Democratic Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and Republican Don Tracy faced off Tuesday in their lone forum over a host of issues, including immigration enforcement, tariffs and the minimum wage.
Stratton and Tracy are vying to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who will end his political career in January after 30 years in the Senate.
During the forum hosted by WTTW News, Tracy repeatedly attacked Stratton as a socialist and accused her of wanting to fund unaffordable programs, while Stratton frequently linked Tracy to President Donald Trump, blaming him for making everything from rent and gas to healthcare and groceries more expensive by launching a war with Iran and imposing tariffs on imported goods the U.S. Supreme Court declared illegal.
“An illegal war, illegal tariffs, that’s what’s caused so much disruption to our economy, that’s why everything is so expensive right now,” said Stratton, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. JB Pritzker for eight years after being elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. “We need leaders in Washington who are going to stand up to this president.”
While Tracy, 76, acknowledged that inflation was too high, he said it was a temporary spike that would only worsen if the Democratic Party takes control of the U.S. Senate, and said the “jury’s still out” on whether the tariffs helped or hurt the U.S. economy.
“There’s a lot of work to be done on this, but the Democratic answer is more government spending,” said Tracy, a businessman and lawyer who served as chair of the Illinois Gaming Board before serving as the chair of the Illinois Republican Party. “Our answer is looking to the root causes of all of these things.”
While Stratton, 61, said she would not vote to fund the war in Iran, Tracy said it was worth it if it stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
“We’re told that Iran was on the verge of a nuclear weapon,” Tracy said, acknowledging that he does not have access to classified information. ”Which means that there was the risk of a nuclear World War III started by Iran. And if by this military conflict, which is more of an economic conflict right now, than a military conflict, if we’re able to eliminate Iran from starting a World War III, then I say, it is just.”
However, there is no evidence, despite assertions from the president and Israeli officials, that Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon before Trump launched the first strikes eight months ago.
This Senate election is the first without an incumbent in Illinois since 2010, when Republican Mark Kirk won the seat once held by former President Barack Obama.
However, it has been 12 years since any Republican has won a statewide office in Illinois, as voters in the state began to regularly cast their ballots for Democrats, a trend that accelerated as the Republican Party moved to the right under Trump.
Trump has not endorsed Tracy, although Tracy said he would welcome the president’s endorsement if it was offered.
Tracy criticized Stratton for only agreeing to appear at one forum, and chided her for airing an ad that used an expletive to criticize Trump.
Stratton vowed to protect undocumented Illinois residents from Trump’s effort to implement the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history and called Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents the president’s “private police force” and promised to abolish the agency.
“What I don’t want to see is the criminalization of our immigrant neighbors,” Stratton said. “I don’t want to see racial profiling of Black and Brown people. I don’t want to see people killed by an agency that is paid for with our tax dollars. It is not OK.”
While Tracy acknowledged that the aggressive immigration raids the Trump administration dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” were “ugly and chaotic,” he blamed that outcome on the unwillingness of state and local officials to cooperate with federal agents.
“(The Trump administration) should have figured out a better way to enforce immigration law in Chicago and in Minneapolis and other sanctuary cities,” Tracy said.
Stratton and Tracy also tussled over whether the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 per hour, should be raised. While Stratton said it should rise to $25 per hour, Tracy said that would cause inflation to spiral out of control.
“That will be a death sentence for small businesses,” Tracy said.
Stratton said she was proud to have worked with Pritzker to raise the Illinois minimum wage to $15 per hour, lifting “thousands out of poverty.”
Tracy also defended the Trump administration’s federal cuts to safety-net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, even as more than one in three households struggle to put food on the table, according to a report from the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
“There is dignity in work,” Tracy said. “And we need to get more able-bodied people into the workforce. It is better for them and it is better for society.”
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | hcherone@wttw.com
