Mike Simmons is running hard.
It’s two years after our first interview with the LGBTQ+ lawmaker — the first to be elected to the Illinois Senate — and he shows no signs of slowing down.
When we met in November 2022, Simmons, 41, was campaigning for the seat he’d been appointed to the year before. He won that election, unopposed, with 66,000 votes, and is running again this year for a second term, again without opposition.
It may be that lack of “contestation,” as Simmons describes it, that keeps the senator at full speed. His only opponent in the race is his own record and performance; keeping them both out front and in optimal condition — like the bike he rides 50 miles a week — is key to his success.
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Simmons spoke from his office in the state capital at Springfield, where he was delayed with some “urgent stuff that came up that we needed to deal with.”
Asked if it was anything I needed to know about, he replied, “Well, unless you’re interested in hyper-local transportation policy, probably not.”
We started instead with a question about LGBTQ+ youth, a constituency Simmons cares deeply about.
LGBTQ Nation: You held a Pride Month press conference back in June with some LGBTQ+ high school students in a school library. What did you take away from that event?
Sen. Mike Simmons: The Pride press conference that I host has become an institution in my district. It’s a time where we do something that no one ever does in politics, which is get folks together and reflect, and this year we actually decided to make this panel all youth.
We brought in people from the 7th District, LGBTQ+ kids and their allies, their moms, their dads, librarians, and teachers and we all talked about where LGBTQ+ community is right now in the district and our state and country, about LGBTQ+ history, about the future. And they killed it.
What’s the difference between the atmosphere in schools for LGBTQ+ kids today versus when you were growing up in the 90s?
Well, when I was growing up in the 90s, I was bullied when I was in 5th grade because, in the words of a hateful security guard, I walked like a little f-a-g-g-o-t. He literally grabbed me and threw me up against the wall and threatened to punch me in the mouth if I continued to walk the way that I was walking. The sad thing is that we’re seeing LGBTQ+ youth continue to be attacked and bullied, to be violated, to be victimized. And it’s 30 years later and it’s still happening.
What scares me is that today, it’s happening even more brazenly. It’s become tied to politics and people running for office on these platforms to ban books about LGBTQ+ people and youth and race and withhold from them their history. That’s something that keeps me up late at night, and I get very angry about.
In 2022, you ran for the seat you were earlier appointed to, and with no opposition from Democrats or Republicans, you crushed it with 66,000 folks voting for you. In the Democratic primary this year, you picked up the nomination again with 100% of the vote, and you faced no opposition in November. Does running without an opponent take a little bit of the fun out of the victory?
Well, no, because it takes a lot of hard work organizing the community and being visible in the district, being present in the district, being accessible in the district, having a reputation as being approachable and knowledgeable and fighting for communities that feel like they’ve been overlooked for a long time. I mean, that’s how I’ve managed to win by the margins I’ve won by. So, I may be running with no opposition in November, but I would just say it took a lot of sweat in a lot of long, long days and long nights to get to that point, and I’m really grateful for it. (It’s a joy to continue to serve the 7th District as Illinois’ first openly LGBTQ+ state senator.)
Do you think the democratic process would benefit from a challenger? And what does it say about Chicago politics, in particular, that someone can get elected without one?
It’s always a good thing in any democracy to have contestation. We need vibrant elections. We also need people to be feeling like they can keep up with what’s going on, and part of that is why it’s important to be an accessible, plain spoken, visible leader in a community, as I’ve been in my state senate role.
Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, was shot and killed in her home by a sheriff’s deputy near Springfield, the Illinois State Capitol, in July. Describe what happened in the incident and how it affected you and other lawmakers in the Capitol.
It’s so routine and normal in America to see a scenario where a Black woman is at home and calls law enforcement because she feels unsafe—which we all should be able to do—and instead of having law enforcement show up to make sure everything’s okay, make sure that there was not an intruder in her home, they violated her. They turned her into the suspect.
And we all watched that video. I watched the video, and I almost—I almost threw up when I watched it. It was heinous, what the officer said to her, and the tone with which he said it. And for me, as a Black state senator, that is a recognizable tone that I and other Black people have heard and recognize.
We have to give our sons and daughters the talk—we should never have to tell any child how to behave around a police officer when they’ve done nothing wrong. And in this instance, Sonya did everything right, and she still lost her life. I just can’t believe there’s not more outrage about it.
