Her Black dad couldn't go on a Capitol trip. She could be a US senator - USA Today

Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton's father was raised in the small town of Clearfield, Pennsylvania. Population: 5,962.

Henry W. Wiggins Jr. wanted to attend his Clearfield High School trip, alongside the class of 1951, to visit the U.S. Capitol in Washington. But he was not allowed, as Stratton tells it, due to an era of segregation practices. Wiggins, then a young Black man, was unable to sleep in the same hotel or eat in the same restaurants as his classmates.

"It's not lost on me. First of all, I'm not talking about my great-grandfather," Stratton, 61, told USA TODAY. "I'm not even talking about my grandfather. I'm talking about my dad."

Now, Wiggins' daughter could work at the Capitol.

The mom of four is expected to be one of the first three Black women to serve at the same time in the U.S. Senate after she won a costly, competitive Democratic Senate primary in March and scored a win for the party's left flank in her reliably blue state.

She released a viral campaign ad referring to President Donald Trump with an expletive and said she will not vote for New York Sen. Chuck Schumer as leader, who has led the Senate Democratic Caucus since 2017, including during Trump's first term, and was majority leader from 2021 to 2025. She supports enacting Medicare for All, which Schumer does not support, and raising the federal minimum wage to $25, up from the current $7.25.

Stratton may serve alongside Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. The historic possibility for the Democratic trio comes two years after former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential race to Trump. Stratton will face Don Tracy, the former chair of the Illinois Republican Party, in November.

Stratton's primary win underscores the complicated dynamics facing the Democratic Party and the nation: Black women are often considered the "backbone" of the left's voting bloc, but Harris' loss sparked new questions – and even concerns – about who is electable in American politics. (Stratton prevailed over two sitting House members, including Rep. Robin Kelly, a fellow Black woman, who received the support of the influential Congressional Black Caucus.)

Stratton was born in 1965 and grew up on the South Side of Chicago. She was the daughter of Wiggins, a Navy veteran, who marched that year from Selma to Montgomery to support voting rights, and her mom, Velma Wiggins, a Chicago public schoolteacher.

She attended the University of Illinois and earned a law degree from DePaul University in 1992. In 2016, the year Trump first won the White House, Stratton launched a primary challenge to state Rep. Ken Dunkin, a fellow Democrat who sided with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and supported embattled former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Stratton was the primary caregiver for her mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and decided to run against Dunkin after watching a TV news segment about his handling of health care. "I literally yelled at the television because I was like, 'What? Somebody should run against that guy,'" Stratton recalled.

Stratton ran, and her mom died that January. She won the race with support from President Barack Obama, whose own career in elected office began in the Illinois statehouse. Gov. JB Pritzker named Stratton his running mate the following year. They won during the November 2018 midterms. The Pritzker-Stratton ticket was re-elected in 2022.

Stratton announced her campaign to replace Sen. Dick Durbin on April 24 last year, one day after the longtime No. 2 Senate Democrat announced his retirement. Her news-themed campaign announcement included vignettes of TV segments as Stratton stood in a room surrounded by strewn newspapers.

"Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to distract us to create such a mess that we don't even know where to start," Stratton said. "But in Washington, they're still doing the same old things they've always done."

For most of the race, Stratton was sandwiched in public polling between Kelly, who wielded CBC support, and frontrunner Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who maintained a $30 million war chest.

Still, Stratton received financial and political backing from Pritzker, the state's popular chief executive and heir of the Hyatt hotel family who remains a potential 2028 aspirant for president. She experienced a surge in the race with a more caustic style on the campaign trail against Trump, who sent thousands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and 300 National Guard troops into Chicago last year as part of "Operation Midway Blitz."

She also slammed Krishnamoorthi for accepting donations from executives of Palantir, a data company that has a contract with ICE, during a tense January debate between the three main candidates.

