META-SPIEL 2026 Primary Election Guide

March 17 is Primary Election Day in Illinois. Alas, some of you don’t live in the Prairie State, and some of you are well ahead of us and have already voted. But some of you haven’t, because some of these freaking primary elections are really confusing. So I decided to write this up. Please share this guide with your friends and neighbors!

There’s an Irish proverb: Ní mar a shíltear a bítear. Things are not always as they seem. But, well, we’re talking Illinois politics, aren’t we? And things tend to be very much as they seem, if you can just bear to look.

I don’t want to bore you all with caveats, so briefly:

• I’m only looking at the Democratic primary

• I’m including statewide races, the most high-profile congressional districts, and a handful of others, but not everything

• I’m not letting perfect be the enemy of the good; I want to get this published and if I try to write too much it’ll never get done

One other caveat. I want Ranked Choice Voting but we don’t have it. So sometimes I’m actually going to recommend someone other than who is actually my favorite candidate. Usually I’m pretty intent on voting for who I think is best, period, but there are a couple of primary races where I think there’s particularly bad candidates and it’s important that better candidates win. You are of course free to disagree with that thinking!

My #1 go to guide is Girl, I Guess: A Progressive Voter Guide to the 2026 Primary Election in Cook County and Beyond. The thing is that those very smart women are so intense and thorough that their guide is 105 pages long. And, while I think I agree with them the vast majority of the time, I do disagree a couple of times.

Finally, I’m not going to write at much length on most races, I’m just going to give my recommendation and maybe a little explanation why. If it’s a district I happen to live in, I’ll elaborate more, and for a couple of the wild congressional races, I’ll elaborate more.

Here goes:

U.S. Senate

Juliana Stratton is my recommendation. There are a lot of candidates on the ballot and some of the lesser-known candidates are very interesting, Kevin Ryan being one of them. But what we have here is a situation where the frontrunner, Raja Krishnamoorti, is a flat-out awful choice. He’s got a cryptocurrency PAC spending a lot of money to attack Stratton. He’s got a close relationship with the right-wing Modi regime in India. I think he’s real bad news.

Juliana Stratton is not an ideal choice, but I think she’s solid. What I see is someone who I think will be an effective Senator, and who will not be super-beholden to the weak Washington conventions. She’s already said she won’t support Chuck Schumer for leader, for example. I wish she’d taken a stronger position on Palestine, I wish she’d have run a more forceful campaign for a while, but I sincerely believe she’ll be a decent Senator.

Robin Kelly is also in the race, and has a lot of support from progressives. I am sorry to be blunt here: Robin Kelly is not going to win this race. Either Stratton or Krishnamoorthi will win the race. Yes, she’s taken a stronger position on Palestine, and I applaud that. The thing is that I think even if it was just Stratton and Kelly, I might lean toward Stratton anyway. But it’s not that way, and I really do think it matters for Illinois that we have a better Senator than Krishnamoorthi, and Juliana Stratton is the available choice.

State Comptroller

Karina Villa is an enthusiastic recommendation. She’s a state senator from West Chicago. She’s got a lot of progressive credentials and endorsements and she was great standing up to ICE fascists. Villa is an enthusiastic choice!

U.S. House, 2nd District (south side / south suburbs / all the way down to Danville)

Robert Peters is the pick. He’s a state senator from the south side, a strong progressive who I’ve heard great things about for years. He’s in a tough race. Donna Miller, a Cook County commissioner, might have been the favorite. But with the seat opening back up, Jesse Jackson, Jr. entered the race, seeking to win the seat back, and I predict even with a lot of candidates in the race he’ll win going away, even though he was literally imprisoned for corruption from when he was in Congress before. There’s been no polling in this race though so instead of assuming, this is a case where, there’s a clear best choice, that’s Robert Peters, and if you’re in the district, he should get your vote.

U.S. House, 4th District (southwest side, southwest suburbs, including Brookfield)

I include this even though it’s uncontested because it’s a weird situation and also the district we live in.

The incumbent is Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, and he is retiring. His chief of staff, Patty Garcia, is the sole candidate on the Democratic ballot. This is because at the last minute they pulled the old switcheroo. Nobody wanted to compete against Chuy in a primary because they knew they'd get trounced. All kinds of people would have thrown their hat in if they'd known he was retiring. So, they waited until the filing period to tell people.

Well, there's going to be competition in November. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, a sitting Chicago alderman, is intending to run as an independent. There may be other independents as well. I think the plan is that Patty Garcia is going to do pretty much nothing and just plan on getting elected by virtue of being the Democrat, and I'm very interested to see how that's going to play out.

U.S. House, 5th District (north side, northwest side, etc.)

Matthew Conroy is the recommendation.

U.S. House, 6th District (west suburbs)

Joey Ruzevich is the recommendation.

U.S. House, 7th District (west side, near west suburbs)

Anthony Driver is the recommendation. In most years this would easily be the craziest race of them all given how many candidates they are and how many weird political constituencies are involved. My recommendation of Driver is based largely on the Girl, I Guess writeup which spotlights his strong stances on Palestine, Medicare for All, and abolishing ICE and the strong progressive endorsements he’s gotten.

