Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won the Democratic Senate nomination Tuesday night — and it’s bad news for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
Stratton wasted no time celebrating the victory, and making clear she was intending to fire Schumer.
Stratton defeated U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly in a crowded and expensive Democratic primary, setting up a November general election race against Republican Don Tracy.
Illinois hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate in nearly 20 years, making Stratton the heavy favorite in the fall.
If elected, she would become only the fifth Black woman in American history to win election to the U.S. Senate. She has served as lieutenant governor for about eight years alongside billionaire Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who backed her campaign heavily and was unopposed for his own third-term nomination Tuesday.
Schumer quickly congratulated Stratton after her win was called.
But Stratton made her position on Schumer plain: She would never vote for him to continue to lead the Democratic Party.
“I’m the only candidate in this race that has made it clear I’m not going to support Chuck Schumer to lead the Democratic caucus, Senate caucus, because that’s not what people are looking for right now,” Stratton said in a recent interview. “They want someone who’s going to fight, and we need fighters and not folders.”
At a debate during the primary, she drove the point home again.
“I’m the only person on this stage that has said so,” she said of her refusal to back Schumer.
Stratton said the message she heard across Illinois was unmistakable.
“What I’m hearing from voters all across the state of Illinois is that they’re fed up. They’re fed up with what’s happening in Washington. They’re fed up with business as usual and the status quo.”
Stratton is part of a growing faction of Democratic Senate candidates running against Schumer as much as against Trump. Among them are Graham Platner, a Marine and Army veteran running in Maine with the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, one of the frontrunners in her state’s Democratic Senate primary.