As DNC opens in Chicago, state leaders tout Illinois as a ‘model of Democratic success’

CHICAGO – In announcing Chicago would host of the 2024 Democratic National Convention more than a year ago, national party leaders referred to Illinois as a key part of the “blue wall” of Midwestern states crucial to President Joe Biden’s 2020 election.

Instead of choosing a venue in a swing state, as they had done for the last two decades, Democrats selected a city and state long dominated by Democratic politics and policies. And while Illinois and Chicago in particular have become conservative media shorthand for out-of-control progressive government, Illinois Democrats on Monday morning sought to cast their brand of politics as an exemplar for the nation.

Gov. JB Pritzker, who was instrumental in landing the DNC in Chicago, kicked off the Illinois delegation’s Monday breakfast at a downtown hotel by thanking elected Democrats in the room “for the work that you’ve done to make this the greatest Democratic Party that Illinois has ever had and in the entire country.”

Before making a quick exit to speak to delegates at two other states’ Democratic Party breakfasts, Pritzker rattled off a litany of legislation passed during his 5 ½-year tenure as governor so far. The governor acknowledged the Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly that helped pass items ranging from a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour starting next year to a $10 million state investment to pay off a projected $1 billion in medical debt for low-income Illinoisans. 

Republicans, he reminded the group, “voted against all of that.” 

“It’s almost as if Republicans don’t want working families to succeed,” Pritzker said, pivoting to the attack dog role he’s been rehearsing for months and criticizing the GOP for being “obsessed with other things…like explaining away Donald Trump’s 34 felony fraud convictions.”

But instead of focusing on Trump and other Republicans on Monday, Democrats tried to keep the spotlight on their positive vision for what their party can accomplish.

“This convention is our opportunity to share our successes, to set the agenda, and to show the entire country why Illinois is leading the way,” DNC Host Committee Executive Director Christy George, who most recently worked in Pritzker’s office on budget and economic issues, told the breakfast crowd.

State Rep. Lisa Hernandez, D-Cicero, who serves as chair of the Illinois Democratic Party, echoed those sentiments as she called Illinois “a model of Democratic success” and “the beacon of progress in the Midwest.”

Illinois Democratic Party Chair Lisa Hernandez hugs U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, of New Jersey, a convention co-chair and the Illinois delegation’s keynote speaker on Monday. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock)

Illinois is increasingly a blue island in the mostly red center of the country, and Democratic politicians have leaned into that identity in recent years.

On the heels of Trump nominating his first U.S. Supreme Court justice weeks into his first term in early 2017, Democrats in the General Assembly began pushing for abortion protections in the event that a conservative majority on the court might someday overturn Roe v. Wade.

By the time that happened five years later, Illinois Democrats had approved a series of laws shoring up reproductive rights just as surrounding states began banning or severely restricting abortion access. 

Later this week, Pritzker will highlight Illinois’ position as a sanctuary for abortion seekers and providers in an event hosted by Think Big America, the progressive advocacy organization he founded last fall. The group, staffed by the governor’s political team, has so far been involved with abortion rights ballot measures in Ohio, Nevada, Arizona and Montana.

Read more: Pritzker launches self-funded nationwide abortion rights advocacy organization

Illinois also stands out as the only noncoastal state to have banned assault-style weapons. Democrats quickly pushed the “Protect Illinois Communities Act” through the legislature early last year after a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park left seven dead and dozens more injured in July 2022.

Read more: What to know about Illinois’ assault weapons ban

Illinois Democrats highlighted the law during an event Monday in conjunction with the anti-gun violence organization named for former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who has spent more than a decade advocating for gun control measures after surviving an assassination attempt early in her third term in Congress in 2011.

Recalling the chaos of the Highland Park parade, State Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, who went on to become the lead sponsor of Illinois’ assault weapons ban, said it was an “opportunity to turn our pain into purpose.”

While Illinois is among a mix of Midwestern states that have not adopted “right to work” laws that bar employers from requiring workers to be union members to keep their jobs. 

Former U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush attends the Illinois delegation breakfast on Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)

But Illinois Democrats went a step further, putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot that bans the state from adopting right-to-work laws in the future. Illinois voters approved the “Workers Rights Amendment” in 2022. 

And in a move that continues to generate attacks from conservatives, Illinois became the first state to completely eliminate its cash bail system last year. Abolishing cash bail was just one part of a wide-ranging 2021 criminal justice reform law pushed by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 and a summer of protests that followed.

The law went unmentioned during the Illinois delegation’s official breakfast Monday morning, but House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, highlighted the legacy of Black political power in Illinois, stretching back to the founding of the NAACP in Springfield following the 1908 race riots in the city.

Welch traced the trajectories of major Black activists and elected officials with ties to Illinois through time, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who he said inspired generations of young Black Americans to get involved in politics with his oft-recited speech adapted from an earlier poem that featured the phrase “I am somebody.”

“I believed I was somebody, and I stand before you today as the first Black speaker of the Illinois House,” he said.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.