Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton stresses progressive record amid Senate speculation

SPRINGFIELD — Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton has completed five marathons and is a seven-time triathlete. But when she first took up distance running at age 40, she couldn’t even run a mile.

So she challenged herself.

“And when I started running with the running group and I started training for triathlons, they would say, ‘if you could do this, you can do the next one. And if you can do five miles, you can do 10. And if you could do 10 you can do 20, and then you could do a marathon.’ And I didn’t think so,” Stratton, 59, said.

But it ended up being “one of the most consequential leadership lessons” Stratton had ever received.

“And that is with proper discipline and training, with keeping your eye on a particular goal, with the proper support network and the willingness to go through the tough times, you can get there,” Stratton said.

It’s advice she’s used in her campaign for state representative, two races on the ticket with Gov. JB Pritzker and in the challenges they have faced together in government, such as addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also came in handy six months ago on election night. 

Stratton, the first Black woman ever elected the state’s lieutenant governor, had campaigned diligently to elect Vice President Kamala Harris the first Black woman and Asian American President of the United States. 

Sipping tea at a Springfield coffeehouse last October, she told Lee Enterprises in an interview that, for her, the election was about her four daughters.

"The kind of world that I want them to live in is really on the ballot — where their rights are protected, where they have access to opportunity, where they can live the life of their dreams," she said.

But as returns poured in weeks later, it became clear to Stratton that the energy that she felt on the campaign trail in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin was not translating into the requisite votes for Harris to make history.

And by the time she woke up Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump’s election to a non-consecutive second term had been confirmed.

"It was a gut punch, to be honest with you," Stratton said in another interview earlier this month, adding that the most difficult part the morning after was consoling her youngest daughter, who broke into tears when confronted with the verdict the country’s voters had just rendered.

But even more than a gut punch, the election represented a gut-check moment for Stratton.

“This is the time to not give up, to not lose hope and to understand what leadership really looks like, and to lean into that and demonstrate it every single day,” she said, reflecting on her thinking. “And that’s what I wake up every morning trying to do.”

For her, this meant elevating the progressive record she and Pritzker built up over more than six years in office to a national scale. In January, she launched her "Level Up" federal hybrid political action committee.

The aim, at least for now, is to support candidates and causes in Illinois and across the country that emulate the values Pritzker and Stratton have promoted in Illinois — and, by default, stand against those being advanced by Trump and his allies.

“I know what our administration has done and I know the policies that we have worked on and the accomplishments that Gov. Pritzker and I have been able to achieve over the last six years, and how they have really helped working families,” Stratton said.

“And so I want to make sure that we talk about that, not just around the state, but I think that this is an opportunity to elevate and amplify that work on a national scale, as it shows what strong Democratic leadership can do to help working families thrive, and what strong diverse leadership can do to help working families thrive, and I just think that we really are blueprint for what’s possible, especially in these times,” she continued.

But there could soon be other uses. Just as Pritzker now routinely finds himself on 2028 Democratic presidential shortlists, Stratton herself could soon be up for a new job.

She is widely seen as a candidate for Sen. Dick Durbin’s seat should the incumbent retire. She confirmed in an interview she will “strongly consider” running if it’s open.

Durbin, 80, told Lee Enterprises on March 20 that he would make a decision “soon” on his future plans. Waiting in the wings are Stratton and a cadre of Illinois Democrats looking to take their shot at a seat that hasn’t been up in nearly three decades.

Stratton is a restorative justice practitioner by profession. As a state representative and lieutenant governor, she has viewed the state’s many problems through that lens. And moving forward, she believes that approach to governing could provide some healing to a divided nation.

Stratton’s story begins — and her worldview was shaped — on Chicago’s South Side.

She was born in 1965 to Henry, a Navy lieutenant and doctor who worked in safety net hospitals, and Velma, a Chicago Public Schools teacher. She has two sisters and a brother.

Though the family did some moving around while her father was in the Navy, including a stint on a farm in Belfair, Washington, they moved back to Chicago when Stratton was young.

They settled in the Pill Hill neighborhood, which gained its moniker due to the preponderance of medical doctors who lived there. Stratton’s family and other African American families moved in just as many white families were moving out.

