Goals

We believe many political organizations fail because they spread resources too thinly across too many races without making meaningful investments capable of changing outcomes.

Across Illinois and nationally, progressive candidates tend to perform strongest in densely populated districts with established organizing infrastructure. However, Illinois’ heavily gerrymandered legislative maps often create geographically sprawling districts where progressive campaigns struggle to establish sufficient ground operations and communication networks. Our organization seeks to fill this gap by directing independent expenditures and operational support into less densely populated districts and municipalities where outside spending can have an outsized electoral effect. We believe targeted investments in ad support can significantly improve progressive performance in races that are otherwise under-resourced.

Our focus is not simply on electing isolated progressive officials. Our goal is to build governing majorities capable of implementing policy and exercising real political power. We therefore prioritize races where victories can contribute to:

• Expanding progressive legislative caucuses
• Building progressive municipal governing coalitions
• Strengthening long-term organizing infrastructure
• Creating durable electoral pipelines for future statewide and federal races

We will operate exclusively in Democratic primary elections for state and federal races. We will operate in non-partisan municipal races and operate in democratic primary and general municipal elections.

We will target:

• Open Illinois gubernatorial race
• U.S. House races in Illinois
• Illinois State Senate races
• Illinois House races
• Municipal mayoral races
• Strategic city council races connected to broader governing coalitions

We will prioritize:

• Democratic +10 districts where progressives are electorally viable
• Districts where moderate incumbents hold seats in D+10 districts
• Municipal races where progressive governing coalitions can realistically gain or maintain governing power

We believe several heavily Democratic Illinois congressional districts currently represented by moderate Democrats are electorally viable for progressive primary challenges.

We are interested in districts where:

• Democratic partisan advantage is substantial
• Progressive turnout potential is high but underdeveloped
• Existing incumbents do not reflect the ideological composition of the district electorate

For Example:

• Brad Schneider is a moderate in a D +20 district
• Mike Quigley is a moderate in a D+38 district
• Nikki Budzinski is a moderate in a D+15 district