03/18/2026
JCUA Votes is thrilled to congratulate our endorsed candidate Miguel Alvelo-Rivera, who last night won the Democratic primary for the 40th Illinois House district. This victory is a triumph of our people-powered movement.
We endorsed Miguel because of his track record working for immigrants' rights and affordable housing, and we look forward to supporting him in the November 3 general election and working together to advance our shared agenda.
Not all of yesterday's results were what we'd hoped. Our campaigns to elect Robert Peters (CD-02) and Sunjay Kumar (IL-13) fell short of victory. These losses hurt. But we know that our path to power does not run in a straight line, and that it is slow, deliberate, unglamorous work of building a movement that can win durable victories for years to come. The relationships JCUA Votes built during this campaign will endure beyond this election, and we will enter future races stronger than before.
We knew these elections wouldn’t be easy. PACs funded by sports betting, crypto, AI, Meta, and other right-wing donors poured millions of dollars into those two races in order to defeat our people-powered candidates. These big money interests are a powerful force. In order to defeat them, we’ll need to organize more people, and more money, than we did this cycle.
THANK YOU to our amazing members who interviewed candidates, knocked doors, made phone calls, stood outside voting sites, and turned out on a bitterly cold Election Day when it mattered most. This was not a small endeavor. This was the work of people who believe that organizing can change the world.
Join us tomorrow evening at 6pm at Sketchpad for a post-election debrief: jcuavotes.org/events.