The Illinois primary election is just two days away, and candidates are in full “get-out-the-vote mode.”
From the U.S. Senate race to five open Congressional seats — not to mention the Cook County Board race –there’s plenty of last-minute campaigning.
In the Democratic race for Senate, a new endorsement has sparked controversy.
On Sunday, Rep. Mike Quigley threw his support behind Rep. Robin Kelly. Both Kelly and Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton have cited endorsements from former President Barack Obama’s in previous contests and recycled them for the Senate race.
With days to go, Stratton said she received the endorsement of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died several weeks ago, raising questions from Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi and others.
“I was handed this sheet that had all of these personal endorsements of Reverend Jackson, and I was told by Betty Magnus at Rainbow PUSH that, she kind of came over to me and said I wanted you to know that Reverend Jackson, we all discussed it before he passed,” Stratton stated.
“I’ve talked to a couple of kids, they don’t know anything about it, so I don’t know. It is what it is, Kelly said.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be getting an endorsement from the grave,” Krishnamoorthi. So, someone was saying they’re looking through the history books to decide who should endorse me… Again, I think ultimately the endorsement that I seek is from the voters.”
The last-minute Jackson endorsement indicates how tight the race is, however, there’s no way to verify if it is accurate.
On another note, there are five open Congressional seats in the Chicago area for the first time.
It’s so rare to have five open seats at once — and some contests have as many as a dozen candidates on the ballot.
The biggest early voting day is always the Monday before the election.
So far, the suburbs – driven by the open Congressional seats – have seen stronger early turnout than the city. Still, Max Bever with the Chicago Board of Elections believes the city will finish stronger.
People like voting on Election Day, and they’ll never break that habit,” Bever said. “But, at this point, we can say the numbers we’ve seen in the city are encouraging, even if they’re not record-breaking numbers. So, we do hope that we can see falling in between those numbers. If we can get above a 30% citywide turnout, that would really buck the trend of a lot of current primaries that we’ve seen in Chicago.”
Primary voters tend to be older — more women than men. With several more progressive candidates on the ballot, that tradition may change.
In the race for Cook County Board President, Toni Preckwinkle is facing what may be the strongest challenge she has ever encountered.
Preckwinkle — who is also chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party — is running for a fifth term. She and Ald. Brendan Reilly are locked in a tighter race than Preckwinkle would like, with Reilly saying it’s time for a change. The board president oversees more than 20,000 jobs.
“But the work is not done and the stakes are higher than ever,” Preckwinkle said. “Donald Trump has declared war on us. Within weeks of taking office, his administration sued the governor, the mayor and me under the guise of immigration enforcement, but what it was really about was intimidation.”
“They want people to focus on the basics like safe neighborhoods, managing our taxes, keeping things affordable,” Reilly said. “Those are the things that impact people every single day.”
Illinois is the only primary this Tuesday, so the nation will be watching the results to see what the message it sends to the nation ahead of the November midterms.
Region: Chicago,Local,City: Chicago
via Local – NBC Chicago https://ift.tt/vqz6d0r
March 15, 2026 at 05:39PM
Illinois Delivered 