Illinois Democrats look to invest resources in swing states

CHICAGO – On the final day of the Democratic National Convention, Illinois party leaders were preparing Thursday to hear Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech and to send workers and volunteers into the field to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.

“She’s going to fire us up,” state party chair Lisa Hernandez said following the delegation’s Thursday morning breakfast meeting when asked what she expected to hear from Harris later in the evening.

But with Illinois already a reliable Democratic state, at least as far as the presidential race is concerned, Hernandez said the state party has plans to make strategic investments outside of Illinois where its money and manpower could have more of a national electoral impact.

“We need to turn out here at home, and we need to work with our neighbors in Michigan and Wisconsin to deliver those swing states, because winning takes more than voting,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle told the delegation. “In the wise words of our own Michelle Obama, we need to do something to make it happen.”

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said he thinks the state party should invest resources both within the state and nationally. Although there are no statewide offices such as governor on the ballot this year, he said there are many state legislative and county-level offices where the party needs to work.

“But then we’ve got to reach out to our neighbors, particularly in Wisconsin.” Durbin said. “We should adopt that state – and we have in many respects – to be part of their organization to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The Illinois organization has been one of the best in history. We can show it with the people that are serving now.”

Wisconsin is often listed among the small group of “swing” states that have been critical in recent presidential elections. In 2016, Donald Trump won the state and its 10 electoral votes by just over 27,000 votes. But in 2020, Joe Biden won it by about 20,000 votes.

Most political handicapping sites – including Sabato’s Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report – put Wisconsin in the “toss-up” column, along with Michigan, Pennsylvania and a handful of other states whose electoral votes will likely tip the balance in the presidential race.

That means both parties will campaign hard in those states over the next 10 weeks to win over undecided voters and to peel away voters from the other party.

One Democratic politician who has become known for doing that is Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who spoke to the Illinois delegation Thursday. Beshear is a Democrat who won reelection handily in 2023 in a state that has voted Republican in each of the last six presidential elections.

“I’m here today because we’ve got to remember that as Democrats, we have to fight in every single part of America,” he told the delegation. “We can’t think about this country as red states or blue states, red counties or blue counties, because in each and every one of those counties, there are American families who deserve good leadership.”

One of the issues that Illinois Democrats hope to use this year to peel voters away from the Republican column is abortion. Democrats have put that issue front and center throughout this week’s convention, believing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade has fundamentally changed party allegiances.

“The Republicans made a huge mistake when they took down Roe v Wade,” Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza told reporters. “Because all of a sudden, they woke up a sleeping giant, which actually –  believe it or not – are Republican women or independent women who always assumed that, ‘even though we don’t talk about this out loud, boy are we thankful that we can make our own decisions about our own bodies.’ So now they can’t.”

In a separate interview with Capitol News Illinois, Beshear said he thinks it will still be hard for Harris and the Democrats to carry a rural, southern state like Kentucky. But he agreed that abortion is an issue that could cut into support for Republicans in his state, especially among women voters.

“In Kentucky, we have the most extreme abortion ban in the country, where we don’t have exceptions, even for rape, incest or non-viable pregnancies,” he said. “Eighty-five plus percent of Kentuckians believe that our laws have gone too far and want to change.”

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.