The seat currently held by retiring United States Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) is up for grabs next fall, and 22 candidates — including 14 Democrats and eight Republicans — have filed their petitions to run.
Monday was the Illinois State Board of Elections’ deadline to file petitions to run for the March 17, 2026 primary. The general election is on Nov. 3, 2026.
Here are the Illinois U.S. Senate candidates slated to appear on the Democratic and Republican primary ballots.
Democratic primary ballot:
Steve Botsford: Botsford (Kellogg ’21) is a managing partner at Laurel Canyon Holdings. His platform focuses on economic reforms, including raising the minimum wage, and educational policies like expanding childcare and investing in career training opportunities.
Sean Brown: Brown is an attorney at his own firm. His goals in the Senate revolve around reducing crime, streamlining the immigration process and growing the economy.
Awisi Bustos: Bustos is the former chief executive officer of the Illinois Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs. If elected, she hopes to work on policy centered around education, transparency in politics and promoting job growth in the age of AI.
Jonathan Dean: Dean is a lawyer and solar energy entrepreneur. He describes himself as a “New Style Democrat.” In the Senate, he hopes to reform the filibuster, support affordable living by changing economic policy and invest in renewable energy.
Adam Delgado: Delgado is an Air Force Reserve veteran and a former police officer and federal agent. His platform includes growing local economies by supporting small businesses and job creation and prioritizing national security by investing in cybersecurity.
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Matteson): Kelly represents Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her work has focused on growing access to health care, reforming gun safety laws and promoting economic development.
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Schaumburg): Krishnamoorthi is currently in his fifth term representing Illinois’ 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. If elected, he plans to spend his term pushing his Trump Accountability Plan, which aims to weaken executive orders. His platform also includes restricting the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Bryan Maxwell: Maxwell is an engineer from Champaign-Urbana. His platform focuses on ending funding for wars abroad, using a billionaire’s tax to fund Medicare for all and investing in rural communities.
Robert Palmer: Palmer is a Chicago Public Schools teacher and a member of the Chicago Teachers Union. He is running with a platform centered on transparency within the federal government and collaborating with local organizations and leaders to tackle issues like education and health care.
Kevin Ryan: Ryan is a Marine Corps veteran and Chicago Public Schools teacher. His campaign focuses include election and campaign reform, expanding labor rights and supporting universal health care.
Jump Shepherd: Shepherd is a delegate of the Chicago Federation of Labor and a member of the Electrical Workers Minority Caucus. His policy plans include taxing incomes over $10 million, supporting climate infrastructure and restoring SNAP benefits and Medicaid.
Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton: Stratton serves as Illinois’ lieutenant governor and has previously represented Illinois’ 5th District in the Illinois House of Representatives. Her platform includes decreasing living costs in Illinois and creating more education and career opportunities for the middle class.
Christopher Swann: Swann is a senior project manager for Feeding America. His policy goals, if elected to the Senate, include creating more federal jobs to lower poverty rates and promoting Medicare for all.
Anthony W. Williams: Williams is a pastor who worked to advocate for an Illinois House bill that declared violence a public health crisis. His core policies include evolving Bitcoin and crypto policies, favoring peace diplomacy over military activity and creating universal pre-K.
Republican primary ballot:
R. Cary Capparelli: Capparelli is currently a geography and geosciences professor at South Dakota State University. His platform endorses an “America First” agenda, which supports foreign and domestic policies that solely serve the U.S.
Casey Chlebek: Chlebek is active in a variety of American civic and Polish-American organizations. His campaign follows tenets of the Make America the Greatest Nation Again and Make the U.S. Loved Again platforms by focusing on the economy, social programs and foreign policy.
John Goodman: Goodman is an Air Force veteran and former law enforcement officer. His platform primarily aims to improve veterans’ and elderly people’s care, create term limits in the Senate and counter antisemitism.
Pamela Denise Long: Long is an occupational therapist and political commentator. In the Senate, she hopes to support Trump’s immigration policies, strengthen gun rights and support the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Jimmy Lee Tillman II: Tillman II is a Heritage Academy Fellow and the president of the Martin Luther King Republicans. His platform focuses on strengthening border security and reducing crime rates.
Don Tracy: Tracy is an attorney who has served as chairman of the Illinois Republican Party and chairman of the Illinois Corporate Acts Advisory Committee. His platform includes lowering the cost of living by decreasing the tax burden.
Republicans Jeannie Evans and CaSándra Claiborne also filed petitions to run, but do not appear to have published campaign websites or social media pages.
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