Though young, Stratton was “keenly aware” of the changes taking place in the neighborhood and “the impact of race,” she said. 

Segregated neighborhood dynamics in cities like Chicago weren’t an accident. They were often the result of redlining, which is the denial of financial services, such as mortgage loans, to people who live in or near majority-minority neighborhoods.

Stratton’s grandfather, Wilbur Slaughter, was a member of the Dearborn Realtist Board, the oldest African American real estate trade association in the United States, and part of the case that ultimately ended racially restrictive covenants in Cook County.

These surroundings helped shape Stratton’s view on the power of government to affect people’s lives.

“I think about how many policies have really caused harm,” Stratton said. “They were intentional to divide. And there’s a legacy from that.

"And so when I became lieutenant governor and even state legislator … my whole focus has been to think about, through a restorative justice lens, how to repair some of that harm, how to bring things back together, how to make them work for everyone.”

While attending DePaul law school, Stratton was trained as a mediator by the Center for Conflict Resolution, a not-for-profit organization that aids in managing and resolving conflicts outside of the courtroom.

This helped set the course for her career.

In 1997, she founded JDS Mediation Services, a consulting group that provided negotiation and alternative resolution services.

Later, she worked as a hearing officer and administrative law judge for the city of Chicago, managed the public safety portfolio for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and served as executive director of the Center for Public Safety at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Stratton “knew public service was in her DNA" and felt that her work in the restorative justice space would eventually lead to politics.

But it wasn’t until 2015 when she was spurred to make the leap. At the time, she was the primary caregiver for her mother Velma, who was suffering from the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

“I was watching the news and saw that the person who was supposed to be representing our district was making cuts to health care for seniors’ home health care,” Stratton said. “And I remember I was furious and I literally yelled at the TV and said, ‘somebody should run against this guy.’ And I’m not kidding, I yelled at the TV.”

The man on the TV was state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago.

The seven-term Democratic state legislator had sided with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on a series of votes during the state’s two-and-a-half-year budget impasse.

This included not voting to override Rauner’s veto of a bill that would have restored funding cut from the Community Care Program, which helps seniors who might otherwise need to move into a nursing home remain in their homes by providing in-home and community-based services.

In Springfield parlance, Dunkin “took a walk” on the roll call, not voting for or against despite his presence in the House chamber. The override attempt failed by one vote.

Stratton found this “so egregious.”

While her mother was not impacted, she knew people in her same situation but of less means were. So, she asked herself, “why not me?”

Within a few weeks, Stratton jumped into the race. It would be the most expensive House primary of the cycle, with House Speaker Michael Madigan and allied unions backing Stratton’s campaign and Rauner and his allies pouring funds into Dunkin’s campaign. President Barack Obama even recorded radio and television ads on Stratton’s behalf.

Stratton acknowledged “it was not the race I thought I was getting into.”

But in the end, the result wasn’t close. Stratton won by a more than two-to-one margin. She ran unopposed in the general election and was sworn in as a state lawmaker in January 2017.

“It was a lot, but it was worth it because I got a chance to get in not just do the work that I was doing in a particular office, but to have a greater impact,” she said.

Stratton proved a quick study in the Illinois General Assembly.

Eight of her bills were signed by Rauner during her first year in office, including a measure prohibiting preschool programs that receive state grant funding from expelling students and one that required training for Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice personnel include courses on restorative justice.

But she wouldn’t be long for the legislature.

That summer, Pritzker wanted to meet. The billionaire businessman-turned-politician was running for the 2018 Democratic nomination for governor. Stratton didn’t know it at the time, but she was being vetted as a possible running mate.

She had come highly recommended to Pritzker by both Durbin and Preckwinkle.

Pritzker, in an interview, recalled that their first meeting at a Bronzeville restaurant lasted three times longer than scheduled. He found Stratton to be kind, empathetic, smart — and someone who could lead the state if called upon.

“You need somebody who can actually take over the job of governor who’s a great campaigner and a thoughtful, smart policy-oriented person,” Pritzker said. “She had all those things going for her.”

Pritzker said that “it kind of all fell together relatively quickly” from there.

Soon enough, Stratton was picked as Pritzker’s running mate. The ticket would go on to win the Democratic primary convincingly and defeat Rauner in the general.

