Underdog U.S. Senate candidates call for new voices in Washington at UChicago debate

Seven underdog candidates seeking retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s coveted seat tried capturing voters’ attention Thursday night during a debate at the University of Chicago.

Fewer fireworks flew at this discussion compared to last month’s U.S. Senate debate between front-runner contenders Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly.

The lesser-known candidates mostly recognized the long-shot chance at winning the primary election, with the exception of the lone Republican candidate in attendance who will likely face one other contender in that primary. Instead, they largely shared their campaign priorities and laid bare the reasoning why they were relegated to a separate debate.

“I think it’s telling that there are multiple aspects of our democratic process that are broken because… we only look to money as the only metric of viability. This debate is a great example,” said Democratic primary challenger Kevin Ryan, a Chicago Public Schools teacher and U.S. Marine veteran.

The University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and International House hosted and moderated the event. It also hosted last month’s debate between Stratton, Krishnamoorthi and Kelly, which was also sponsored by the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ.

Krishnamoorthi held a wide fundraising advantage in the race, with $18 million in his federal campaign fund as of last fall, compared to about $2 million for Kelly and $1 million for Stratton. Those numbers tower over the amounts raised by the seven other Democratic candidates, with Steve Botsford leading the rest of the pack with $128,000 on hand at the end of last year.

“You have three candidates who are running around, doing their best to avoid the rest of the seven of us,” said Democratic candidate Jonathan Dean, a lawyer and solar energy business owner.

“And those three other candidates just happen to be the ones who have a bunch of rich friends, so this Democratic primary has turned into a contest [of] who has the most rich friends,” Dean said. “But politics is not a game. Real futures are at stake.”

The candidates who participated in Thursday’s debate are: Democratic primary candidates Botsford, Sean Brown, Dean, Bryan Maxwell, Ryan and Christopher Swann, and Republican primary candidate Pamela Denise Long. Democratic candidate Awisi A. Bustos and the other Republican candidate Jimmy Lee Tillman II did not attend.

Two University of Chicago students asked the candidates six questions, in topics ranging from immigration, taxes, rising cost of living and foreign policy.

All Democratic runners shared a general consensus on abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; raising taxes on ultra wealthy individuals and corporations; reducing the U.S. government’s military budget and reallocating that money to services like housing and health care; and ending U.S. military support for Israel.

Maxwell said the government can’t address the rising cost of living without cutting the roughly $1 trillion U.S. military budget and raising money through increased taxes on millionaires and billionaires.

“We need to actually put more money back into the hands of people in this country,” said Maxwell, an agricultural engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “...We’re the richest country in the world, there’s absolutely no reason people should be going without food, housing and health care.”

Each candidate except for Long said they would support raising the federal minimum wage.

When asked to name a Trump policy they support, Botsford and Dean both said the ban on corporations buying single-family homes. Botsford also noted that he agreed with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “trying to get Americans to focus on more real foods and away from carbohydrates and sugary snacks.”

Long said she supports Trump’s “America first” agenda and his border security. She acknowledged that while immigration enforcement “has to happen, but it needs to be done humanely.”

In addition to leading the fundraising effort, Krishnamoorthi has led most polls in the race, including a WGN-TV/Emerson College poll last month. That poll gave him 31% support over 10% for Stratton and 8% for Kelly, while 45% of poll respondents were undecided.