As U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-8th District) begins to make his case for a promotion to fellow Illinois Democrats, he’s citing his experience “standing up to bullies and bad actors” — naming e-cigarette companies and food conglomerates as examples — as preparation for working in the U.S. Senate.
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-8th District), who is running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in the 2026 election. Credit: Raja for Illinois“I’ve gone after them, held them accountable and gotten results,” Krishnamoorthi told the RoundTable in a recent phone interview. “Now I have to do the same with regard to Donald Trump, perhaps the biggest bully of them all.”
He’s among a trio of high-profile Democrats leading the race to succeed longtime U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who will not run for a fifth term in next year’s midterm election. Rounding out the pack are U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly (2nd District) and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, and all three are putting their current positions on the line to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination in a race that will top voters’ ballots in the March 17, 2026 primary.
Krishnamoorthi has served in the U.S. House since 2017, representing suburbs in northwest Cook County and parts of DuPage and Kane counties. It’s his first stint in elected office, and he previously served in appointed positions under former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and then-State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. He first ran for the 8th District seat in 2012 but lost the primary to Tammy Duckworth, who now fills Illinois’ other seat in the Senate.
Dems should ‘use our leverage’ against Trump
With Election Day still more than six months away, candidates are broadly focused not on each other but on Trump and his administration, as each works to build a reputation as someone ready to push back on the president’s policies as a senator.
Krisnamoorthi released an “Executive Branch Accountability Agenda” on Aug. 11, a policy document outlining a plan to “rein in the presidency. He said he’s been on a “listening tour” around the state. When he spoke to the RoundTable last month, his next stop was the DuQuoin State Fair. He added that he’s visited Evanston “I don’t know how many times at this point” in his travels, with more plans to return in the coming months.
The two biggest issues Krishnamoorthi said he’s heard about from voters: the “chaos” of Trump’s economic policies, including the “affordability crisis right in front of our eyes,” and the administration believing it’s “unaccountable to anyone.”
“That it will deploy U.S. soldiers on U.S. soil against American citizens … or that it will send ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] into a community and round up people,” Krishnamoorthi said of voters’ concerns. “So they want somebody who will address both those buckets of issues, the economic ones, but also … making sure that we don’t have another administration ever like this, because we can’t go through this trauma again.”
Part of that work is for Democrats to “use our leverage,” he said, specifically calling it “very disappointing” when a group of senators, including Durbin and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), voted in March to allow a Republican funding bill to pass and avert a government shutdown.
“I voted against it … hoping and thinking that the Senate Democrats would back us up,” Krishnamoorthi said, “only to find out that that was not true.”
Fundraising and filing season
His overall attitude toward Durbin remains positive, though, saying the outgoing senator has “really put a lot of people to shame” with his energy and presence throughout the state during his tenure. He was similarly courteous to his opponents, telling the RoundTable he has “nothing bad to say about them” and instead pitching that his experience makes him “the person that Illinois needs at this moment.”
That said, he’s also ready for what’s shaping up to be an expensive contest with his high-ranking rivals, reporting $21 million in cash on-hand at the end of June against Kelly’s $2 million and Stratton’s $660,000. That financial advantage showed in his $500,000 purchase of the contest’s first TV advertisement on July 15, a full eight months before the primary. The Cook County Democratic Party decided not to endorse a candidate a few days later, keeping it an open race.
With summer ending, all candidates in the 2026 midterms face two significant autumn milestones. The first is on Oct. 15, the deadline for campaign committees to disclose their fundraising and spending for the third quarter, covering July, August and September, which will offer a fresh look into how much cash each candidate has stocked up for the active campaign period still ahead.
The second is the filing window from Oct. 27 to Nov. 3, when candidates go from prospective to official by submitting paperwork, including reams of voter signatures, to qualify for the primary ballot. Senate candidates from both parties have to submit signatures from at least 5,000 registered voters of their party to qualify.
Rep. Krishnamoorthi pitches experience ‘standing up to bullies’ in Senate bid is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston’s most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.
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September 2, 2025 at 06:36AM
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