The Illinois Senate’s fifth-most senior Democrat will retire after this fall’s veto session, marking the second member of the chamber’s leadership team to plan their exit from state government in recent months.
Sen. Linda Holmes, of Aurora, said she will file the paperwork Monday to remove her name from the November ballot, ending a 20-year run in the 42nd District. While Illinois is no stranger to candidates remaining on the ballot until the last minute and then withdrawing in favor of their political allies, Holmes said her reason to drop out is due to her health.
She had planned to run for and, if elected, serve another two-year term and retire just before turning 70. But, she said, the grueling pace of the May legislative session took a toll on her multiple sclerosis diagnosis of nearly four decades.
“I’ve had MS for 37 years, and it at times has presented challenges,” she told Capitol News Illinois. “And this latest, which happened at the very end of session, was more than just a flare-up that I would get better and recover from.”
She said her doctor instructed her to moderate her stress and sleepless nights — two mainstays of May in Springfield.
“It was literally my doctors sitting down and saying, after this many years, at your age, the amount of damage that the disease has done is something you can’t just continue to push through,” she said.
She made it through the final month, including the all-night slog that ended at about 4:30 a.m. on June 1. But then she made a decision that she said she’s at peace with.
“Yes, I’ll miss it,” she said. “But I also think with the health issues, to not be able to give it that 100% energy, it’s then time for somebody else to come in and do that.”
Just who that somebody else will be on November’s ballot is up to the Democratic County chairs based on a weighted vote in the four counties where Holmes has constituents — Kane (about 41%), Kendall (about 29%), DuPage (about 19%), and Will (about 11%).
Holmes declined to mention who she’ll be backing for the nomination — though she does have a preferred candidate. That person would face Aurora Republican Edgardo “Eddie” Perez.
“We want to give people the opportunity to run,” she said.
A ‘more combative, more cynical’ political arena
Her planned resignation date is Dec. 31, taking her through the fall veto session, but short of a January lame duck session if there is one.
Senate President Pro Tempore Bill Cunningham, the Senate’s seventh-most senior Democrat, is also stepping down at the end of his term in January. Both are part of Senate President Don Harmon’s 14-person leadership team, with Holmes serving as assistant majority leader.
The pair have seen Springfield change over the past two decades. Cunningham was elected to the Senate in 2013 after serving a term in the House.
For Holmes, whose father died of lung cancer at 49 when she was just 15, the matter was personal.
“Just seeing how he suffered, my mother at that point had really talked to all of us, and she was always like, if something ever happens to me, make sure you don’t prolong my life, I don’t want to suffer like that,” she said.
When her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2016, “everyone knew exactly what Mom wanted.”
“Obviously had she had the option to do something like medical aid in dying, she absolutely would have, and I really sort of did this to honor both my parents,” she said.
She declined to comment on a pending lawsuit against the bill.
Holmes said one of her favorite tasks was serving as one of two Democratic leaders in the legislature’s unemployment insurance and workers compensation working group.
Among the crush of claims brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated shutdowns, the state’s unemployment trust fund hit a deficit of nearly $5 billion, threatening hefty penalties on businesses or reduction in benefits for workers.
Holmes worked with leaders from each chamber and party, as well as business and labor interests, to craft what ultimately became a bipartisan plan to dig the state’s trust fund out of the hole.
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