Republican Sen. Dave Syverson has represented this far northwest suburban area including part of Rockford and localities to the east such as Harvard, Marengo and Huntley, since 1993, meaning he’s one of the few state senators who can say he served with Barack Obama when he was a member of the body. In 2016, the president spoke to the General Assembly in Springfield and singled out Syverson, among others. “We didn’t call each other idiots or fascists who were trying to destroy America,” Obama said then. “Because then we’d have to explain why we were playing poker or having a drink with an idiot or a fascist who was trying to destroy America.”
Oh, to have those days back!
Syverson, 68, hasn’t seen a general-election challenger since 2010, but he’s got one in Sarah Mertens, a substitute teacher. The Democrat says she grew up in Romeoville and graduated from the University of Illinois in 2011.
Her campaign platform seems both progressive and weirdly rote. One example: “shifting the tax burden away from working families and onto Billionaires’ international corporations.”
Syverson, though, is a veteran lawmaker who understands in detail how state government works. He offered us a litany of good ideas. One: fixing the electronic-monitoring issues by ending the law’s automatic two days per week of untracked freedom for those on ankle bracelets to making violations grounds for new detention hearings. Another: forbid end-of-career salary spikes that lead to gold-plated pensions for big wigs in the bureaucracy.
As to the transit rescue bill, dramatically increasing tolls, he said he opposed it even as he’s supported past tax hikes like the gas-tax increase. And this point resonated with us: “A small fare increase would not have filled the entire gap but would have at least told downstate taxpayers, ‘we did our part.’ Instead, they just did a big ‘in your face.’” Exactly.
Syverson’s decades of experience in Springfield are invaluable when we need pragmatic Republicans. Mertens has a very thin record. Dave Syverson is endorsed.
Read all of the Tribune Editorial Board’s endorsements for the 2026 Illinois general election here.
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