Gov. JB Pritzker was not on the ballot in the Illinois Senate race, but that was hard to tell from some of the closing advertisements for Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton.
Mr. Pritzker made himself the face and finances of Ms. Stratton’s campaign. In the final weeks of the primary, the two hopscotched around Chicago together, touring senior centers and El train stops. The billionaire governor funded a super PAC that provided the vast majority of pro-Stratton advertising. The super PAC’s closing argument ad showed Mr. Pritzker more than it did Ms. Stratton, and it is his voice, not hers, speaking to the audience.
Ms. Stratton’s victory over Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly demonstrated her strengths as an unapologetically progressive candidate in a Democratic state. But it also showed that the state’s billionaire governor has the clout to help push a relatively little-known and otherwise ill-funded ally to a Senate nomination against candidates with more money, more name recognition and more experience.
Mr. Pritzker, who is widely seen as having presidential aspirations in 2028, can now take credit for helping make Ms. Stratton the heavy favorite to win the Senate general election in deep-blue Illinois. Winning would make her just the sixth Black woman to serve in the Senate, and the second from Illinois, after Carol Moseley Braun in the 1990s.
“A lot of people have suggested that this was personal to me,” a jubilant Mr. Pritzker told supporters at Ms. Stratton’s victory party Tuesday night in Chicago. “They were right — it was. Because I wanted to be there for Juliana in all the ways that she was there for me.”
Ms. Stratton, in her victory remarks, thanked Mr. Pritzker as part of a list of other in-state supporters, including Senator Tammy Duckworth. In an interview last week in Chicago, she called herself a partner with Mr. Pritzker and said her campaign should be judged on its own, not as a referendum on his popularity or political future.
“I’m grateful that he has that faith and trust in me, but I’m running this race,” she said. “The reason why I’m doing this is not for anyone’s political calculation — it’s because of the five-alarm fire that’s been ignited by Donald Trump.”
Ms. Stratton campaigned on an outspokenly progressive platform. She called for increasing the minimum wage to $25 per hour — higher even than Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has demanded — and for abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. She said she would not vote to retain Senator Chuck Schumer of New York as the party’s Senate leader. She ran a TV ad in which a parade of Illinoisans colorfully cursed President Trump.
Her election has obvious benefits for Mr. Pritzker, should he decide to run for president. His role in helping her could prove to be no small bragging point. And Ms. Stratton could be an important surrogate to Black voters, who make up substantial segments of the Democratic presidential primary electorate, as she talks about their close partnership and his support.
The Pritzker-Stratton dynamic was on display during a campaign stop last Thursday on Chicago’s South Side, where the two stumped before a crowd of older Black voters.
In his remarks, Mr. Pritzker wove his support for Ms. Stratton in the Senate race with his record as governor and gave her credit for a number of his administration’s policies. A “birth equity initiative” he started to reduce maternal mortality rates for Black women, he said, was Ms. Stratton’s idea. And increases in state education funding and student test scores, he said, were “thanks to Juliana Stratton.”
“Here’s what I can tell you,” Mr. Pritzker said. “I know her. She’s my friend.”
To win, Ms. Stratton overcame not just the $20 million head start Mr. Krishnamoorthi had, but $10 million in attack ads from Fairshake, a super PAC funded by cryptocurrency interests. Another super PAC, from a group called Indian American Impact, spent $1 million in an attempt to boost Mr. Krishnamoorthi and Ms. Kelly, whom it hoped would cleave votes in Black neighborhoods away from Ms. Stratton.
It could not match Ms. Stratton and Mr. Pritzker, who spent millions to back her and put his political machine to work arm-twisting Illinois politicians to support her — or at least remain neutral and not back one of her rivals.
The governor’s support was all the more important because Ms. Stratton never caught fire with the kind of small-dollar donors who flooded the Democrats running in the Texas Senate primary with cash.
“There’s no campaign without him,” said David Axelrod, the Chicago-based Democratic operative. “Juliana is in many ways a political creation of JB Pritzker.”
Ms. Stratton, 60, was little known at the start of the campaign, which began last spring when Senator Richard J. Durbin announced he would not seek a sixth term. Lieutenant governors rarely get much attention, and though Ms. Stratton has held statewide office since 2019, she entered the race the day after Mr. Durbin’s long-expected announcement having long operated in Mr. Pritzker’s shadow.
The Senate race was the first time since 2016 that Ms. Stratton appeared on a ballot by herself. In that race, a Democratic primary for an Illinois State House seat, she ousted an incumbent who was an ally of Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, after late support from President Barack Obama.
In the Senate race, she had less name recognition at the start than either of her two major rivals in the Democratic primary and had not raised money on her own since that 2016 race.
What she had was Mr. Pritzker.
“She’s running on the name of JB Pritzker,” former Gov. Pat Quinn, the last Democratic governor of Illinois before Mr. Pritzker, said on Monday. “If she wins, it’ll be a feather in his cap, and I’m sure they will try to get the word out nationwide.”
The governor’s influence on the race was not lost on the other candidates, who sought to make it an issue in the race.
Ms. Kelly, a longtime rival of the governor’s whom Mr. Pritzker had ousted from her post as the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Illinois in 2022, criticized him for exerting influence on the race.
“Seventy-three percent of her donations come from one family,” Ms. Kelly, who had support from the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, said in an interview in the final days of the campaign. “That’s a little influence. Some people don’t like that he’s doing that, though, you know.”
The only Black Democrat in Congress from outside Illinois to have endorsed Ms. Stratton in the primary was Senator Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.
“Juliana’s tenacity and stamina demonstrated exactly why she’s going to be an incredible senator,” she said Tuesday night after the race was called. “I’m so proud to have supported her in this race and cannot wait to call her my sister senator.”
Reid J. Epstein is a Times reporter covering campaigns and elections from Washington.
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