Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a 52-year-old Ivy League-educated lawyer born in India who is known for his fund-raising prowess, is one of three leading contenders in the Democratic primary for Senate in Illinois on Tuesday.
Here are five things to know about him.
1. He is a fund-raising juggernaut. Across five terms in Congress, Mr. Krishnamoorthi, a moderate Democrat representing Chicago’s northwest suburbs, has earned a reputation as an ambitious political operator and a formidable builder of war chests. Mr. Krishnamoorthi’s spending on advertising has eclipsed that of his primary opponents. His fund-raising has also drawn scrutiny. The Chicago Sun-Times reported in December that he had received more than $90,000 from donors with ties to President Trump, including a contribution from the chief executive of the tech company Palantir. (The company created a database used by ICE agents to track their targets, according to current and former officials.) Mr. Krishnamoorthi said he had donated the money to migrant rights groups. At a debate last month, he said he was “proud” to have received contributions from more than 80,000 donors during his political career.
2. He worked on Barack Obama’s House campaign in 2000. Mr. Krishnamoorthi, who like Mr. Obama studied at Harvard Law School, served as policy director on Mr. Obama’s first run for Congress, a failed bid to topple Representative Bobby Rush, a Democrat. Mr. Krishnamoorthi and Mr. Obama had met at a civil rights reception at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago shortly before the campaign, according to a spokeswoman for Mr. Krishnamoorthi. During the 2000 race, Mr. Krishnamoorthi crafted policies on earned-income tax credits, said Dan Shomon, who was the campaign manager. Mr. Shomon recalled Mr. Krishnamoorthi’s industriousness: He worked full time as a lawyer and full time as policy director. Mr. Krishnamoorthi also helped with policy development on Mr. Obama’s successful run for Senate in 2004.
3. He is part of a small but growing group of Indian Americans in Congress. Mr. Krishnamoorthi is aiming to become the second Indian American elected to the Senate. After he was elected to the House in 2016, he joined two other Democratic congressional newcomers, Representatives Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Ro Khanna of California, in increasing the number of Indian Americans in the House from one to four.
4. He took a middle ground in the Democratic debate about ICE. As the party grappled this winter with the Trump administration’s far-reaching deportation effort, Mr. Krishnamoorthi and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, a rival candidate, took somewhat different tones. While Ms. Stratton embraced the slogan “abolish ICE,” Mr. Krishnamoorthi opted for the more measured “abolish Trump’s ICE.”
5. He led a push to ban an e-cigarette. Mr. Krishnamoorthi objected to a product called Puff Bar that rapidly replaced Juul as the go-to vape product for many young people during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, he wrote a letter to the Food and Drug Administration charging that Puff Bar was using the pandemic to peddle its product to children stuck at home. Later the agency wrote a warning letter to Puff Bar saying that the company was hawking products without the necessary authorization.
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