The lieutenant governor is first in the line of succession should the governor die, resign or be removed from office. The Illinois Constitution prescribes few other responsibilities for the office, instead giving the governor broad authority to delegate tasks to his No. 2.

In this sense, it is the most low-profile statewide office in Illinois, though state statute adds select other duties that include chairing the Governor’s Rural Affairs Council, the Rivers of Illinois Coordinating Council and the Illinois Council on Women and Girls.

It’s not quite a blank canvas, but Illinois lieutenant governors have generally had wide leeway to chart their own courses. For one reason or another, it hasn’t always been the easiest assignment.

Lt. Gov. Dave O’Neal famously resigned in 1981 out of sheer boredom. And others have been iced out due to poor relationships with the governor. When Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on federal corruption charges, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn told reporters that the two had not spoken in more than a year.

But staying busy hasn’t been an issue for Stratton, who has embraced her statutory responsibilities, promoted her own initiatives and enjoys a warm personal and professional relationship with Pritzker.

“It strikes me that Juliana Stratton has used the lieutenant governor position very effectively,” said John Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. “She’s been part of the policy debates within the administration; she has developed a very close and productive political and personal relationship with the governor, and has used the job of lieutenant governor to travel the state and become much better known.”

Pritzker has made a point to elevate Stratton. She is often by his side at press events, where he introduces her as his “partner in governance.”

Both say the warm regard is not an act.

“I felt that he would see me as a genuine partner, and not just what we sometimes see (elsewhere) as just kind of like, ‘go to this because I don’t want to go,’” Stratton said. “We’re partners. We’re also friends.”

Still, it is a junior-senior partnership, and it is “not like we’re both on this equal footing,” Stratton said.

“He’s the governor and I’m there to support him, but partnership in terms of mutual respect, mutual belief that we both want to do best for the people of Illinois,” she said. “He knows I have his back and he has my back.”

The governor has tasked Stratton with spearheading the administration’s criminal justice reform agenda, which covers a wide umbrella of programs but generally seeks to shift the state’s justice system away from punitive approaches towards restorative practices.

She also took a lead role in forming and negotiating Pritzker’s birth equity initiative, which seeks to address a maternal mortality gap in which Black women are three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women.

The initiative, introduced last year and funded in the state budget, ensures that doulas and other community-based care providers who help new mothers receive competitive Medicaid reimbursement rates. Funds were also set aside to build community birthing centers and a free diaper pilot program.

“She hunkered down and met with the doulas and midwives and doctors in that field and came to understand what some of the challenges are and is the best advocate that you could have for an issue that affects so many people’s lives and that’s so important to the future of our state,” Pritzker said. “And she just took that issue on and really led it to victory. And now we have a program in the state of Illinois that is saving people’s lives, and that is on its way to being one of the best in the country.”

Many of Stratton’s own initiatives elevate and expand upon her statutory responsibilities. She chairs the Governor’s Rural Affairs Council, a group set up to address the challenges facing the state’s rural areas like economic development, healthcare and school district consolidation among others.

But the group also collaborates with her own "Ag Connects Us All" campaign, which seeks to promote pathways for underrepresented groups to the state’s agriculture industry while expanding access to nutritious foods in low-income communities.

It’s just one example of Stratton attempting to connect people across regional, racial and cultural lines on issues where she says there are more commonalities present than at first glance.

“It always has been important for me, being from the South Side of Chicago, to kind of shift the narrative from … the urban-rural divide (and) to make it the urban-rural bridge,” Stratton said.

“I do think that our country clearly has become more divided and people have become more entrenched in their positions,” Stratton said. “But I’m a restorative justice practitioner. I’ve been one for about two decades now, and it’s focused on thinking about communities that have suffered harm and how do we repair that harm? And we do that by listening to the wisdom in the room.”

Sonja Reece, a longtime community leader in Normal, has served on the Governor’s Rural Affairs Council since 2015 — first under Republican Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti and later under Stratton.

She said that Stratton has given rural communities “more visibility” and “more voice” on the council.

“I think that the goal (of the council) was always the same, but I think the way that Juliana is dealing with it is getting us actually out into these rural communities and getting their voice heard more specifically,” Reece said.

