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Juliana Stratton, who won Illinois’s U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, November 3, says she will vote against every nominee President Donald Trump sends to the Senate — Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices and federal judges alike.
“I made it very clear I will not confirm any Donald Trump nominee or appointee, whether this is to the Cabinet or to the Supreme Court or anywhere else,” Stratton said.
Stratton first made the promise in an interview with YouTuber Jack Cocchiarella earlier this year, repeated it at the candidates’ only televised forum on October 20, and said it again on CNN after her victory, as Democrats swept to control of both chambers of Congress.
Stratton, 61, who has served as Illinois’s lieutenant governor under Governor JB Pritzker for the past eight years, defeated Republican Don Tracy, a former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party. The Associated Press called the race as soon as the polls closed, with Stratton leading by about 61 percent to 37 percent with nearly three-quarters of the vote counted. She succeeds retiring Senator Dick Durbin, who held the seat for three decades, and takes office in January.
Her win also makes history: Stratton will be the fourth Black lawmaker to hold a U.S. Senate seat for Illinois and the second Black woman to do so, after Democrat Carol Moseley Braun, who was elected in 1993. Serving alongside Senator Tammy Duckworth, she will make Illinois the first state to have two women of color in the U.S. Senate at the same time.
The pledge carries weight because Democrats retook the Senate in the midterm elections, with the Associated Press declaring at least a 51–49 majority after flipping six Republican seats. Confirmations need a majority vote, so no Trump nominee can count on Stratton’s support. She has also broken with her party’s leadership, saying repeatedly that she will not support Senator Chuck Schumer for another term as leader of the Senate Democrats.
“I will be a check on this president,” Stratton said at the October forum, where she called Trump a “wannabe dictator” and “the biggest threat to national security.” She blamed the president for starting the war in Iran and for imposing tariffs on friends and foes alike, and vowed not to vote for any bills providing supplemental funding for the war effort.