5.As long as the residents of my Chicago district and districts downstate remained strangers to one another, I realized, our politics would never truly change.
6.Every couple of weeks, I'd head downstate—sometimes driving myself but more often traveling with Jeremiah Posedel or Anita Decker, the two talented staffers running my operations there.
8.The first time we made the trip, I could tell he was a little nervous about how folks downstate might react to a Black lawyer from Chicago with an Arab-sounding name.
9.In a primary race against six other Democrats, I went about lining up endorsements from unions and popular members of our congressional delegation, helping to shore up my downstate and liberal bases.
10.Of all fifty states, Illinois best represented the demographics of the nation, home to a teeming metropolis, sprawling suburbs, farm country, factory towns, and a downstate region considered more southern than northern.
11.It's why I'd gotten votes from rural white voters in downstate Illinois and Iowa—because they sensed, even when we didn't agree on an issue like abortion or immigration, that I fundamentally respected and cared about them.