Stratton, who wants to abolish ICE, then drew national attention with a February campaign ad, laced with profanity, in which several voters say "f--- Trump, vote Julianna" directly to the camera. "They said it, not me," Stratton quips.

Earlier this year, Chicago tech executive Jacob Rosenbacher told USA TODAY that "I think Democrats should be doing everything possible to stop the Republican Party" in explaining why he supports Stratton.

Kaitlin Fahey,a Stratton strategist, told USA TODAY that advisers amplified an "incredibly relatable" candidate by talking about affordability – a winning message for several primary victors this cycle. "She's a mom of four, she talks regularly on the campaign trail about kind of budgeting as a family," Fahey said.

Stratton put it more plainly. "My campaign was about giving the people what they want and that was the distinction," she said. That's why, she said, she focused her campaign on Medicare for All, a $25 minimum wage and getting corporate PAC money out of politics.

Dick Simpson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago, attributed Stratton's win to the outsize role of Pritzker, calling his endorsement the "most important" factor. Stratton served by the two-term governor's side as the billionaire boosted his own national profile as a Trump antagonist and immediately endorsed his right hand.

On Election Day, Stratton prevailed over Krishnamoorthi, her closest challenger, by nearly 8 points. She also became the first in a wave of progressive wins in Democrats' highly competitive Midwestern primary contests. Abdul El-Sayed later won the Michigan Senate primary, and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan delivered a decisive victory in the Minnesota primary to replace retiring Sen. Tina Smith. However, in redder Iowa, state Sen. Josh Turek, the more moderate pick, beat state Sen. Zach Wahls in a Democratic primary to succeed Sen. Joni Ernst, who is also retiring.

A win for Stratton in November would mark the first time a state has elected two Black women to the Senate. The nation's first Black woman senator, Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat, was elected in 1992, and served Illinois for one term from 1993 to 1999.

Harris and former Sen. Laphonza Butler, who was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom after Dianne Feinstein's 2023 death, made California the first state with two Black women to serve in the upper chamber.

In 2024, Alsobrooks, 55, and Blunt Rochester, 64, both won open seats in their respective states. Through the halls of Congress, the pair carry a friendship born from a lunch before they both arrived in the Senate. They refer to one another as "sister" senators and sit together at the same table during Democratic caucus meetings.

"We look across at each other, and we can speak sometimes without exchanging words," Alsobrooks said during an interview. When her father was sick, Alsobrooks received soup and cookies at her house, delivered by Blunt Rochester. The sister senators have spoken with Stratton throughout her campaign.

Alsobrooks shared a gospel playlist with Stratton, while Blunt Rochester called the candidate, the day before the Delaware legislator participated in an interview, to offer advice on what forums to attend during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference.

"I think that's the beauty of almost a built-in sisterhood is that we can talk about all of those different things and we're also in the same sorority," Blunt Rochester said.

If all three women serve together in the Senate, they will match the number of Black men that work in the body of 100: Sens. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia, Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, and Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, currently serve. It will also be the largest number of Black senators to serve concurrently.

Analysts say their presence together may affect policy changes. Georgetown University Professor Nadia Brown, an expert on Black women in politics, said the outcome may lead to key objectives from the trio of lawmakers in three areas: health care, education and ensuring a living wage.

Brown said she expects that the women may bring "attention to issues that people just hadn't thought about even though it's been under your nose the entire time." Michael Strawbridge, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said Black women in Congress lend a greater focus to maternal and women's health.

"They recognize that sometimes issues related to race on the single axis don't always account for the distinctive experiences of Black women who deal with both race and gender," Strawbridge said.

November's midterms are less than two months away, and the possibility of three Black women serving together is growing closer.

Last November, Stratton's dad, Henry Wiggins Jr., died. Sixty years after he marched from Selma to Montgomery, his daughter is on the ballot to be a U.S. senator. She could work where he was unable to visit.

"What I would imagine they are thinking is that you are doing, Juliana, exactly what we raised you to do," Stratton said.