SPRINGFIELD — Democratic Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and former Illinois Republican Party Chair Don Tracy aren’t the only candidates on the ballot for U.S. Senate in Illinois.
Whitfield Harrington, 46, a Chicago pastor and former financial services professional, is offering voters an option outside the two established parties. Harrington said the American Center Party he created is intended “to give people a different option with an actual vision for how we want to address the issues that Americans are facing.”
Non-established third-party candidates running for statewide office must attain a daunting 25,000 signatures to attain ballot access. But if Harrington gets 5% of the vote in this election, the American Center Party will achieve established status and, like the Democrats and Republicans, only need to get 5,000 valid signatures next time around.
In this election cycle, Harrington is the only candidate running on the party line.
Harrington moved to Chicago from his native Mississippi in 2013. He’s the 20th of 21 children born to a pastor involved in the Civil Rights movement. He ran for the Mississippi House in 2011, losing in the Democratic primary against an incumbent.
Harrington sat for an interview with Capitol News Illinois earlier this week. Here’s an abridged version of the conversation. The full interview can be found on our YouTube page.
Why he’s running for the U.S. Senate
“I tell people that I’m a pastor, and on my birthday, I actually had a dream,” Harrington said. “I woke up from a dream, and I heard the voice of the Lord telling me, ‘In two years’ time, there’s going to be a U.S. Senate seat race in your state. You have to be in that race.’ I did not want to do it. But I started having more and more dreams about it… And finally, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it, Lord.'”
“I’ve been into government my whole life. My father was a civil rights leader” and “I have a degree in political science,” he said. “So it’s not foreign to me the functions of the U.S. Senate. I’m familiar with what happens there and how it shapes the nation as a whole with the decisions that are made.”
Top priorities
“The number one focus is to address the cost-of-living crisis in America, and I believe that can be addressed by dealing with the root of the issue instead of the fruit of the issue,” Harrington said. “When we look at the cost of living in America right now, the prices have gone through the roof primarily for two reasons. Number one, the war in Iran, and number two, the price of oil. As a United States senator, the first thing that I’m going to call for is an end to the conflict in Iran.”
“And once you get that conflict resolved, ended, hopefully in a negotiation that’s beneficial to America and the rest of the world, then you can quickly focus on bringing down the cost of oil, which would have a domino effect in bringing down the prices of everything else in the country,” he said.
“I also want to address what I consider to be making healthcare affordable again with a different approach,” Harrington said. “There is right now a focus in our U.S. government on making certain that people have insurance… And what I would like to see is a new system that’s already in functioning, which is called direct primary care, where instead of giving money to an insurance company, you’re giving it to a doctor.”
Thoughts on tariffs
“If there was one thing that I would say to the President of the United States, it’s ‘Please stop doing your negotiating out loud,'” Harrington said. “He’s using tariffs as a means to get what he wants, but it’s hurting the American consumer. There are some negotiations that you can have behind closed doors to where you can apply tariffs, and I think tariffs should be used only primarily to protect the American economy and American consumers, especially businesses who may find that different types of products are being dumped on the market, and different industries are struggling because of competition from overseas.”
Immigration
“Let me say this: If we have laws on the books, they need to be enforced,” Harrington said. “But also, I believe they need to be enforced with dignity. Barack Obama and his administration deported in some cases more people than Donald Trump… but he did it with dignity and respect.”
“You don’t get to shoot people in the street in the name of enforcing immigration laws,” he said. “You crossed the line. That’s bloody murder to do that, and I believe that some of the things that the Trump administration has been doing has been out of line, have crossed the line, and it needs to be reined in, and hopefully we continue to see those things being dealt with.”
“But at the same time, there are people who are calling for amnesty for all, which I don’t support,” he said. “I do believe that we should look for a middle ground, and that’s what my campaign has been about: trying to find a compromise.”
Thoughts on Trump
“One of the things that I say is: I like the fact that President Trump has a motive to make America great again, but I think his actions and his methods are debatable,” he said.
How would you describe your ideology?
“The ideology is really vision-based,” Harrington said. “There’s a lot of personality politics, identity politics that are sort of carrying the message of the day, where you hear the loudest person on the left and the most ruthless person on the right. They’re the ones that are always in the media, and they have a tendency to present a bunch of slogans but no solutions. What the American Center Party is, it is a party that is going to be based on principles and visions, and that is to address the issues that the nation has, that people are expecting the government to deal with.”
Explanation of opposition to abortion, gay marriage
“I’m a pastor, and many of these things I don’t have a personal opinion on it,” Harrington said. “It’s based on the biblical belief that I have, and I hold true to my religious freedom, and I do understand that one day I’m going to have to stand before God and give an account of everything that I’ve done in my life, and I’d rather be honest with people and tell them this is what I believe and this is why I believe it, and that’s what the positions I have are based.”
On whether he would caucus with Democrats or Republicans
“Neither… I would have leverage at that point to be able to use on behalf of the state and to push forth the agenda that the people would like to see happen,” he said.
How he would get committee assignments assigned by party leaders
“So is this United States Senate going to openly discriminate against a senator and a state simply because of the way he thinks politically? That’s the argument that I’m going to take to the U.S. Senate because I don’t think you have the right to do that,” Harrington said. “The Senate existed before political parties existed. And I believe that the leverage that I will have will only intensify the argument that we’re going too far to the left, we’re going too far to the right, and when you want to force a person to think your way or to behave your way, or you’re going to punish them, punish their state because the individual doesn’t think like you. It’s not the way that America was designed.”
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.
