Illinois Democrats eye suburbs in push to expand supermajorities

If Illinois Republicans are to chip away at Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly, winning Chicago’s suburbs will be essential. But the state’s Democrats also see those races as the ticket to expanding their power.

Republicans have slowly seen their representation trickle away in the city’s outskirts over the past decade amid gerrymandered maps and President Donald Trump’s unpopularity. While Democrats outnumber Republicans 78-40 in the House and 40-19 in the Senate, they’re targeting several legislative districts currently held by Republicans to expand those margins.

Two northwest suburban races perhaps best encapsulate the battleground:

• 26^th Senate District: Nabeela Syed, D-Inverness, is seeking to unseat appointed Sen. Darby Hills, R-Barrington Hills, in the only race this year pitting two incumbent lawmakers against each other.
• 52^nd House District: Within half of that district, Rep. Martin McLaughlin, R-Barrington Hills, is trying to fend off another challenge from North Barrington Democrat Maria Peterson, whom he beat by just 47 votes in 2024.

52^nd House District

McLaughlin was elected to the seat in 2020 after eight years as Barrington Hills village president. He raised $65,419 between July 1 and Sept. 30 and received $118,116 from the House Republican Organization. He already had $229,704 on hand.

“This election really is a lot like what I think northern Illinois is these days,” McLaughlin said in an interview. “People just don’t like right, left, red, blue — they want to be identifying issues that are important to them and they want solutions, and that lends to races being tighter.”

Peterson, an attorney and business owner, has been trying to make it to Springfield since 2022 when she lost to then-Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie, R-Hawthorn Woods, by 385 votes. House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, appears committed to getting her over the hump this time. His caucus reported a $1million ad buy for Peterson on Monday.

At the end of September, she had $223,306 on hand after raising $222,891 and receiving another $150,152 in support from Democratic Party and House Democrats. She cast herself as an underdog in the race, though the district leans left.

Peterson said in an interview her close race is “very indicative that I have Republican support and independent support because a Democrat doesn’t get ahead simply by Democrat votes out here in District 52.”

26^th Senate District

Syed defeated incumbent Rep. Chris Bos, R-Lake Zurich, in 2022 and at age 23 became one of the youngest members in General Assembly history.

“You’re up for election every two years; it’s very difficult to sit down and really focus on the policy,” Syed said about her decision to leave the House. “I really care about the policy.”

Being in the Senate gives her more time between elections to improve her policy proposals, she said.

Between July 1 and Sept. 30, she spent and raised $1.2 million, with most spending going to TV ads. The Democratic Party and Senate Democratic Caucus have also covered $470,889 in expenses. She had $219,295 on hand at the end of September.

Hills is a former Cook County prosecutor who has won a village board election but is otherwise untested at the state level after she was appointed to the Senate in early 2025 when McConchie retired in the middle of his term.

A spokesperson for Hills did not respond to multiple interview requests.

She had more cash on hand than Syed — $418,507. She raised $450,979 between July 1 and Sept. 30 while the Republican Party and Senate Republican Caucus spent $204,988 in support.

In the other half of the Senate district, Jenny Levin, a Palatine Democrat, is facing Long Grove Republican Lori Smith to replace Syed as the 51^st District representative.

Politics of the region

The 26^th Senate District is centered around the Barrington area with Interstate 90 as the southern border and Volo, Mundelein and Libertyville on the north end. In between, it stretches from Algonquin to Long Gove with Wauconda, Lake Zurich, Hawthorn Woods and Palatine in between. McLaughlin’s 52^nd House District occupies the western and northern halves of the district while the 51^st District is packed east of Barrington from Hawthorn Woods to Palatine.

The districts are among the few places in Cook County still represented by Republicans. Two-thirds of residents in the broader Senate district make above six figures. But since the 2021 remap, races for the two seats have been close.

In major statewide elections, Democrats have won decisively in recent years. Gov. JB Pritzker and Vice President Kamala Harris both won the district by about 10 points in 2024 and 2022, respectively. But those same voters have split their ticket, allowing McLaughlin to win reelection twice.

McLaughlin is leaning on some extra help this year from the House Republican Organization — financial resources he declined four years ago. He said he also thinks his rhetorical approach makes a big difference.

“If you have a position, you want as many people to know about it as possible and if they disagree with it, that’s OK, but if they don’t know what your position is, that’s bad because someone else can define what it is inaccurately,” McLaughlin said.

Peterson is trying to tie McLaughlin to Trump and predicted he will struggle because voters are unhappy with Trump’s economic policies, which she argued has made life more unaffordable.

“Many Republicans, especially those who were Trump supporters, feel that. They experience it every day they go to get gas, every day they go to the grocery store,” Peterson said. “They’re tired of being slapped in the face. They’re tired of being blindsided.”

McLaughlin often does news conferences in Springfield with members of the Freedom Caucus, a group of the legislature’s most conservative members. But he said he’ll never join their caucus and is more moderate than Peterson claims.

“I’m a Reagan person,” McLaughlin said. “That’s my guy. Good luck trying to find me mentioning the president’s name in anything since 2015 — not for any other reason than I believe in policies, not the people.”

Syed said that even though Democrats are broadly expected to do well nationally this year, voters have a “general mistrust in government.” While she hears lots of frustration about the Republican-led federal government, she said she hears plenty about the Democratic-led state government, too.

