Dylan Blaha, a progressive Democrat and Illinois National Guard member, has an uphill battle to defeat U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski in the primary for Illinois’ 13th Congressional District.
He’ll need to overcome a massive fundraising disadvantage, while not taking contributions from the political action committees of corporations or foreign interest groups.
Anti-Trump sentiment felt by some voters could help fuel a closer primary, he said.
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“I can't win with name recognition,” the Urbana resident said on the latest episode of Politically Speaking. “I'm never going to beat her with money, so I need to beat her by educating people on what we both stand for, what she's voted for, and then, hopefully, they'll pick me.”
Blaha’s primary challenge exemplifies many of the qualms that more progressive, younger members of the party have had with the current congressional Democrats.
“I'm not just running against Nikki,” Blaha said. “I'm running against the Democratic Party.”
The 13th Congressional District, which includes most of the population in St. Clair and Madison counties, stretches from East St. Louis to Springfield and Urbana-Champaign.
Early voting starts Feb. 5 in Illinois, and the primary election is March 17.
Further to the left
Blaha is not one for labels. He’s a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and his politics are more progressive than Budzinski’s, he said.
“At the end of the day, I just say that most of our policies are just focused on affordability and fighting for human and civil rights,” he said.
Blaha grew up in the Chicago area and moved to Urbana-Champaign, where he studied cell biology and earned a master’s degree in biochemistry. After that, he went on active duty, serving in Afghanistan and Germany from 2019 to 2024.
He made headlines last year when he posted videos on social media saying he would defy orders to deploy to Chicago during an immigration crackdown ordered by President Donald Trump, and he might be charged by the federal government, he said.
“Ultimately, I didn't raise my right hand to go against the American people,” he said. “I raised my right hand to defend the Constitution and protect the American people."
Immigration reform
What’s been lacking from the debate on immigration is reforming the current path to citizenship, Blaha said.
“Undocumented immigrants already pay taxes,” Blaha said. “Now we need to make sure that they're set up for success.”
After the murder of Laken Riley in 2024 by a Venezuelan man who entered the country illegally, Congress passed a law that required noncitizens to be detained without bond if they are charged with committing violent crimes. Budzinski voted for it, but progressives have called the legislation anti-immigrant and xenophobic.
Congresswoman Robin Kelly, who’s running to replace retiring Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, introduced legislation to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem this week. While Blaha said he’d vote for it, he’d also go a step further: He’d like to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“A lot of things that Trump's doing didn't just start in his current administration. They've been going on for a long time,” Blaha said of ICE deployments. “He's just way more explicit about it, and I think that's finally opening America's eyes to what's really going on.”
Agreement on affordability
Like his primary competitor, Blaha makes affordability key in his campaign.
“What's more bipartisan than affordability and fighting for the working class, which makes up the base of both parties?” he said.
In order to make life more affordable for Americans, Blaha said he’d like the U.S. to return to policies that mirror the New Deal, the legislation championed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Among other actions, the legislation increased income tax on the wealthiest.
“Some people will jump out and defend billionaires and corporations, but the fact of the matter is that they are not getting taxed equally,” Blaha said.
Raising taxes on the rich would allow Congress to fund expanded Medicare for everyone, he said, which carries support from six out of 10 Americans in some polls. He’d also like to cut the defense budget, which has approached $900 billion in recent years, by $100 billion to help pay for those policies.
Cutting the defense budget doesn’t mean the U.S. wouldn’t have an effective military, Blaha said. However, he believes the federal government needs to stop playing “Team America World Police” around the globe.
“It's something that we cannot sustain in the future, and we do need to invest more in our American communities,” he said.
Blaha opposes the Trump administration's decision to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. While he’s sympathetic to Venezuelans and Iranians suffering under authoritarian regimes, Blaha said the U.S. is taking those actions with bad intentions. In Venezuela, it’s oil, he said.
“The U.S. is not about spreading democracy around the world,” he said. “It's about their own self-interest.”
Blaha feels the same about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s and Afghanistan, where he served in 2019 and 2020.
“Unfortunately, I feel like both parties, foreign policy-wise, are uniparty,” Blaha said. “When it comes to foreign policy, they vote for war. We see that even with Venezuela. What do a lot of the corporate Democrats say? They say: ‘Oh, you didn't follow the rules. You didn't go through us to vote for it first.’ They didn't say that they didn’t want war with Venezuela.”
Editor’s note: Budzinski already appeared on Politically Speaking. St. Louis Public Radio also plans to sit down with both Republican candidates, Jeff Wilson and Joshua Loyd.