U.S. House, 8th District (northwest suburbs)

Junaid Ahmed is the pick. This is another hotly contested open seat, though it’s not quite as crazy as some of the others. Ahmed has gotten strong endorsements, has a strong platform, and seems like he’ll make a really good congressman.

U.S. House, 9th District (far north side, north suburbs)

<deep breath>

This is probably the zaniest race around and the one where I feel like I need to give the most convoluted recommendation.

To recap: there are three candidates who all seem like they might possibly win here. Daniel Biss is the Mayor of Evanston and a former State Senator. Laura Fine is a State Senator. Kat Abughazaleh is a journalist and social media influencer. Then there are 12 other candidates. If ever there was an example of why we need Ranked Choice Voting, this race is it.

Laura Fine is a bad candidate - she’s the AIPAC candidate in this race - and that it’s very important she not win.

Dan Biss is a meh candidate. I don’t think he’s terrible. I think he’s smart and I think he was a decent State Senator. But I met him back when he was running for Governor in 2018 and I was not impressed, and in general I think if he went to Washington he would just be another milquetoast dude. Insert whatever joke you want hear about how he’s better than Fine but no better than fine.

Kat Abughazaleh is a really interesting candidate running a really interesting campaign. She’s a 26 year old social media influencer which, look, I don’t understand how she built a base and I’m open-minded about it all but this campaign has always seemed kind of odd and I’d kind of been waiting to see how it would all play out. And what I think has happened is that this unusual modern campaign ran into the confusion of a cluttered primary but also ICE became a central issue because she was at the anti-ICE protests but is ICE actually the central issue for voters because Biss was doing at least a decent job of handling the ICE situation?

Really, Kat seems like an absolutely fantastic candidate: young, energetic, super progressive, saying all of the right things, someone who could really shake up Congress. But… she doesn’t really have any connection to the district and I’ve wondered how much that would matter. And the thing is…

Bushra Amiwala is also in the race! She’s 28, already an office holder (school board), has run multiple campaigns, has a very similar message overall, this is where she’s lived all along, and she has a significant base of support among Muslim groups in the district. She is an excellent candidate who has put the work in over time. She also has no chance of winning this time around. The most recent poll has her at 4%.

If this were a Ranked Choice Vote, my recommendation would be, in order: Bushra Amiwala, Kat Abughazaleh, a couple of the other candidates, Dan Biss. I’d rank him, but rank him low. But it’s not Ranked Choice. So…

Kat Abughazaleh is the recommendation. I think that Biss is going to win, but I think Kat has a legitimate shot, and I think Laura Fine is going to finish third.

U.S. House, 10th District (far north suburbs)

Morgan Coghill is the recommendation.

U.S. House, 13th District (from Urbana to East St. Louis)

Dylan Blaha is the recommendation.

Cook County Board President

Toni Preckwinkle is the overwhelming choice here, for two reasons. First, she’s extremely competent, and competence matters. I’ve had a lot of issues with Toni over time but I respect the work she’s done. I feel like this would be a good time for someone new to step up, but that’s not happening, and that gets me to the second and more important reason:

The challenger, Brendan Reilly, is a downtown alderman, essentially a Republican, a pervasive jackass on the Chicago City Council, and would be an absolute disaster running county government. His chief constituency is a cohort of huge property owners. Yes, he’s getting support from some seemingly decent aldermen, but that’s just insider politics, and has a lot to do with the current state of affairs in City Hall where Mayor Brandon Johnson (a Toni Preckwinkle protégé) is having a hard time dealing with a lot of the aldermen.

Long story short, absolutely vote for Toni, but I do hope this is her final term.

County Assessor

Fritz Kaegi is the strong recommendation here. He’s a two-term incumbent who isn’t corrupt and for Assessor what the hell more can you ask for?

His opponent Pat Hynes is literally being bankrolled by property tax attorneys.

I don’t have the inside scoop here on why the county Democrats bailed on Fritz but the guy took down Joe Berrios and he’s done nothing to convince me he shouldn’t stay in the job. Between Hynes and Reilly, what I see is some sort of convoluted attempt on the part of moneyed interests in the county to seize an opening in a chaotic primary. Don’t vote for these dipshits. Please.

Cook County Commissioner, Most Districts

I don’t have a lot to offer here. I’m making one strong recommendation and then explaining how silly politics are…

Cook County Commissioner, 6th District (south suburbs)

Wesam J. Shahed is a strong recommendation, based on input from people I trust who live in the district, and also based on a strong writeup from Girl, I Guess.

Cook County Commissioner, 16th District (west / southwest suburbs)

This is our district and this race is very dumb.

Longtime META-SPIEL readers will recall that once upon a time this seat was held by Jeff Tobolski, who doubled as Mayor of McCook, and who got busted by the feds. When Tobolski resigned, the seat was filled by appointment, and Yours Truly applied for the seat, and wound up, very early in the pandemic, in a crazy room being interviewed by the Cook County central committee members from the district. Please read the story if you haven’t, it’s one of my favorites.