“This is a purple district,” Syed said. “There is a lot of independent voters in this district, people in the middle, many people within that subset that resonate with my policies but they very much don’t like the national party labels because a lot of people feel like neither party has been really making their lives easier.”

Property taxes

Voters in the district pay hefty property taxes and the candidates are hearing about it while door-knocking.

Lowering property taxes and state spending is a top priority for McLaughlin, but as a member of the minority party, his ability to pass legislation to deal with the issue is limited.

“We get small wins in the minority when we get really specific about issues that people can connect to,” McLaughlin said. “There are times where we take bad legislation and make it less bad and those are the victories we can actually have.”

Peterson said lawmakers need to reform the Evidence-Based Funding model for K-12 schools to take some responsibility for school funding off homeowners.

“So long as real estate values and public schools are tied at the hip, students will not get the same education statewide and that’s an injustice,” Peterson said.

Syed said improving education funding at the state level and reducing the number of mandates on school districts will be key in lowering property taxes.

Bears

The Chicago Bears’ stadium search is one of the hottest issues in state politics and has implications for the districts. The Senate district boundary ends in Rolling Meadows across Route 53 from where the Bears want to build their stadium at the former Arlington Park site. Rolling Meadows has been involved in stadium negotiations and surrounding suburbs would likely see a significant increase in visitors around events.

Syed said the Bears issue doesn’t come up with voters as often as she expected it would. She took a pass on the April vote in the House on a Bears bill because it didn’t include infrastructure funding, which she said is the biggest concern she hears from residents about the team’s proposed move.

“My priority as a legislator is to protect my residents from seeing increases in their property tax bill as a result of a half-baked bill in Springfield,” Syed said. “So I’ve been very much encouraging of any and all discussions to figure out what that might look like.”

Peterson said residents are skeptical about providing help to the team. She said if the Bears do relocate to Arlington Heights, she would push for a plan that addresses potential transportation headaches that could come to the surrounding suburbs.

McLaughlin has proposed his own plan aimed at luring the team to the area. Unlike Peterson and Syed, he said voters bring it up often with him and are aware he’s filed a bill. He said the goal was to show his constituents he is weighing in on the issue and putting forward a serious plan.

Ethics

Another top issue in many legislative races, especially for the House, is sexual harassment in Springfield. Democratic Rep. Harry Benton was forced to resign after an inspector general investigation found he engaged in a ‘pattern and practice’ of sexual harassment. But Welch has also faced scrutiny for financially backing Benton even after a district office staff member accused him of misconduct. The same staffer also accused Welch of unprofessional behavior by reacting to several of her Instagram photos with heart-eye emojis and asking her to correspond on a private messaging app.

Though her campaign has received $1.3 million tied to Welch, according to State Board of Election records, Peterson said she is undecided whether she’ll support him for speaker, saying “I have to win first.”

Peterson released a detailed ethics proposal that would eliminate the one-year statute of limitations on investigations, give the legislative inspector general subpoena power and create an independent human resources office for legislative employees.

“The sexual harassment issue has not been made a priority. I think that’s a complete disrespect to every woman who wants to serve in government,” Peterson said.

Syed had a blunt assessment about sexual harassment in the House:

“I recognize that as a young woman in this space the only thing protecting me is my title. And that deeply frustrates me,” Syed said.

She said she doesn’t think the House’s issues will make a big difference in her Senate race, but sexual harassment and a lack of action to stop it fosters mistrust in government. She pointed to the Epstein files as a broader example where high-profile people have “been insulated from any kind of backlash.”

“They’ve lost trust in the institutions that can hold people accountable,” Syed said of voters. “I don’t blame them for feeling like that. I think we’ve seen a lot of abnormal things happening in politics that are having real life detrimental consequences on people.”

Other races

• 47^th House District: Democrats are also eying a pickup opportunity in DuPage County, where Rep. Amy Grant, R-Wheaton, decided not to seek reelection. Carol Stream Republican Robert Vrankovich and Wheaton Democrat Erica Bray-Parker are battling over the district Grant narrowly won two years ago.
• 33^rd Senate District: Algonquin Democrat Michele Clark and St. Charles Republican Danielle Penman are seeking the seat in parts of Kane County after Sen. Don DeWitte, R-St. Charles, declined to run for reelection. Harris won the district by 2.5 points in 2024 while Pritzker won by 5 in 2022.
• 97^th House District: Republicans are eying their own pickup opportunities in the suburbs as well. Plainfield Republican Gabby Shanahan is trying to unseat Rep. Jessica Dixon Heitman, D-Plainfield, in the 97^th House District. Dixon Heitman was appointed in July to replace Benton.
• 76^th House District: West of the suburbs in DeKalb and LaSalle counties, Rep. Amy “Murri” Briel, D-LaSalle, is facing accusations of inappropriate behavior. Republicans are hoping LaSalle Republican Liz Bishop, who Briel narrowly defeated in 2024, can flip the seat.
• Various districts: Seth Lewis, R-Bartlett, in the 24^th Senate District, and Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, in the 70^th House District, and Rep. Dan Ugaste, R-Geneva, in the 65^th House District could also be vulnerable if the election turned out strong for Democrats.
• Downstate races: Other state lawmakers in close races outside the suburbs could include Rep. Brandun Schweizer, R-Danville, Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, and Rep. Kevin Schmidt, R-Millstadt.

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