What’s the single piece of legislation that you’re most proud of introducing in the Illinois Senate?
Oh man, the Jett Hawkins Act. I read in the news about a four-year-old Black child in Chicago that had been suspended from school because he wore his hair in natural braids, and that infuriated me, and I wrote a bill that night and we got it passed. We had a big bill signing in my district with the governor, and Jett Hawkins and I are still friends. He’s seven years old now.
With the fall of Roe v Wade in 2022, “Trump abortion bans” have been enacted in states all around Illinois. What’s Illinois’ message to women in neighboring red states looking for reproductive healthcare?
The message is that Illinois remains a beacon for reproductive rights.
I am so proud to be a state senator in Illinois because we have been a haven, a refuge for women to exercise their reproductive rights, and the message is that Illinois will continue to be that. That’s why this presidential election is so important. You have two candidates here, one of whom has equivocated on the issue of reproductive rights, supported the overturning of Roe v Wade, and the other candidate has been a champion for reproductive rights for her entire career, and has direct, lived experiences as a woman to also understand this issue in a way that gives me hope.
Vice President Kamala Harris has described reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights as part of a group of fundamental freedoms she wants to fight for in a Harris administration. What are some of the LGBTQ+ rights under attack in Illinois right now?
We continue to see efforts to stymie curriculum in our schools. And a lot of times, the books that are challenged will be books that are by a Black or an LGBTQ+ author. More than 50% of them target books by those demographics, so that directly impacts LGBTQ+ youth. Twenty-five years ago, I could go into my school library and pick up a book by James Baldwin or Audre Lorde, right? Just great LGBTQ+ writers throughout history.
There is now a chance where kids growing up in the current climate won’t have access to those same books and curricular materials. That’s an urgent fight that we are fighting here in Illinois. It’s why I’m trying to pass the Let America Read bill, which would outlaw book banning and restrictions on curricula. That’s a big fight here, as it is in several surrounding states. And the people, who are running for school boards in Illinois on the platform of removing books by LGBTQ+ authors and using small-screen arguments around cultural sensitivity and these other things, are essentially bad actors.
Describe your state of mind after Trump and Biden debated at the end of June.
(Laughing) It’s too soon.
I’m a strong admirer of President Biden, but for me, what really made my stomach sink was just how many times Donald Trump lied. He, like, dwells in it. He’s a fortress of mendacity, he just can’t help himself. It was stomach-churning.
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate your excitement on that Saturday last month when Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris declared her candidacy.
Boy, did I feel just a surging sense of hope. I felt an excitement that I haven’t felt since Barack Obama occupied the White House, and that’s what I’m feeling right now about this election.
What are your constituents telling you about a Harris candidacy?
Folks are excited, and I’m excited to see Harris signs up right next to my signs for state senator. I saw another three-flat in my district where they had a Biden-Harris sign, and I was like, yeah, those signs are going to be vintage.
How do you view a Harris candidacy?
We share a lot of the same priorities, first of all in terms of what she represents as — I’ll just say a bicultural leader. She’s a Black and Asian leader, right? My father is Ethiopian, my mother was African-American. There’s so many Americans whose parents were able to come here after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 opened up immigration to the rest of the world and not just Europe. And that really resonates with me.
Her sense of urgency around reproductive rights and gun violence is something that I share, and I’ve worked with her office on a number of approaches that we need to take to gun policy at both the federal and local level. She was here in Chicago, actually, last year for a Moms Demand Action meet-up on gun violence.
Your paths might cross again in a couple weeks when the Democratic National Convention starts in Chicago. Do you have a formal role as an elected from the host city?
I’ll be at the convention and there are a number of fundraisers that will be happening that week, and I’m going to be running around to try to help rally people to get out the vote. We have a group of LGBTQ+ elected officials we call Q Force going out in Michigan and Wisconsin to help get out the vote for Kamala Harris, as well, because we live within 90 minutes of two of the most crucial precincts in two of the most crucial battleground states, like literally right here in our backyard.
So I’m going to be doing that every two or three days right now, and helping raise money and just, you know, being a part of this historic moment.
That could include Beyonce and Taylor Swift showing up. What are you most excited about for the convention?