The guy they appointed was Frank Aguilar, a former Republican state representative who had also been on the board of one of the community colleges. I’ve seen it described as a “backroom deal” but I’m pretty sure the room I was in at the Italian-American Civic Organization of Berwyn was a front room…

Anyway, Aguilar has coasted through his time in this office. I haven’t seen him do anything bad or wrong. I just haven’t seen him do much of anything at all.

Well, something happened, because he’s running for reelection, but he’s not the one sending all of the mailers out. That would be Miranda Hernandez, whose very first mailer spotlighted having the support of a lot of the doofus mayors for the villages in the district. I found that weird because mayors don’t usually openly back challengers like that. Then she sent more and more mailers and attacked Aguilar in some and it seemed awfully weird.

Here is where it’s probably worth noting that this district is politically centered around Cicero and Berwyn. It also sneaks around and goes up to pick off Melrose Park and Franklin Park. It was redrawn this last time around to be a very Latino district, Cicero and Berwyn being majority Latino, especially Mexican. But why would Aguilar be in anyone’s crosshairs? Did he do something to piss someone off?

I had to go hunting to figure this out because there’s NO local media coverage of this race around here. (Maybe there is in Cicero or Berwyn but I don’t know what local media that would be.) What I found out is that Miranda Hernandez is the daughter of Lisa Hernandez, Chair of the Illinois Democratic Party. In the process of hunting for this I also found out that Lisa Hernandez’s State Rep district is literally one block north of us. (It’s a sign of how disconnected I am that I didn’t know more about the shape of these crazy districts.)

So I don’t really know that Frank Aguilar did anything wrong, I just think a decision was made that six years was enough. Aguilar hasn’t even bothered fundraising in recent years. He’s hardly even trying right now. It’s really a sad commentary on things that this guy hasn’t made any real attempt to do anything and has been able to be a commissioner for six years.

Miranda Hernandez, meanwhile, isn’t really running on any kind of coherent platform herself. She’s just kind of attacking Aguilar in mailers and apparently expecting people to fall in line. She’s not given voters any reason to vote for her, from my perspective.

But wait - there’s a third candidate! Sort of! Leticia “Letty” Garcia ran against Aguilar last time around, got trounced, and she’s back at it this time. We voted for her last time because, well, you know, I should be the commissioner, right? But get this: her filing with the state was recently changed to reflect that she’s going to run for Berwyn City Clerk. She’s raised no money to speak of, her website was hard to find, identifies no positions on anything… she’s frankly making Aguilar look like he’s putting in effort.

In the end, my very weak recommendation, not deserving of hitting control-b, is for Miranda Hernandez, because she’s the only candidate who actually seems to be trying.

Cook County Board of Review, 1st District

Juanita Irizarry is a very strong recommendation. She’s a strong, well-known activist, and she would be FANTASTIC on the Board of Review.

The incumbent is George Cardenas, one of the worst elected officials you’ll ever encounter. Truly wretched. Precisely the kind of person you would never want on the Board of Review.

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago

I am going to defer to Girl, I Guess here, and echo their recommendations for Eira Lizeth Corral Sepulveda, Precious Brady-Davis, and Sarah Bury. I have separately had friends talk up Sarah Bury - the one non-incumbent and an environmental attorney and who sounds like a great choice.

State Legislature, Almost Everywhere

Sorry, I don’t have a lot here. I don’t know about any interesting races downstate though I’m sure they’re out there. There’s only two I keep hearing about so here you go:

State Senate, 6th District (Lakeview)

Nick Uniejewski is a strong recommendation. I keep hearing great things about him. Read the Girl, I Guess guide for a lot of information on this race.

State Representative, 40th District (Albany Park)

Miguel Alvelo-Rivera is a strong recommendation coming from friends in the area. Read the Girl, I Guess guide for a lot of information on this race.

27 Pages of Information about Judicial Elections

Just kidding.

I recommend Girl, I Guess again and I also recommend Injustice Watch for good information on judicial candidates.

General Thoughts

The political state of affairs in America is so awful that it can be hard to get inspired to go out and vote for marginally better candidates in lower-profile local elections. I get it.

What I would say is that I sincerely believe that one of the many factors which brought us to this fascist moment is the sad state of engagement in local politics, which has of course only gotten worse. The almost total collapse of local media makes it all worse. When I ran for State Representative in 2004 and 2006, there were real media outlets covering those races. Living in the suburbs today, what I can tell you is, some of these races have NO coverage. The weekly paper around here hasn’t even attempted to cover the county commissioner race, for example. And we at least have a weekly paper.

I hope what I’ve offered here can be helpful to some people. And I’d love to engage. If you think I’m wrong, great, I hope to hear from you. If you think I’m right and you appreciate it, I hope you’ll let me know. And hey, if this really isn’t content you want, please tell me that too.

I wish I could have made this more complete and I wish I could have made this more fun and I wish I wish I wish… we can all just be part of making things better.