“Her personality is warm and accepting — and she knows us,” Reece added. “That is not always the case with people at her level in government. Not like we’re best friends, but she knows Sonja and Sonja knows Juliana.”

After two election cycles on the ticket with Pritzker, Stratton’s name could appear alone on the ballot next year for the U.S. Senate if Durbin retires.

While potential candidates have been deferential to Durbin, several have been laying the groundwork.

U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Schaumburg, has more than $17 million in his campaign account. He has been traveling the state over the past year — including several stops to Bloomington-Normal — and meeting with Democratic committeemen in vote-rich Cook County ahead of an expected run.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Naperville, is also putting together a campaign team. And U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson, is expected to at least explore running, according to multiple people involved in Illinois Democratic politics.

Other names linked to the race include state Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. But other candidates are expected to give it a look as well.

Stratton has been gearing up in ways both subtle — she now uses the term “Pritzker-Stratton administration” in joint appearances with the governor — and obvious, like opening a federal political action committee.

A late February fundraising launch party for Level Up PAC in Chicago drew several prominent Democratic donors and politicians, including Pritzker.

Most Democratic political operatives view Stratton as one of the frontrunners in an open primary alongside Krishnamoorthi.

While Krishnamoorthi starts with a significant financial advantage, the flexibility of Stratton’s current office frees up more time to campaign. She is also believed by many operatives to have the strongest relationship of any prospective candidate with Chicago’s African American community, perhaps the most important constituency in a Democratic primary.

Democratic strategists say that more candidates generally creates greater volatility and could open up pathways for those who are lesser known.

“When you talk about Lauren Underwood and Robin Kelly, they’re actually in Congress, actually making legislation, fighting every day,” said Delmarie Cobb, a Chicago-based Democratic political strategist. “So we can see what they’re doing. And so that’s going to be something she’s going to have to show us because she will not be the only Black woman in the race.”

Stratton is also largely unproven as a fundraiser.

Pritzker self-funded his two campaigns, negating the need for her to dial-for-dollars. Stratton reported having just $317,000 in her main state campaign account as of the beginning of the year.

“It’s really about being strategic and about money,” Cobb said. “And we don’t know her fundraising ability. I mean, now that she’s formed this PAC, we’ll get a sense of her fundraising ability. And, of course, being lieutenant governor, she certainly will have some fundraising ability.”

Stratton would have to cut ties with the PAC and create her own campaign committee should she become a candidate for the seat. But the PAC would still be able to take unlimited donations and spend it to promote her candidacy without direct coordination.

Enter Pritzker. Illinois’ billionaire governor is expected to endorse Stratton in an open Senate race. But it remains an open question as to what level of financial support he would provide to Stratton’s campaign. But, even if Pritzker doesn’t open his own wallet for Stratton, his robust political network could be a deep well from which she can draw from.

For now, Pritzker is, at least publicly, keeping his powder dry.

“Look, I think extraordinarily highly of her,” Pritzker told Lee Enterprises. “I want you to know that she’s somebody that I think would make an excellent United States senator. And I haven’t made up my mind or decided on who I would endorse, if anybody. But I can start with (this): she’s somebody that I have come to admire and somebody who is highly capable.”

Stratton said she has not yet identified candidates or causes to support through Level Up. And with the Senate race frozen until Durbin makes his decision, she said she is planning on having events through the PAC that facilitate “dialogs across the state where we’re doing more listening.”

“There’s a lot of conversation around messaging, for example,” Stratton said. “And for me, the best messaging comes from listening to people who are closest to the ground, listening to people in communities.”

“And not just kind of saying, ‘well, this is what people want to hear.’ And yes, I know that there’s polling that exists,” she continued. “But I’ve always believed getting into community, and listening directly to community is important.”

Stratton believes she can offer “an alternative to the chaos” emanating from Washington, and a contrast from Trump, who she described as “out for vengeance.” Or, to put it another way, she can help repair harm and hold people accountable — exactly what a restorative justice practitioner does.

“The harm is going to happen against people all across the political spectrum, all across in every corner of Illinois — in rural communities, urban communities, suburban communities,” Stratton said of the Trump Administration.

“Everyone is going to feel this pain," she said. "And I think right now what people want is they want real leadership. They want people who are fighting back and who are showing a real, tangible alternative of what happens when you put working people first.”