The top-of-the-ticket Illinois Democratic primary race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat has lurched along in slow motion through much of the fall, its major candidates eclipsed largely by a turbulent political backdrop even as they seek support for a contest less than 90 days away.

But as the March 17 election moves closer, signs of chippiness have emerged among the contenders as they look to move beyond well-worn campaign rhetoric and seek to draw sharper contrasts for voters.

The race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin has struggled to break through a crowded news cycle. A tumultuous fall — punctuated by aggressive immigration enforcement raids in the Chicago area under Republican President Donald Trump and a bruising fight over the city budget — has dominated political attention, leaving the candidates to build momentum primarily on their own.

So far, U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg, Robin Kelly of Lynwood and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton of Chicago have focused on similar public themes — affordability, health care and opposition to Trump — while shying away from direct criticism of one another in early public forums.

They’ve also worked on fundraising and building support, seeking backing from individual labor unions after none of them could get the two-thirds support from delegates needed to win the Illinois AFL-CIO’s endorsement.

At the same time, the campaigns have begun taking shots at each other on more political issues, focusing on campaign finances rather than policy, to try to dust up the rival contenders.

Already, a complaint has been filed against Stratton, alleging her Senate campaign misused an email fundraising list from her state campaign, something her Senate campaign dismisses as “frivolous.”

The complaint, filed by a family member associated with a Krishnamoorthi supporter, contends that in the month before Stratton announced her Senate bid, her state campaign fund spent more than $100,000 on a firm to increase her digital presence and grow an email list, then effectively transferred that asset to her federal campaign without properly disclosing it, in violation of federal campaign law.

The complaint cites a person who said they signed up for Stratton’s state campaign emails and subsequently received campaign emails from Stratton’s Senate campaign account after she announced her bid for federal office.

Stratton’s campaign disputes the characterization. Despite heavy state spending to help curate a state email list, her Senate campaign said it is not using the state list and has instead built its own new list while using the same digital vendor.

The same firm is also sending emails. But the Stratton Senate campaign said email addresses used in campaign solicitations come from a variety of sources. Those receiving a federal solicitation were the result of being on the separate Senate list, not the state email list, according to the Stratton Senate campaign.

“It’s the same digital vendor, but it’s not the same mailing list,” a Stratton spokeswoman said. “There’s a lot of ways that you end up on different mailing lists that you didn’t directly sign up for.”

As the complaint plays out, Stratton has been hitting back at Krishnamoorthi, the race’s dominant fundraiser. Through September, Krishnamoorthi raised $24.9 million compared with Stratton’s nearly $2.1 million and Kelly’s $2.7 million.

The clash intensified when federal immigration agents resumed enforcement activity in Chicago and the suburbs on Dec. 16. Krishnamoorthi posted publicly that conducting raids during the holidays was not about public safety but “about fear and intimidation.”

“I will use every oversight and legislative tool available to confront these abuses, defend due process and hold federal agencies and their leaders accountable,” he pledged.

Stratton quickly fired back, attacking Krishnamoorthi for having accepted $29,300 since 2015 from Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer at Palantir, which has a $30 million contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement through the Department of Homeland Security. After the contribution was reported in the Chicago Sun-Times, Krishnamoorthi’s campaign said it donated the funds to unnamed immigrant rights groups.

“With all due respect, Congressman, you had no issue accepting tens of thousands of dollars from the people profiting off of these raids. Accountability starts with you. You owe Illinoisans an explanation of where you donated the money and why you had to be pressured to return it,” Stratton posted on X.

She also questioned whether Krishnamoorthi prioritized fundraising over personal values.

A Krishnamoorthi spokesperson dismissed the criticism, saying the five-term congressman “is fighting tirelessly to hold Donald Trump, ICE, and DHS accountable” and that, as a “proud immigrant and a proven fighter … his record on these issues is crystal clear.”

Krishnamoorthi, whose fundraising has allowed him to air commercials nonstop since mid-July, and Stratton have each used the aggressive activities of ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents as a major campaign point to also rail against Trump.

On Dec. 19, Krishnamoorthi visited the ICE detention facility in Broadview after a federal court lifted restrictions on members of Congress conducting oversight visits. Authorities denied him entry twice in October.

Earlier that week, Stratton said she joined community organizers in the Back of the Yards neighborhood to warn residents of ICE activity. In a social media post, she taunted the chief border patrol agent, Greg Bovino, saying he “and his out-of-control agents should know that their authoritarian tactics are not welcome here.”

Railing against Operation Midwest Blitz underscores a shared imperative among the leading Democrats: to persuade primary voters they would be the most forceful check on Trump and his agenda.

“We’ve got to hold the Trump administration accountable. They are acting with impunity right now,” Krishnamoorthi said at a recent candidate forum hosted by the Northwest Suburbs Organizing for Action group and Indivisible Illinois.

“We need to constrain his powers. He can’t tariff the hell out of our prices so that people can’t afford their basic staples. We’ve got to make sure that people don’t lose their health care, and we have to repeal that large, lousy law. On top of that, we have to make sure that ICE, which is acting with impunity, is reined in,” he said.

“I’m going to hold Donald Trump accountable,” Stratton, the two-term lieutenant governor to Gov. JB Pritzker, told the forum. She added that she believed the president to be “a threat to United States’ national security.”

“You all have heard me day after day call him out on his nonsense, and I’m going to continue doing it when I get to the United States Senate,” she said.

Kelly, in her 12th year in Congress, is less strident in her rhetoric and defends herself against Stratton’s efforts to position herself as an outsider against a “status quo” of two congressional rivals.

“Illinois needs someone who has worked in Congress, reached across the aisle in very challenging times, but still gotten the work, done. And I’m not afraid to stand up to any bully,” Kelly said. “I’ve stood up, shown up my entire life in government.”