Illinois' two candidates for the open U.S. Senate seat — Democratic Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton and Republican Don Tracy — met Tuesday evening in Chicago for their first and only face-to-face forum before the November 3 midterm elections, an hour-long WTTW event dominated by immigration, affordability and President Donald Trump.
Source: Daily Northwestern
Immigration produced the sharpest exchange. Stratton accused ICE of targeting tamale vendors and daycare workers during Operation Midway Blitz, the federal crackdown in the Chicago area first announced in September 2025, and repeated her call to abolish the agency, calling it “Donald Trump's private police force.” Tracy said nobody seems to care about ICE officers shot and killed in altercations, criticised the administration's handling of enforcement in Chicago as “ugly and chaotic,” but blamed much of that on what he called massive resistance from sanctuary cities, including Chicago.
Source: The Daily Illini
On affordability, the candidates split along familiar lines. Tracy argued for unleashing American energy production and more refining capacity, and blamed Illinois leaders for shutting down fossil-fuel plants and driving up diesel prices. Stratton proposed raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $25 an hour, with a middle-class tax cut funded by higher taxes on households earning over $1 million a year, and blamed high housing costs in part on corporate buyers competing with families. Both acknowledged the strain of a mortgage rate around 7.4 percent.
The seat is open because Senator Dick Durbin is retiring. Stratton, who is endorsed by Governor JB Pritzker, Durbin and Senator Tammy Duckworth, enters the final two weeks as the heavy favourite, with a recent poll showing her ahead by double digits in a state where Republicans have not won a statewide election since 2014, CNHI reported. Tracy, an attorney and former Illinois Republican Party chairman who has loaned his campaign $3.5 million, told reporters after the forum: “I will not owe anything to anybody. I will be a true, independent voice for the people of Illinois.” A third candidate, Whitfield Harrington of the American Center Party, did not meet WTTW's 15 percent polling threshold to take part.
Source: CNHI News
For Punjabi and other immigrant families in the Chicago area — one of the largest diaspora hubs in the Midwest — the forum's immigration clash is the part with the most direct local weight: the two candidates offered opposite accounts of the same federal operation that has shaped daily life in the region for more than a year.