SPRINGFIELD — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren urged Illinois Democrats on Wednesday to unite behind all of the party’s nominees in the upcoming midterm elections so they can win control of Congress and block Republican President Donald Trump from advancing his agenda.

And to show she was serious, she announced she is putting $500,000 into the party’s coordinated campaign funds to elect Democrats to the U.S. House and Senate, plus another $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee to strengthen the party’s internal infrastructure.

“It is time to stop the handwringing and to invest in a key part of our Democratic infrastructure,” Warren, D-Massachusetts, told an audience of more than 2,000 Democrats gathered in Springfield. “And I am asking others to join me and do the same.”

Warren was the keynote speaker at the Illinois Democratic County Chairs’ Association brunch, an annual event that coincides with Governor’s Day at the Illinois State Fair. The focus of this year’s event was to celebrate Illinois’ retiring Sen. Dick Durbin while also showcasing the party’s slate of candidates in the November election.

But her speech came at the same time internal friction has been rising within the party as a new generation of young, left-leaning and self-identified socialist candidates have been rising to prominence around the country by defeating establishment-backed candidates in contested primaries.

Rise of the left

Just a day earlier, Angie Nixon, a little-known Florida state legislator and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, scored an upset victory over the more moderate, establishment-backed candidate Alex Vindman to win that state’s U.S. Senate primary.

And earlier this month, Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate, edged out the more moderate U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens to win Michigan’s Senate primary.

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Warren, who is often identified with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, but whose message is usually more populist than socialist, admitted she has often been critical of party leaders for “meddling” in competitive primaries.

“I think it’s wrong for the (party) to put a thumb on the scale when Democrats are choosing their nominee,” she said. “I think it’s wrong to line up with big money, to drown out grassroots candidates. Wrong, and it weakens us.”

“But I know our job now,” she continued. “Democrats must win the Senate, and I am 100% behind our Democratic nominees everywhere, and I am 100% behind getting them the resources they need to win with.”

In his speech, Gov. JB Pritzker downplayed Democratic divisions.

“These days, it seems like the pundits and the naysayers want to stay in an endless loop of debate about the future of the Democratic Party to draw false and rigid divisions, to paint a picture of a fractured coalition,” Pritzker said. “If there’s a divide in the national Democratic Party that exists, it’s the one between team fight and team cave. And in Illinois, we’ve made our choice. We’re on team fight.”

Still, the rise of self-identified socialist candidates has raised concern in some circles that the party may be shifting so far to the left that it is hurting its own chances to win in a general election, especially in a swing state like Michigan, which Trump narrowly won in 2024, or a conservative-leaning state like Florida, which Trump won by 13 percentage points.

Leading Illinois Democrats said Wednesday they remain confident of the party’s chances in November.

“I think Democrats are a big-tent party, and I think as many voices as we can get under the same umbrella is a good thing,” U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said in an interview later in the day at the state fairgrounds. “We don’t want a homogenous party that is beholden to a single individual like the Republicans. I’m glad that we have diverse voices in our party so we can have many different perspectives.”

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is running to succeed Durbin in the Senate, told reporters that she thinks Democrats still have a shot at winning control of the Senate.

“I think that it’s still in play and everybody is going to focus on these races over the next 76 days,” she said. We’re going to make sure that we are electing Democrats up and down the ticket in our own state but I’m also going to do everything I can to help Democrats win across this country.”

Honoring Durbin

Warren also took time to praise Durbin for his 30 years in the Senate, giving him credit for being an early supporter of legislation that would eventually bring her to national attention —  creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That agency was created in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a legislative response to the 2008 financial crisis. Warren was still a Harvard law professor at the time and had been a vocal advocate of forming a government agency to protect consumers from predatory lending practices.

“Dick Durbin was the original sponsor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” she said. “He fought to make that agency happen, and I will forever be grateful.”

After the bill was signed into law, then-President Barack Obama named Warren to head a steering committee to get the new agency up and running. But she was not nominated to become the agency’s first director.

In 2012, Warren was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts, defeating incumbent Republican Scott Brown. Brown had won the seat in a special election in 2010 following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Durbin received several rounds of applause and said he’d remain involved, quipping that once politics is “in the blood,” it takes “embalming fluid” to get it out.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.