Editorial: No Endorsement In Illinois 1st Congressional District Republican Primary

Rep. Jonathan Jackson’s 1st Congressional District includes a large chunk of Chicago’s South Side and runs narrowly through south Cook County suburbs like Blue Island and Midlothian more broadly into Will and Kankakee counties. He faces no challenger. On the Republican side, Marcus Lewis is running for a second consecutive cycle and is opposed by Christian Maxwell, a 36-year-old Chicago business owner and mother of four.

Lewis won a little over a third of the vote in his 2024 race against Jackson, one of two sons of the Rev. Jesse Jackson running for Congress this year. Lewis didn’t share his views on various issues, and his campaign website is an inflammatory stream of consciousness that, for example, accuses of Jackson of being a “TRAITOR TO AMERICA” (his punctuation.)

Maxwell is more intriguing as a long-shot candidate. She has ideas for improving public safety in Chicago via a tough-on-crime stance, and calls on Black voters, who make up a plurality in this district, to stop giving their votes to Democrats so liberally. Unfortunately, we can’t endorse her based on her view that it remains an open question whether Joe Biden legitimately won the presidential election in 2020. We believe this matter has been sufficiently probed and is — or should be — settled.

We make no endorsement in the GOP race.

Read all of the Tribune Editorial Board’s endorsements for the 2026 Illinois primary election here. 

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.