Takeaways from the Illinois primary elections

By Eric Bradner, CNN

(CNN) — In nominating Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton for the Senate on Tuesday, Illinois Democrats chose a candidate whose message included a television ad featuring people saying “f*** Trump” over a more moderate, better-funded rival, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, as well as Rep. Robin Kelly.

Stratton’s win, fueled by a big margin in Chicago and bolstered by stronger-than-expected results in its suburbs, came in a primary election that featured an open Senate seat and four House vacancies.

Those seats are all likely to be won by Democrats in November. But the party’s deepest divides — over ideology, generational change, how to approach Israel and more — played out in Tuesday’s primaries. And ultimately, the outcomes are likely to do little to settle those long-running debates over the party’s path forward.

Candidates backed by pro-Israel and pro-cryptocurrency groups won some key races, but lost others. A progressive promising generational change fell short in one Chicago-area House contest, but the winner of that race was also opposed by AIPAC. One former member of Congress succeeded in a comeback attempt, while another conceded defeat.

Here are five takeaways from the Illinois primary:

Pritzker wins twice

The primary’s biggest winner might be Stratton’s top booster: Gov. JB Pritzker.

The Democratic governor, who is widely seen as a 2028 presidential contender, was unopposed in his own primary as he seeks a third term. But he pumped millions of dollars into lifting Stratton over two members of Congress in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.

Pritzker, the billionaire heir to a hotel chain fortune, celebrated with a fiery speech Tuesday night taking aim at Trump — making clear again where he stands as the party begins to sort through what it is looking for in its next standard-bearer.

He called the president “the carnival barker in chief” and the Republicans who support him in Congress and in the White House “grifters of corruption and selfishness, purveyors of bigotry and hatred.”

“Everything we care about is under siege from Washington,” Pritzker said.

Senate Democratic generational change

If Stratton wins in November — and in deep-blue Illinois, she is the heavy favorite against the GOP nominee, former Illinois Republican Party Chair Don Tracy — she would bring more progressive energy to the Senate as Democrats face what could be a changing of the guard.

Durbin, 81, is the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. Stratton, 60, has said she will not support Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as the leader of the Democratic caucus.

In a speech celebrating her win Tuesday, Stratton vowed to take up a series of progressive policy goals, telling supporters that “we will fight for Medicare for all, we will fight to abolish ICE, we’ll fight for a real living wage,” and “we will fight to defend our rights and claw our democracy back from the brink.”

She said that “courage will bring this fight straight to Donald Trump’s door.”

If elected this fall, Stratton would become the sixth Black woman to serve in the Senate.

Split outcome in political comeback attempts

Two former Democratic members of Congress were attempting political comebacks on Tuesday. Only one succeeded.

Former Rep. Melissa Bean, a moderate Democrat who was swept out with the tea party wave in the 2010 midterm elections, won the primary for the 8th District seat Krishnamoorthi is vacating. She defeated tech entrepreneur Junaid Ahmed, a progressive backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the Justice Democrats.

In the 2nd District, though, former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s bid to win back his old seat weeks after his father’s death fell short.

Jackson spent more than a year in prison in 2014 and 2015 after pleading guilty to federal charges stemming from his use of campaign funds for personal purchases. He was defeated Tuesday by Donna Miller, a Cook County commissioner who was backed by millions in spending by a super PAC connected with AIPAC.

Mixed results for super PACs

Illinois’ primary was awash in outside spending, with groups connected to the pro-Israel lobbying organization American Israel Public Affairs Committee pouring millions into the Democratic races.

AIPAC allies backed Bean and Miller, two House primary winners. But it opposed state Rep. La Shawn Ford, who won the primary for the 7th District House seat. He defeated city treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who was backed by millions in AIPAC-aligned spending, and 11 other candidates in the race to replace retiring Rep. Danny Davis.

In the 9th District race, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss — a candidate AIPAC-aligned groups opposed — won. But he did so by defeating Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian-American and vocal critic of Israel who was vying to become the first Generation Z woman in Congress.

The pro-cryptocurrency super PAC Fairshake got little for the millions it spent on Illinois’ primaries. Two candidates it opposed — Stratton and Ford — both won. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a prominent cryptocurrency critic, took aim at the group’s spending in a rally with Stratton last week.

The outcomes suggest there could have been some backlash against the tens of millions of dollars in super PAC spending.

Chicago resident Brian Henn, as he was voting Tuesday, said campaign commercials were “the only ads I’ve seen on TV in the last month. It’s kind of nuts.”

Jennifer Parks, 54, voted for Stratton at a downtown Chicago voting site. She said she backed the lieutenant governor “because she’s really trying to change the dial and push back on Citizens United, and we need to push more corporate money out of the elections.”

“We really need to figure out ways in which we can push back and get the individual dollars into the races or pull money out of elections so that people can run and get the individual voice to be centered and not the corporate voice,” she said.

Strong, but not record-setting, turnout

Illinois’ Democratic primary turnout was high, with more than 1.1 million votes counted in the Senate primary as of late Tuesday night.

But it won’t match 2018, the last time the state saw a competitive statewide Democratic primary in a midterm year. That’s when Pritzker defeated Biss, then a state senator, and Chris Kennedy, a member of the famous Democratic family.

When counting is done, about as many votes are likely to have been cast this year as in 2002, when Rod Blagojevich won a competitive Democratic primary on the way to his first term as governor.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Ethan Cohen, Steve Contorno and David Wright contributed to this report.