over to someone cut from similar political cloth.
In the 2nd District, which spans parts of the South Side, the south suburbs and downstate, Kelly will be succeeded by Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, a longtime political ally and fellow Lynwood resident. Miller defeated candidates further to the left in the primary and focused her campaign on improving healthcare.
In the northwest suburban 8th District, Krishnamoorthi will hand the seat back to fellow centrist Melissa Bean, who also defeated more progressive candidates in the primary. Bean held the seat for three terms before she was swept out in the 2010 tea party wave.
Biss wasn’t the furthest-left candidate in the 15-way primary in the 9th District, which covers parts of the North Side and the north and northwest suburbs. But the former state lawmaker and primary candidate for governor campaigned on his progressive record as Evanston mayor and his resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration raids.
Ford, a progressive who’s been in the Illinois House for two decades, has focused on bringing resources and delivering services to constituents as he prepares to succeed Davis in the 7th District, which covers parts of the South and West sides and the near-west suburbs.
Patty García is preparing to take up the mantle of the progressive political operation her former boss has been building since the 1980s on the Southwest Side and as he’s represented the 4th District, which covers several majority-Latino Chicago neighborhoods as well as some western suburbs. In some instances, she has taken stronger stances than he has, such as calling explicitly for the abolition of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The new dean of the delegation will be Rep. Mike Quigley of Chicago’s North Side, who won a 10th term Tuesday while also running for Chicago mayor in February’s election.
Quigley said he would meet with each new member as he tries to help them land their preferred committee assignments and find their footing in Washington. He sought to temper expectations about how quickly the newcomers might deliver results, even with large Democratic majorities.
“Nobody gets what they want right away,” he said. “You help them build a path to what they aspire to.”
For example, Quigley aims to help two members just elected to third terms — Reps. Nikki Budzinski of Springfield and Jonathan Jackson of Chicago — get appointed to the powerful committees. For Budzinski, that’s Appropriations; for Jackson, that’s Ways and Means.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” he said. “There’s an institutional memory that has to be recaptured. There’s a steep learning curve for the Illinois delegation.”
‘Dare him to veto’
In the immediate aftermath of the midterm election, progressive Democrats in Illinois’ House delegation largely focused on passing the policies they promised constituents rather than coming in swinging with investigations of Trump administration officials.
Among their strategies for advancing an ambitious legislative agenda are two in particular: Mobilizing the voters who elected broad Democratic majorities to lobby representatives of both parties and daring Trump to veto broadly popular or bipartisan legislation.
It’s time for Democrats to swing big, Ford said in an interview last week. He was optimistic that some Republican lawmakers, having been “emancipated from Trump,” could get on board with some Democratic proposals, allowing Congress to send bipartisan bills to the president’s desk.
“Why would he veto something that the American people want?” Ford said.
Duckworth separately noted Wednesday that Trump didn’t veto bipartisan housing legislation that landed on his desk earlier this year, instead allowing it to become law without his signature.
“We’re going to call Donald Trump on it,” Duckworth said. “We can put things in front of him and dare him to veto them.”
Trump, for his part, frequently has used executive orders to enact his agenda. And he addressed reporters on Thursday while sitting next to a red hat bearing the word “VETO.”
Still, Democrats have to do both — oversee the Trump administration and pass laws to help people, Biss said.
“If we were to take the eye off the ball on oversight, we’re basically inviting this to happen again, which is unacceptable. If we are to take the eye off the ball of advancing an agenda to improve the material conditions of Americans, we’re just not doing our job,” he said.
Both are “right there in the Constitution,” he said.
Several members said they already can see the stakes.
“If we do not prove to the American people that we will do everything in our power to deliver for them, goodbye 2028,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez of Chicago, an outspoken progressive who was elected to a third term.
If Democrats want to hold on to their majorities and retake the White House, Ramirez said, “we have to actually pass the bold agendas that we’ve unfortunately failed to deliver in the past.”
‘They will be subpoenaed’
Ramirez also plans to play an active role in accountability efforts.
At a post-election rally in Pilsen on Wednesday, she told immigrant rights advocates that she is looking to chair the House Homeland Security subcommittee that deals with oversight, investigations and accountability. She’s put current and former Department of Homeland Security officials, including former Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, on notice, she said.
“They will be getting a letter from me. They will be subpoenaed. And they will be coming before our committee,” Ramirez said, eliciting applause. “I believe that Democrats can walk, run and chew gum at the same time. We need justice and accountability, and we need a legislative package in the House and Senate to actually address the issues that our communities need.”
The rally, hosted by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, also drew Biss, both Garcías and Jackson. Their presence reflected how strongly immigration motivated voters in Chicago and elsewhere, a little more than a year after the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the region, known as Operation Midway Blitz.
Patty García, wearing an “ABOLISH ICE” T-shirt, said accountability for immigration enforcement is the “No. 1” priority.
The incoming congresswoman said she learned as a chief of staff on Capitol Hill that organizing for change happens both inside and outside the halls of Congress. The large group of progressives in the incoming class will “give us that benefit of introducing a progressive agenda,” she said.
Some progressive members of the Illinois delegation pushed back on the notion that the results of the midterms were more of a rejection of Trump than an embrace of Democrats and their policies. Patty García said she took offense at that idea, given all the organizing it took to motivate voters.
The results were not only a rejection of Trump “but also a show of love to democracy and the Democratic Party,” said García, who easily defeated Democrat-turned-independent Chris Getty and two other candidates.
The Lyons mayor, who staked his candidacy on the idea that voters were angry with both major parties, garnered only 9% of the overall vote and just 21% in Lyons Township, where he serves as the elected supervisor.
Bean, returning to Congress after a 16-year absence, said she is hopeful about what Democrats can accomplish, even with Trump still in the White House.
“I tend to be an optimist,” said Bean, whose previous tenure overlapped with the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “You should be an optimist if you’re in public service and believe in the possibilities of what you can accomplish. … The president is going to care about his legacy and is likely to want to work with a Democratic majority to get things done. … It’s incumbent upon us to put forth legislation that it would be very difficult for him not to support.”
While she thinks there could be support for pursuing impeachment of some administration officials, possibly including bipartisan backing to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even before Congress changes hands, Bean cautioned against attempting to impeach Trump for a third time.
“He has been a retribution president and gone after anyone he perceives as his enemies, and we don’t need to do that,” she said. “We need to deliver for the American people.”
Miller agreed, calling previous impeachment efforts “fruitless.” Voters are tired of “the noise,” she said, and want Congress to focus on issues that make them feel heard, such as addressing high gas prices.
“I don’t want to just go in there and have performative fighting going on, just so that we can say we’re attacking him,” Miller said. “I mean, he’s self-imploding right now.”
Instead, Miller said, Democrats should use their new power to make tangible improvements in people’s lives, such as restoring food assistance, protecting maternal healthcare and preserving disaster aid.
“This administration is cutting the basic essentials of people’s livelihoods,” she said. “What’s important now is restoring people’s confidence in Congress.”
While the risks are significant for Democrats if they fail to deliver, Ford pointed to a strong political upside if they succeed.
“If Democrats do this right, we could gain new Democrats in our party, and it would be difficult for 2028 for Republicans,” he said.
