1930 United States Senate election in Illinois

The primaries and general election coincided with those for House and those for state elections. Medill McCormick lost the Republican primary of the 1924 election to Charles S. Deneen. Deneen went on to win the 1924 general election. McCormick, on February 25, 1925, died in what is considered to have been a suicide (though the suicidal nature of his death was not known to the public, contemporarily), widowing Ruth Hanna McCormick. His reelection loss is believed to have contributed to his suicide. In 1927, Medill McCormick's widow, Ruth Hanna McCormick, announced a campaign for one of Illinois' at-large seats in the 1928 election for the U.S. House of Representatives. J. Hamilton Lewis had remained active in Democratic politics. He had been waiting for an opportunity to stage a political comeback. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had started an economic downturn that would ultimately be known as the Great Depression. In recent history, Republicans had dominated U.S. Senate elections in Illinois, with only Republicans having been elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois since popular elections were adopted after the 1912 and 1913 United States Senate elections. At the time, Lewis, in 1913, was the last Democrat the state had elected to the U.S. Senate. Some saw the Republican primary for U.S. senate as tantamount to election in Illinois. Only one woman, Rebecca L. Felton (who served for a single day), had ever served in the U.S. Senate, and none had ever been seated by election. In 1922, Jessie Jack Hooper was nominated for senate by the Democratic Party in Wisconsin after an uncontested primary, but lost the general election in a vast landslide. ==Democratic primary==

Candidates • Harold M. Beach • James H. Kirby • J. Hamilton Lewis, former U.S. Senator, former Senate Majority Whip • James O. Monroe, attorney and perennial candidate • Louis Warner Campaign J. Hamilton Lewis declared his candidacy on February 9, 1930. In his campaign announcement letter to the state and county Democratic committees, he claimed that he had been drafted, writing, Lewis faced only token opposition in the primary, and positioned his campaign to prepare to make his opposition to prohibition the principal issue of the general election campaign. In his announcement letter, he derided Prohibition as, "national tyranny". He declared that he opposed enforcing temperance by law, and preferred it be done by personal will. His announcement letter also advocated for greater relief to farmers. His letter also blamed financial distress experienced in the city of Chicago, and in Cook County as a whole as the fault of the local Republican party. Results ==Republican primary==

Candidates • Charles S. Deneen, incumbent U.S. senator • Ruth Hanna McCormick, U.S. congresswoman • Adelbert McPherson, candidate for U.S. Senate in 1924 • Newton Jenkins, attorney and candidate for U.S. Senate in 1924 • Abe Lincoln Wieler Campaign On September 22, 1929, Ruth Hanna McCormick announced her intention to run for the Senate against Republican incumbent Charles S. Deneen, who had won the seat from her husband in 1924. She sought the nomination at a time when no woman had ever been elected to the Senate. By October, McCormick had returned to Illinois, visiting the state's various counties to rally support while Deneen was stuck in Washington, D.C., on Senate business. McCormick formally launched her campaign January 13, 1930. She made speaking engagements in 100 of the state's 102 counties. The victory showed strong support for McCormick throughout the state, including a surprisingly strong showing in Chicago. ==General election==

Candidates • George Koop (Socialist), perennial candidate • J. Hamilton Lewis (Democratic), former U.S. senator • Ruth Hanna McCormick (Republican), U.S. congresswoman • James J. McGrath (Liberty) • Lottie Holman O'Neill (independent Republican), Illinois state representative • C. Emmet Smith (Anti-League World Court, Anti-Foreign Entanglements) • Ernest Stout (American National) • Freeman Thompson (Communist) • Louis Warner (Peace and Prosperity) Campaign Partisan dynamics Lewis was considered a formidable candidate, and campaigned with vigor. As a result of McCormick's wavering on the issue of prohibition, the Anti-Saloon League ultimately endorsed independent candidate Lottie Holman O'Neill over McCormick. Gender and sexism Lewis made a point not to refer to McCormick by name, instead calling her "the lady candidate". McCormick refused to make her gender an issue, calling gender differences a personality issue and insisting political party mattered more in the general election. Thompson went as far as to, on October 23, 1930, print and distribute a pamphlet which accused McCormick's late husband of having made racist remarks, an attack that McCormick called, "malicious and unjustifiable". Great Depression While neither McCormick nor Lewis treated the economic turmoil as a main issue, until the closing days of the campaign, it was ultimately a deciding factor in the election. Chicago was particularly hard-hit at the time by the Great Depression. While she did not originally treat it as the central issue of the campaign, by the end, McCormick admitted that, in the election, rather than prohibition, voters were more focused on the economy, saying, "the question is not whether everybody gets a bottle of beer, but whether everybody gets a job". She argued that Democratic rule would worsen the economic turmoil. Results J. Hamilton Lewis won by a broad margin, becoming the first Democrat to be popularly elected to the United States Senate from Illinois. McCormick was the first Republican to lose a popular U.S. senate election in Illinois. ==Aftermath==

Two years later, in the 1932 United States Senate election in Arkansas, Hattie Wyatt Caraway would become the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Illinois’ post-economic crash turn to the Democratic Party (Demonstrated by the 1930 Senate race) continued in 1932, with a Democratic sweep of all statewide races (including races for president, U.S. Senate, at-large U.S. House seats, governor, and lieutenant governor). The 1932 elections also saw Democrats capture several additional U.S. House of Representatives seats in Illinois. Illinois would have to wait 56 years after 1930 to see another woman nominated for U.S. Senate by a major party, with Judy Koehler being the unsuccessful Republican nominee in the 1986 United States Senate election in Illinois. It took 62 years after McCormick's loss before Illinois elected a female United States Senator. In 1992, Democrat Carol Moseley Braun would become the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois. In 2016, Democrat Tammy Duckworth would become the second woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois. ==See also==