Candidate Q&A
Why are you running?
I’m running because life has become too expensive and Washington isn’t serious about fixing it. Housing, health care, child care, and education all cost more every year while paychecks fall behind.
I believe the way to lower costs is to build more of what we need, more housing, more doctors, more transit, and more opportunity. I’m running to challenge the status quo, take on special interests, and help build a more affordable future for Illinois.
What do you think is the most pressing issue facing your constituents and how do you plan on addressing it?
The most pressing issue facing people in Illinois is affordability.
I plan to address this by focusing on supply side solutions, building more housing where people want to live, training more doctors and nurses to lower health care costs, expanding transit to reduce household expenses, and taking on the regulatory and political barriers that keep prices high.
Affordability is not a slogan. It requires making hard choices and being willing to fight entrenched interests to actually bring costs down.
What do you think federal immigration reform should look like?
Federal immigration reform should be firm, lawful, and realistic.
We need clear border enforcement focused on real security threats, combined with a legal immigration system that actually meets the country’s labor and economic needs. That means expanding lawful pathways to work, reducing backlogs, and ending chaos that benefits smugglers instead of families or employers.
Immigration policy should be about order, growth, and the rule of law, not performative cruelty or endless dysfunction.
How should the Senate address the rising costs of health care?
The Senate should focus on lowering health care costs by increasing supply, competition, and transparency across the entire system.
That starts with care delivery. We need to train more doctors and nurses by expanding residency slots, take on hospital consolidation and monopoly pricing, and enforce real price transparency so patients and employers can actually see what they are paying. Payment and regulation should reward value and outcomes, not just volume. Health care does not get cheaper through slogans. It gets cheaper by fixing the structural bottlenecks that keep prices high.
The Senate also needs to take a hard look at the full drug pricing pipeline and fix it end to end. That begins with serious PBM reform so middlemen cannot extract opaque fees that raise prices without improving care. American patients should not pay more than Europeans for drugs developed in the United States, especially when public research dollars helped fund them.
We should pair that with faster FDA reciprocity and approval pathways with peer countries so safe, effective drugs reach patients sooner and competition comes online faster. At the same time, more of the NIH budget should be focused on true moonshot research that can deliver paradigm shifting treatments, not just incremental advances.
Lower health care costs require competition today and breakthroughs tomorrow.
What approach would you take on tax policy?
My approach to tax policy is straightforward. The code should raise the revenue we need while rewarding productive work and investment, not rent seeking.
That means ending the carried interest loophole, especially for private equity, and closing offshoring strategies that let corporations shift profits to tax havens like Ireland to avoid paying what they owe. I also support eliminating stepped up basis so large fortunes are taxed at least once and do not compound forever without contribution back to the society that made them possible.
At the top end, I would favor a high end consumption tax. Buying a bigger yacht or private jet should not be illegal, but it should be discouraged relative to productive investment. The goal is not to punish success, but to tilt the system away from financial engineering and conspicuous consumption and toward growth, fairness, and long term prosperity.
Should any changes be made to the size of the Supreme Court or the confirmation process?
I do not support changing the size of the Supreme Court.
Court packing would further politicize the judiciary and undermine its legitimacy. Instead, the focus should be on restoring stability and public trust through structural reform.
I support term limits for Supreme Court justices, with staggered terms so each presidential term results in the same number of appointments, eliminating timed retirements and lowering the temperature around confirmations. In addition, the Court should be subject to clear, enforceable ethics rules, including transparency around gifts, travel, and conflicts of interest, so no justice is above basic standards of accountability.
Do you believe the structure of the Senate leads to legislative gridlock? What would you change?
Yes. The current structure of the Senate contributes directly to legislative gridlock, and it is not accidental.
The modern filibuster has turned the Senate from a deliberative body into a veto point where inaction is the default. I support eliminating the filibuster so the Senate can actually legislate, govern, and be held accountable for outcomes.
Beyond the filibuster, Congress needs to reclaim power it has ceded to the executive branch. One way to do that is by aligning House and Senate committees more closely with executive cabinet agencies. Clear jurisdiction would improve oversight, build real subject matter expertise among legislators, and allow Congress to write more precise, durable laws instead of vague statutes that invite endless rulemaking.
A functioning democracy requires a Congress that can act. Ending the filibuster and modernizing committee structure would reduce gridlock and restore the legislature as a coequal branch of government.
What is the most pressing foreign policy issue facing the country and what role should the Senate play in dealing with it?
The most pressing foreign policy issue facing the country is strategic competition with China.
The Senate should focus on strengthening alliances in Asia and Australia, deepening economic and security cooperation, and re entering the Trans Pacific Partnership so the United States, not China, sets the rules of trade in the region. We need an economic strategy that supports allies while reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains.
That includes using targeted, strategic tariffs and industrial policy to ensure China cannot use its manufacturing scale to hollow out industries the United States would need to rapidly expand in a military conflict. The Senate’s role is to set clear strategy, fund it consistently, and ensure economic policy and national security are fully aligned.
How do you view AI and the role the government should play in its regulation?
AI is a general purpose technology that will reshape the economy, national security, and daily life, and the government needs to approach it with both urgency and restraint.
The federal role should focus on three things. First, protecting national security by ensuring the most advanced models and chips are developed and deployed by the United States and its allies, not adversaries. Second, setting clear guardrails around safety, privacy, and accountability in high risk uses like defense, critical infrastructure, health care, and elections. Third, preparing workers for disruption through education, training, and stronger economic security.
At the same time, regulation must be targeted and flexible. Overregulating a fast moving technology would push innovation offshore and weaken U.S. leadership. The goal is not to slow AI down, but to steer it in a way that strengthens economic growth, democratic institutions, and American leadership.
How will your approach differ from or mirror that of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin?
Senator Durbin has had a long and consequential career, but my approach will be more focused on the problems of the next twenty years rather than the last twenty.
Where I differ is emphasis and method. I am more willing to challenge entrenched interests, including within my own party, and to focus relentlessly on affordability through supply side reforms like building more housing, expanding health care capacity, and modernizing infrastructure. I am also more open to structural reforms in Congress so it can actually legislate rather than defer power to the executive branch.
Where we align is on core Democratic values, protecting working families, defending democracy, and believing government can be a force for good when it works. The difference is that I am running to modernize how it works and to take on the political fights needed to deliver results.
How would you describe the current state of your party and what changes or new approaches would you like to see your party adopt?
The Democratic Party is right about many of the problems facing the country, but we are not currently organized to win the power needed to solve them.
Too often, the party prioritizes ideological purity and base mobilization over coalition building and electoral reality. That approach has left us unable to win Senate races in large parts of the country, which means no legislation, no judges, and no meaningful guardrails on the executive branch.
I want to see a party that is unapologetically focused on winning the Senate by expanding the coalition to include moderates, independents, and voters who may not agree with us on everything but want a functional government. That requires moderation, discipline, and a focus on results. Power matters, and the Democratic Party needs to start acting like it intends to win and govern, not just signal virtue.