Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly said Wednesday he is exploring a challenge to Toni Preckwinkle in the 2026 Democratic primary for Cook County Board president.
Reilly, 42nd, told the Tribune he would make a final decision in the coming weeks, but claimed he’d been approached to take on Preckwinkle — who is so far uncontested for her fifth term — in recent weeks. He made similar overtures for a Congressional run against Democratic Rep. Danny Davis in 2015 and has also explored mayoral runs in past cycles but has stayed put in City Hall.
Reilly, 42nd, one of the City Council’s moderates, has represented downtown for nearly two decades. An ally to the business community, he has been one of the best fundraisers on the council and has run uncontested for the seat since defeating longtime alderman Burt Natarus in 2007. He closed the last fundraising quarter with more than $700,000 in the bank.
Preckwinkle ended the same quarter with a little over half of that, $365,000, in her main campaign committee.
But Preckwinkle also chairs the Cook County Democratic Party, which gives her additional political power and fundraising heft.
Even so, Democrats have increasingly broken from the county organization’s slated picks in ways once unthinkable, including Preckwinkle’s own endorsed candidate for State’s Attorney last year. Her selection, Clayton Harris III, lost in the State’s Attorney primary to Eileen O’Neill Burke, with several Democrats defecting to support Burke.
Reilly himself bucked the party in 2020, backing Republican State’s Attorney candidate Pat O’Brien over Preckwinkle mentee Kim Foxx. Foxx won.
Preckwinkle, 78, announced her plans for re-election last month, suggesting she wanted to lend a steady hand at the county during a second Trump administration. She also pointed to the ways she had stabilized the county’s finances and launched meaningful criminal justice reform since 2010 that helped usher in the Pretrial Fairness Act.
She told her fellow Democrats at a party meeting on April 16 that “if I wasn’t doing this job, I would just find another one, which I probably wouldn’t find as interesting, challenging, or as impactful. So I decided that I would ask you and the good people of Cook County for another shot at this.”
A spokesman for Preckwinkle’s political organization did not immediately comment Wednesday about Reilly saying he’s thinking about running against her.
Reilly’s father, Dr. Brendan Reilly, previously led the Department of Medicine at Cook County Hospital.
