Candidates offer various approaches to job with some pledging bold legislative agenda
Who wants to manage Illinois’ checkbook as the state faces growing financial uncertainty? Three state legislators and the treasurer of one of the state’s largest counties have raised their hand.
Incumbent Comptroller Susana Mendoza — who has first took office in 2016 in the middle of the state’s infamous two-year budget stalemate — is not seeking reelection. Her departure created the first open primary for the Democratic party for a statewide constitutional office since 2018.
The comptroller’s primary responsibility is ensuring the state’s bills are paid — a task that wasn’t always easy, but one that Mendoza has fine-tuned in recent years.
With Mendoza stepping aside, state Sen. Karina Villa of West Chicago, Rep. Margaret Croke of Chicago, Rep. Stephanie Kifowit of Oswego, and Lake County Treasurer Holly Kim are running in the Democratic primary. Each sat down with Capitol News Illinois reporters in recent days to answer questions on our Capitol Cast podcast.
Bryan Drew, a Republican from southern Illinois, is running unopposed for his party’s nomination.
Who are the candidates
Kifowit is the longest tenured legislator of the group, having joined the General Assembly in 2013. She is leaning on her Marine Corps service and past career as a financial advisor to argue she is the most qualified candidate.
“In this race, individuals need an independent, knowledgeable, experienced person for this position, one that has the backbone like I do from being a United States Marine Corps veteran, and one that has life experience along with professional experience,” Kifowit told Capitol News Illinois.
She is facing an uphill battle in fundraising, however, as her campaign raised the least money of the candidates in the final quarter of 2025. Croke is leading the financial race thus far as the only candidate to raise at least $500,000 during that fundraising period.
Croke has been in the legislature since 2021 and was previously a deputy director at the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. She is a close ally of Gov. JB Pritzker and has received endorsements from several top Democrats, including the influential Cook County Democratic Party, but Pritzker has not been one of them.
“We all have seen bills pass, and we’ve seen bills blow up, and it’s because of your relationships or if you understand how to get these things done,” Croke told Capitol News Illinois. “So, I feel really confident about my ability to kind of steer the ship in the right direction.”
Croke narrowly won the support of the Cook County party over Villa, who is backed by Senate President Don Harmon and U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez as she tries to carve a lane as the most progressive anti-Trump candidate in the race. Villa has been in the legislature since 2019 but does not have a financial background — her career was in social work.
“This is the people’s money and a social worker who has this background, who has the understanding, who has spent all of this time in the General Assembly combing through the budget and understanding how, at times, in order to balance budgets, we have to actually cut service line items that are so critical for everyday people to make ends meet — the social worker being the comptroller makes the most sense,” Villa told Capitol News Illinois.
Kim has no legislative experience in Springfield but spent four years on the Mundelein Village Board and has served as treasurer in Lake County — Illinois’ 3rd largest county with more than 700,000 residents — since 2018. She boasts support from dozens of officials in local government and Democratic county chairs across the state.
“I’m in charge of billions of dollars,” Kim told Capitol News Illinois. “All the checks go out with my name on it, which means out of four people running, I’m already doing the comptroller job. I’m definitely going to be a fierce protector of people and their money.”
Budget philosophy
The comptroller does not directly deal with the legislative process of approving a budget, but the candidates had plenty of ideas on how the state should manage its finances.
Mendoza herself has been an outspoken supporter of boosting the “rainy day” fund and has continued to advocate for ways to increase its size. The fund’s $2.4 billion balance only funds about two weeks of state operations, and lawmakers suspended the monthly transfer to the fund this year to free up money for other priorities in a tight budget year.
“To continue to put money away for a rainy day when we’re in the middle of a tsunami, that’s not when we should be putting money away for a rainy day,” Villa said, adding “there’s no way to prioritize that in this budget.”
Raising revenue is the central focus of Villa’s campaign. She suggested the state implement a tax on digital advertising and retry implementing a graduated income tax raise more money for social services she said are inadequately funded. Such a measure needs approval from both lawmakers and the general public, but voters rejected soundly rejected the proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed it in 2020.