Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton is 20 days out from Election Day, running to succeed Senator Dick Durbin and join Senator Tammy Duckworth in representing Illinois in the United States Senate. She won a competitive Democratic primary and has the endorsement of President Obama, Governor Pritzker, and Marcus’s PAC, Hold the Line.
The conversation covers the arc of her public life: growing up on Chicago’s South Side with a Navy veteran father who marched from Selma to Montgomery and a public school teacher mother, becoming a lawyer and mediator for two decades, then watching a state representative try to strip healthcare from seniors like her mother — who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s — and deciding that somebody needed to run against him. That somebody turned out to be her. She won that race against a 13-year incumbent, passed 10 bills in a single term with bipartisan support and a Republican governor’s signature, and has spent nearly two terms as Lieutenant Governor overseeing the Birth Equity Initiative, the Restore Reinvest Renew criminal justice investment program, and Girls Lead — a mentoring program for girls in fifth through twelfth grade across every corner of Illinois.
Marcus asks her what she heard in the primary, what she’d do first in the Senate, and what she’d say to voters about affordability. Her answers are specific: roll back the HR1 Medicaid cuts immediately, raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour, give middle-class families a tax break paid for by a millionaire surcharge, and fight for universal healthcare as the long game. And she makes the accountability argument that Marcus has been making for months: flip the House and Senate, be a wall of resistance, pass things and let Trump veto them, then tell that story clearly.
Twenty days out. Early voting is open in Illinois. Find her at julianastratton.com.
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