CHICAGO — Democratic state Sen. Willie Preston is pitching himself as a fighter for working-class families and a product of South Side struggles, hoping that message will stand out in a crowded field vying for Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District seat.

But as Preston campaigns on authenticity and lived experience in the race to represent the district that stretches from the South Side to Danville, his online past is beginning to command attention.

Just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Preston posted a series of Facebook messages praising President Donald Trump and ridiculing Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. The posts, some laced with mild profanity, were written by Preston before he held public office as a Democrat in the state legislature.

“Go to hell Joe Biden! #TRUMP2020,” Preston wrote at the end of one post shared six days before the election. In another on the same day, in response to a question about who he would vote for, Preston answered, “Trump,” and attached a photo showing the Republican president’s name checked on a digital ballot.

Now, as Preston courts the same Democratic voters who overwhelmingly rejected Trump by a margin of 67% to 33% in the congressional district, those comments threaten to overshadow his campaign message and raise new questions about his political identity in one of the state’s most reliably blue districts as he faces nine other Democrats in the March primary.

Preston, saying he is “not in the business of trying to pretend, lie or run,” confirmed in a Tribune interview that he wrote the posts. But he insisted the comments from five years ago do not reflect how he would legislate on Capitol Hill if he’s elected to replace U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, who is stepping down to run to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.

Instead, he described the posts as unpolished outcroppings of the same real-life experience, political frustrations and independence that he believes make him the best candidate. And he argued the posts were light-hearted, even exasperated jabs he put out on social media and not literal expressions of support for Trump.

“No, no, no. No, no, no, no,” Preston said when asked whether he actually voted for Trump, given his 2020 Facebook post claiming he did. “That’s totally false.”

He characterized his social media comments in favor of Trump and critical of Biden as nothing more than satire and “s−−− talking,” describing himself as “a regular guy, who was not an elected official” at the time.

“That’s probably the only amount of power that poor people in America have is to use their voice to talk and say outlandish things at times,” Preston said. “I’m one of them. I’ll admit that. I’m guilty. You caught me.”

First elected to the state Senate in 2022 to represent a district covering Chicago’s South and Southwest sides and southwest suburbs, Preston had unsuccessfully run in the Democratic Party primary for an Illinois House seat in 2018. He previously served on a local elementary school council board and was an organizer for a group pushing for police accountability. He also worked as a union janitor and as a carpenter.

Now Senate chair of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, Preston argued voters should judge him by his legislative record rather than his old social media activity.

“It’s certainly not the acts of a congressman. But I wasn’t a congressman, I wasn’t a state senator, I wasn’t a candidate for office,” Preston said of his position at the time he made the social media posts. “Everything that I’ve done as an elected official has been the opposite. It’s been deadly serious.”

Preston won the state Senate seat vacated by longtime state Sen. Jacqueline Collins. In office, he successfully pushed to make it easier for people leaving prison to get state IDs and for the public to access health insurance to pay for colonoscopies. He also sponsored legislation to ban certain food ingredients from being manufactured — a bill that passed the Illinois Senate but never made it through the House — while the Trump administration this year banned at least one of those ingredients at the federal level.

He has also shown a willingness to go against the grain of the Democratic Party. He was one of the first Democrats to speak out against government funds being set aside for migrants in Chicago coming from Texas out of concern that such funding wasn’t going for low-income Black residents.

And more recently, Preston has voiced his opposition to a mid-decade push by U.S. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to redraw Illinois congressional districts as Democrats aim to retake the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm election, promising to oppose the change if it dilutes Black communities’ ability to elect Black representatives.

Five years ago, Democrats faced a somewhat similar situation as they tried to retake the White House from Trump.

Preston, in March 2020, likened then-candidate Biden to a “lemon” car and urged Democratic primary voters to pick U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont instead. Even after Biden won the primary, Preston wrote two weeks before Election Day that a Biden win would “ruin you financially” and “put your kids in a poorer position due to your bad vote!”

In October 2020, he called on Black men to “show up in droves and punish Joe Biden at the polls” and wrote that Trump had “earned the Black vote with his policies.”

He congratulated Trump’s Supreme Court appointee , Amy Coney Barrett after her U.S. Senate confirmation and he argued her appointment was not scary. He also referred to the 2020 presidential contest as a “so-called election.”

In other posts identified by the Tribune, Preston shared harsh criticism of the Democratic Party, criticizing Black Democratic leaders in one long post for not finding ways to work with Trump.

“Too many folks have a problem with folks talking to people who they don’t like or agree with,” he wrote. “That’s a very immature way to operate politically.”

He also wrote in another post that politicians “only use the (D) to trick you,” a reference to the political party. He also reshared a post that read: “The DEMOCRATIC PARTY Hates BlackMEN.”

Asked about the latter post, Preston said America has often failed Black people, though he also called on Black Americans to take better advantage of opportunities available to them. He said he is a Democrat, not out of choice, but “out of necessity,” and added that “people like me” have no other political home.

In the post where he told Biden to “go to hell,” Preston also criticized Biden for declaring LGBTQ rights his top priority, though he added, “this is nothing against my LGBTQIA friends whatsoever.”

In yet another post from that time, he expressed apparent frustration with the Democratic Party’s positions on sexuality, suggesting there was a political bias against straight Black men. He wrote that it was becoming clear that any Black man running for office with the party needs to pass an “anti-Blackheterosexual test.”

During his recent interview with the Tribune, Preston said he has at times been “severely disappointed in Biden,” but also praised him for making Juneteenth a national holiday.

Preston also poured out criticism of Trump. He called Trump’s tariffs “a disaster” and argued the “big, ugly, deadly bill” passed by Trump and Republicans will “kill my people” by cutting health care spending.

The state senator struck a similar tone at an Englewood candidate town hall last month, where he called the ongoing federal immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection a “campaign of terror” and likened mask use by federal agents to masks worn by the Ku Klux Klan. But Preston also said the country’s borders must be secured.

“There were far too many people coming over to this country unchecked,” he said. “That is a reality that a lot of people inside poor communities across Chicago are saying quietly and loudly.”

Online, Preston has also struck a different tone since winning office in 2022.

Last year, he proudly posed before framed photos of Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris — whom he had in earlier posts suggested was a “sellout” for marrying a white man — to “salute” the leaders on Presidents Day.

In the past, Preston said, he did not approach social media thoughtfully. He cited past traumatic events, including his brother stabbing him and the murder of a best friend, to argue that Facebook “hasn’t been real life for me.”

“I guess my life has been so real that I didn’t take social media as seriously as I should have, but again, I was not groomed or raised to be a politician,” he said.

Preston highlighted the lived experience of his difficult Englewood upbringing as a cornerstone of his candidacy. He recalled as a child being pushed toward gun violence and walking to the store to buy kerosene to heat his family’s home in lieu of gas. His time as a state senator further proves who he really is as a politician, he said.

“I’m as resilient as the people I represent,” he said. “My record speaks to exactly what Democrats are calling for. I’m going to fight every day for working-class people.”

Noting he has voted for every state budget ultimately passed by Illinois Democrats in his three years in office, Preston said as a congressman, he would support trade schools, work to drive down inflation and “fight for health care.”

He also said he would “100% caucus with the Democrats,” if elected to the House.

“I’m going to be a good Democrat,” Preston said. “But a good Democrat looks like representing the people that I actually represent, and giving that true, authentic voice, not being a ‘yes man’ for party bosses or mimicking whatever consultant tells me that I should say.”

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(Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed to this story.)

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