The 1930 United States Senate election in Illinois took place on November 4, 1930.
Incumbent Republican Charles S. Deneen was unseated in the Republican Party's primary election. Democrat J. Hamilton Lewis, who previously held this Senate seat from 1913 to 1919, won a second nonconsecutive term.
This election was notable as being the first instance in which a major party nominated a female candidate for United States Senate, with Ruth Hanna McCormick, widow of Deneen's predecessor in this seat Medill McCormick, becoming the Republican nominee after defeating Deneen in the Republican party’s primary election.
This was the first time since the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution made U.S. senators popularly elected that a Democrat won a U.S. Senate election in the state of Illinois.
Election information
The primaries and general election coincided with those for House and those for state elections. The primaries were held April 8, 1930.
Background
The U.S. Senate seat in question was held by Democrat J. Hamilton Lewis from 1913 to 1919. He lost the seat in the 1918 election (the first year this seat faced a direct popular vote) to Republican Medill McCormick, the husband of Ruth Hanna McCormick. 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. Campaigning on issues such as her opposition to the World Court, her support of Prohibition, and her support of aid to farmers, she won the election. She won the Republican primary in April 1928 by a nearly 100,000 vote margin-of-victory, which drew significant attention, including being featured on the cover of Time. She received a larger vote share than any other Republican on the ticket in Illinois, besides presidential nominee Herbert Hoover.
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.
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.