The Illinois Senate’s fifth-most senior Democrat will retire after this fall’s veto session, marking the second member of the chamber’s leadership team to plan their exit from state government in recent months.
Sen. Linda Holmes, of Aurora, said she will file the paperwork Monday to remove her name from the November ballot, ending a 20-year run in the 42nd District. While Illinois is no stranger to candidates remaining on the ballot until the last minute and then withdrawing in favor of their political allies, Holmes said her reason to drop out is due to her health.
She had planned to run for and, if elected, serve another two-year term and retire just before turning 70. But, she said, the grueling pace of the May legislative session took a toll on her multiple sclerosis diagnosis of nearly four decades.
“I’ve had MS for 37 years, and it at times has presented challenges,” she told Capitol News Illinois. “And this latest, which happened at the very end of session, was more than just a flare-up that I would get better and recover from.”
She said her doctor instructed her to moderate her stress and sleepless nights — two mainstays of May in Springfield.
“It was literally my doctors sitting down and saying, after this many years, at your age, the amount of damage that the disease has done is something you can’t just continue to push through,” she said.
She made it through the final month, including the all-night slog that ended at about 4:30 a.m. on June 1. But then she made a decision that she said she’s at peace with.
“Yes, I’ll miss it,” she said. “But I also think with the health issues, to not be able to give it that 100% energy, it’s then time for somebody else to come in and do that.”
Just who that somebody else will be on November’s ballot is up to the Democratic County chairs based on a weighted vote in the four counties where Holmes has constituents — Kane (about 41%), Kendall (about 29%), DuPage (about 19%), and Will (about 11%).
Holmes declined to mention who she’ll be backing for the nomination — though she does have a preferred candidate. That person would face Aurora Republican Edgardo “Eddie” Perez.
“We want to give people the opportunity to run,” she said.
A ‘more combative, more cynical’ political arena
Her planned resignation date is Dec. 31, taking her through the fall veto session, but short of a January lame duck session if there is one.
Senate President Pro Tempore Bill Cunningham, the Senate’s seventh-most senior Democrat, is also stepping down at the end of his term in January. Both are part of Senate President Don Harmon’s 14-person leadership team, with Holmes serving as assistant majority leader.
The pair have seen Springfield change over the past two decades. Cunningham was elected to the Senate in 2013 after serving a term in the House.
When she first came into office, Holmes said she worked well with a Republican representative, Tom Cross. Then the House minority leader, Cross was a pro-choice Republican who lived in Holmes’ Senate district.
“We carried legislation together, got along great, worked on things together,” she said. “I think we just worked better. There were more of us that were sort of middle-of-the-road people, and especially out in the suburbs.”
Cunningham told Capitol News Illinois much the same in September when he announced his plan to retire at the end of his term.
“The political arena has changed during my time in it,” Cunningham said. “It’s more combative and more cynical and I know that has driven some people out of it, but for me, it’s more of a personal decision. Those factors really didn’t play in my decision.”
Holmes’ was in the first class of Senate Democrats to take a 36-vote supermajority in 2006. It’s fallen below that number once since then and now sits at 40 — something she said has helped usher out an era of compromise.
“I don’t like that we have the power to necessarily push things through just as Democrats,” she said. “I think my famous line in the Senate is always, ‘Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.’ I just would like to see much more working together, much more building consensus.”
In a statement, Harmon said Holmes “never shies away from a difficult conversation or complex issue.”
“Linda Holmes and I have been through a lot in the past 20 years. An impeachment, a budget impasse and a global pandemic to name just a few,” he said in a statement. “And through it all, she has been an unwavering champion for the people who sent her to Springfield. She brought to the Illinois Senate the perspective of a small business owner, the heart of a community advocate and the steady judgement of a leader who understands that lasting progress is built through collaboration.”
‘Nobody said that she had a shot’
Holmes describes herself as a moderate. But Mark Guethle, the Kane County Democratic Party chair who helped spur Holmes’ first run for office, said in an interview she has nevertheless always been a reliable Democratic vote on the party’s big issues.
In 2004, he approached Holmes, then a proprietor of a remodeling and carpentry business with her then-husband, to run for Kane County Board.
Holmes at the time was involved in community activism, especially on safety issues, had a home improvement newspaper column, and served as a community representative on city committees.
“I was just really involved in the community, and that’s how they finally found out who I was and came after me to run for office,” she said. “And I, quite frankly, said ‘No, I’ve never seen myself in politics, I like being a neighborhood activist because I can say whatever I want and not have to worry if I offend anybody.’”
She ran and won the county board seat. About a year later, the Democrats needed a candidate for Senate in what was then a swing district to replace an outgoing GOP lawmaker who was going to become a judge.
“She ran, and nobody said that she had a shot, and she’s gonna lose,” Guethle said. “When Linda runs for office, she just doesn’t assume she’s going to get elected. She gets out, she canvasses and talks to people.”
She won in 2006 and again in 2008 and four more elections after that. Ultimately, she decided another run would be too much, given her doctor’s orders.
“When I made the decision, my overwhelming feeling was relief, because I’m like, physically, I don’t think I can do this anymore,” she said.
Guethle will wield 41% of the vote when the Democratic chairs sit down to name Holmes’ replacement on the ballot. Holmes’ opinion on her successor, he said, will carry a lot of weight, at least for him.
“She worked hard for this many years, and she’s entitled to what she thinks would be the best fit,” he said.
But that candidate would need approval from at least one other county chair to reach the majority vote.
Holmes said it’s important that whoever it is will face voters in November.
“I didn’t want somebody just appointed to fill the position,” she said.
Cooler temps prevail
As far as her legacy, Holmes said she’s proud of her work carrying animal welfare legislation, fighting for health insurance coverage protections and advocating for people with MS. She also said she always had an eye on economic development and local control.
But if she were to boil it down to a single bill, she’d point to legislation authorizing “medical aid in dying,” sometimes referred to as physician-assisted suicide.
For Holmes, whose father died of lung cancer at 49 when she was just 15, the matter was personal.
“Just seeing how he suffered, my mother at that point had really talked to all of us, and she was always like, if something ever happens to me, make sure you don’t prolong my life, I don’t want to suffer like that,” she said.
When her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2016, “everyone knew exactly what Mom wanted.”
“Obviously had she had the option to do something like medical aid in dying, she absolutely would have, and I really sort of did this to honor both my parents,” she said.
She declined to comment on a pending lawsuit against the bill.
Holmes said one of her favorite tasks was serving as one of two Democratic leaders in the legislature’s unemployment insurance and workers compensation working group.
Among the crush of claims brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated shutdowns, the state’s unemployment trust fund hit a deficit of nearly $5 billion, threatening hefty penalties on businesses or reduction in benefits for workers.
Holmes worked with leaders from each chamber and party, as well as business and labor interests, to craft what ultimately became a bipartisan plan to dig the state’s trust fund out of the hole.
“It’s an even number, so it’s not an unfair vote, and it comes to an agreement on unemployment issues and workers comp. I still think it’s one of the best things we do,” she said — though labor has at least on the surface indicated a reluctance to participate in the process.
As for what’s next, Holmes, a lifelong Illinoisan, said she may soon be counted among the population that’s left Illinois on account of the weather — but with a twist.
“I will probably retire to Michigan because I like winter, and we don’t get enough snow here anymore,” she said. “So I want to retire to where it’s cooler.”
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.
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