Juliana Stratton makes history as 3 Black women enter US Senate for first time

Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton, a Democrat, made history after winning the open US Senate seat from Illinois. This is the first time in the history of the US Senate that there will be three black women in the upper chamber: Juliana from Illinois, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. Illinois' other senator, Tammy Duckworth, is Asian American. That would make Illinois the first state with two women of colour in the Senate at the same time.

Stratton won by defeating Republican challenger Don Tracy to succeed retiring five-term Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, whose 30-year tenure ends in January 2026. Stratton also recalled a recent conversation with Durbin, who told her the seat she was running for was the same one Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated for.

“Those debates boiled down to one issue: slavery,” Stratton said. “And now, the seat where the future of slavery was once debated will be held by a descendant of someone who was enslaved.”

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Stratton would be the sixth Black woman to serve in the US Senate and the second from the state. She has vowed to raise the federal hourly minimum wage to $25, to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and expand Medicare to all Americans to replace private health insurance. Tracy is a former Illinois GOP chair who called her the "most extreme far-left" Senate candidate in state history. Illinois last elected a Republican to the Senate in 2010.

Juliana Stratton is a native of Chicago, Illinois. She began her political career as the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois in 2019. She was a gubernatorial running mate for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Pritzker has often floated the idea of a potential Democratic contender for higher office, including the US presidency.