Illinois voters elected Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, and when she is sworn in, three Black women will sit in the chamber at the same time for the first time in American history. The Associated Press called the race for the Democrat over Republican Don Tracy, a former chair of the Illinois Republican Party, at 8 p.m. Eastern.
Only five Black women have ever served in the Senate: Carol Moseley-Braun, Kamala Harris, Laphonza Butler, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks. Stratton will be the sixth. She joins Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Alsobrooks of Maryland, which puts Black women in three of 100 seats.
Illinois is the first state to have elected two of them. It sent Moseley-Braun, the first Black woman in the Senate, in 1992. It took 34 years to send a second.
Stratton, a Chicago native with a law degree from DePaul University, was twice elected lieutenant governor on the ticket with Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed her in the Democratic primary. She replaces Sen. Dick Durbin, who is retiring after five terms. Tammy Duckworth becomes the state’s senior senator.
She ran as a fighter. Stratton supports Medicare for All and spent the campaign criticizing President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and federal immigration agents in Chicago. Her campaign spokesperson said voters had picked someone who would “stand up to Donald Trump,” and that “Juliana Stratton is the fighter Illinois needs.”
Three seats is a record, and it is still three seats. For most of the Senate’s history there were none, and it took until 1993 for one Black woman to take her place. The Senate has now had six in its entire history, and Illinois accounts for two of them.
Stratton takes the seat when the new Congress is sworn in in January. Her own platform is the measure: Medicare for All and a check on federal force in Black cities are promises she can now be held to.
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