Republican incumbent Seth Lewis of Bartlett faces Democrat Ben McAdams, a 30-year-old community organizer, in this district containing west suburban parts of Cook and DuPage counties. Lewis won in 2022 after edging Democrat Lauren Nowak.
Lewis, 58, is one of the Senate GOP’s lead budgeteers and an important and thoughtful advocate for reducing tax burdens in Illinois and reining in spending.
He’s also taken positions that make many in his party unhappy, particularly his vote in late 2025 for the transit rescue package that paved the way for Illinois’ record toll increase. Lewis was the only Springfield Republican to support the legislation, saying that “public transit is vital to the continued success of our region” and emphasizing that earlier revenue-raising proposals for the measure were far more destructive. “When something is right for my district, I’ll vote for it, even when that means breaking with my own party,” he tells us. More Springfield Democrats ought to do the same.
McAdams is an unabashed progressive. For example, he enthusiastically supports a 3% surcharge on incomes over $1 million and is sympathetic to the call for far more state revenue to bail out Chicago Public Schools. “The teachers are not the problem, the administration is not the problem, the children and families are not the problem,” he tells us. We don’t think that even many Chicagoans would agree with his take on CPS administrators and teachers, at least as reflected by their militant union.
Lewis is exactly the kind of Republican moderate Democrats and independents should support. Springfield needs more Republicans like Lewis to provide a check on the worst impulses of the Democratic supermajority in Springfield. Seth Lewis is endorsed.
Read all of the Tribune Editorial Board’s endorsements for the 2026 Illinois general election here.
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