The Progressive Midwesterner

One of the most high-profile victories for the Democratic Party in this year's midterm elections was Sharice Davids's election to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 3rd Congressional District of Kansas, which includes much of the Kansas portion of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Davids became the first Democrat to win election to either house of Congress as a Democrat since 2008, and Davids became one of the first two Native American women to be elected to either house of Congress from any state (Deb Haaland of New Mexico was the other Native American woman elected to the U.S. House in 2018). Now, Democrats in Kansas are flipping state legislative seats after the votes have been counted in this year's elections. That's because two state senators and one state representative have switched their party affiliation from Republican to Democratic in recent days. The two state senators who have defected to the Democrats are Dinah Sykes, who represents State Senate

Ten score years ago, on December 3, 1818, Illinois became the 21st state to be admitted to the Union. Now, with the great State of Illinois celebrating its 200th birthday, here are 20 of the most defining moments in Illinois political history, one for each decade that Illinois has been a U.S. state (although not all decades are represented, and some are represented more than once) and presented in chronological order: Illinois's admission to the Union - During much of the year 1818, what was then the Illinois Territory went through a lengthy process to become what is now the State of Illinois . On April 18, 1818, the U.S. House of Representatives was officially notified that President James Monroe had signed an Act of Congress titled "An Act to Enable the People of Illinois Territory to form a constitution and state government and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original states" into law. In July of 1818, delegates to a sta