(Laughing) I would say just being in the same space with so many other Democrats who are excited about the Harris-Walz ticket. The news just dropped on Walz, and a lot of what he’s done in Minnesota really does resonate with me. He created a robust Child Tax Credit, and I just passed a child tax credit here in Illinois that was signed into law in July.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz represent the future, and what I’m most excited about is the youth, right? The number of youth that are going to be at the convention, and the energy and the substance that they are going to bring to this ticket is badly needed right now, and I’m there with them.
The author and activist James Baldwin would have turned 100 this year. You’ve got a banner on your X profile that features a photo of Baldwin with a hand raised and his wrist turned up. What do you think he’s saying in his expression in that picture?
Props to you for noticing that, because I put that on there very purposefully. I think what I’m hearing from Baldwin in that photo, especially in the 100th year for him, is that we have no time to waste. We have no time to waste. We don’t have time to waste on lies. We don’t have time to waste on mediocrity. We don’t have time to waste on doing anything that is not helping to advance the cause of human rights, and that has to be grounded in our history. It means reckoning with our history. So many people try to hide from and run from and paper over their history, or they want to see something that more closely resembles a fairy tale.
And James Baldwin was not about any of that. All of his writing, all of his philosophical musings, all dwelt in truth about America. His work was about holding America to its actual, stated ideas. What a breath of fresh air, right?
How important is social media for a politician in 2024 and what’s your preferred platform?
My preferred platform is Instagram. I’m a photographer. I’ve had two photo exhibits prior to becoming a state senator, and photographs for me are a way of communicating things that only art can communicate sometimes. And so I love Instagram because a photo can tell my constituents everything that they should know about an event where I was, or just something that’s going on in the office, me doing my work in Springfield. Those photos, I think, tell a tell a story in a way that newsletters and text sometimes can’t.
But social media and the algorithms and things like that can really keep people stuck in a place where they’re not necessarily evolving or focusing on substance, and not spending time with their family or all these other things, so I try to be very disciplined about how I use social media. I don’t go on there 24/7—I just don’t think that that’s the most helpful thing for my constituents. But I do think accessibility is a good thing for our democracy.
What’s the single most important thing the world needs to do to address the climate crisis?
We got to get people out of cars.
Would you support a plan for mandatory national service for young people, either in the military or some other form of public service?
I would be slow to make those kinds of things mandatory. How we get the point of service across to young people is through experiential learning, and that needs to be built into our classrooms and our pedagogies. When young people really understand how our country, how our society, how people ended up where they are, they take ownership of what’s going on around them.
Are you in a relationship and what can you share?
(Laughing) Oh yeah, I am in a relationship. My partner’s name is Michael Sullivan, and we will have our sixth anniversary in November.
Where did you meet?
We met at a Victory Fund fundraiser. It was a Sunday morning in November of 2018 and it was at the end of the event. I had seen him—I think we made eye contact—but, you know, sometimes you see somebody you really like, and you kinda start making excuses to not go over and introduce yourself and be vulnerable. But I went over, and I asked him if we could do a coffee date to talk about healthcare policy, which was, you know, a cover because he worked in healthcare. I wrote his email on the back of a napkin, real old school, and I took a week to follow up. It took two more weeks for us to get together, and then our first date was four hours.
And, you know, he’s the love of my life. I feel lucky that we found each other and our relationship continues to grow. It’s miraculous—I feel like I fall more in love with him over time.
Predictions!
I’ll give you one prediction. And I know this probably sounds like what elected officials would say, but I really do think our future is going to get better in this country. I think we’re going through a dark patch right now, but I’m a student of history and I do think that for people who are fed up with injustice, people who are decent, people who want America to reckon with its past but also believe in peace, I think that by our participation in our political systems, things will get better for our country. I really do believe that, otherwise I wouldn’t fight as hard as I do.
What’s the best thing about representing your constituents in District 7?
My constituents are happiest when I just do me. And what I mean by that is they want authentic representation. They want somebody that seems like a real person. They want somebody who is unafraid to be themselves, and as a Black, openly LGBTQ+ state senator and as a child of an Ethiopian refugee, how liberating to have nearly a quarter million people that I know have my back and want me to be myself so that I can then turn around and have their backs in the state senate. That’s just such a perfect alignment for me.
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