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Christ Kallas
Christ Kallas (Democratic Party) is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Illinois' 8th Congressional District. He declared candidacy for the Democratic primary scheduled on March 17, 2026.
Kallas completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Christ Kallas was born in Dixon, Illinois. He graduated from Amboy High School. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in 2010 and a graduate degree from the University of Illinois in 2021. His career experience includes working in marketing, packing batteries in a factory, on political campaigns, in nonprofits, and in a chamber of commerce.[1]
Kallas has been affiliated with the following organizations:[1]
- Working Families Party
- United Working Families
- Indivisible
- Mobalize.US
- We the Future Coalition
- No Small Act
Elections
2026
See also: Illinois' 8th Congressional District election, 2026
General election
The primary will occur on March 17, 2026. The general election will occur on November 3, 2026. General election candidates will be added here following the primary.
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Illinois District 8
The following candidates are running in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Illinois District 8 on March 17, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Junaid Ahmed | |
 | Yasmeen Bankole | |
 | Sanjyot Dunung | |
 | Christ Kallas  | |
 | Neil Khot | |
 | Kevin Morrison | |
 | Dan Tully | |
 | Ryan Vetticad | |
| Joseph Wentzel | ||
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Illinois District 8
Mark Rice is running in the Republican primary for U.S. House Illinois District 8 on March 17, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Mark Rice | |
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
Ballotpedia is gathering information about candidate endorsements. To send us an endorsement, click here.
Campaign themes
2026
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Christ Kallas completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Kallas' responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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At the University of Illinois he earned a political-science degree and organized for Obama ’08, then packed batteries in a Dixon factory during the Great Recession before working to re-elect Rep. Bill Foster in 2012. Marketing and nonprofit roles let him build a middle-class life, but Trump’s 2016 win pulled him back to the streets — protests, picket lines, community food drives.
Now rooted in Schaumburg with his talented wife — an IL-08 native — Christ is a home-maker who volunteers at Feed My Starving Children and marched with UNITE HERE Local 1. Living with a degenerative disc, he feels the weight of medical bills and inflexible jobs.
At 37, Christ is done waiting for Congress to remember working families. He’s running to be IL-08’s progressive bulldog: slashing healthcare fees that bleed $5,000 a month from our households, defending unions, and making healthcare, childcare, trade school and 2-year college are rights, not luxuries. Washington changes only when we send someone who has our lived experience and won’t back down.- Our working families deserve dignity and a fair shot at the American dream. We have let billionaires write the rules while our families wrote the checks.
It is time for us to get what we're due; send me to DC to collect.
What does that look like? The Working Families Bill of Rights - 7 Guarantees that can be made law with a simple majority in congress and the president's signature. - Personal Healthcare is a human right and should be the base-line minimum that an American should expect for working as hard as we do. There should be nothing standing between you and making decisions about your own body; there especially shouldn't be a smarmy, DC politician sticking their nose in your private medical decisions. Universal healthcare with 100% control over your own body is a necessity for every American.
- We need to secure our elections by getting money out of politics, stopping money lobbying, prevent Congressional stock ownership, prevent gerrymandering, and make sure our election are protected from corporate hackers and cross-border attackers.
Universal Healthcare - Personal healthcare is a human right.
Universal Childcare - Protect future Americans.
Secure Borders & Elections - Get money out of politics and reform our failing immigration system.
Universal Access to 2-Year College & Trade Schools
Dignity in Work - $20 minimum wage tied to inflation
Affordable Home Ownership - Ban corporate landlords
In a world full of those that content themselves by closing their eyes to reality, make them see the enormity of the atrocities by any means necessary.
Abe Lincoln jumped out a window to prevent quorum to protect the people's justice - I am willing to do that and more. The only things that matter are my oath of office and my constituents.
I did that for for two summers, while also maintaining a paper route, before I started spending time working on family farms while bussing tables, serving, cashiering, and stocking at a local camping resort.
It's a book that tells you how to best design for people while keeping people in mind. It breaks every design down into elements that are easy to understand and he gives you a framework to analyze every future product you come across.
Of course it does not have to be a product, like a car or toaster, but can be a service or system as well. If you go up to a door with a handle and it looks like a door you are supposed to pull open, it is not your fault when it turns out the door was a push door. It's the designer's fault.
I wanted to build a quiet, middle-class life with my wife and my family but my employer decided that upending my life was the most profitable thing they could do. Then when the current administration was elected, my options for justice were reduced to 0 since the agency that dealt with worker discrimination was allowed to be shuttered by Congress.
After being laid off, I was thrown into an uncaring and cruel unemployment system which did not even pay me enough to cover the average rent of my district, and that was after denying my claim and making me fight for 6 weeks without pay.
While I was collecting unemployment I was given the 'privilege' of spending $600/month on insurance or stop going to physical therapy. I made the difficult decision, like many families in my district, to forgo insurance and to stop physical therapy while I looked for work.
If it wasn't for the grace, support, and love of my wonderful partner then I would have drown, but she was able to keep the family afloat by working two jobs and lots of overtime.
The House of Representatives has the unique ability to hold these corporations and billionaires accountable with Congressional hearings and Contempt of Congress charges.
Our representatives don't need an ivy league education, they need to pass laws that help working families regain and maintain their dignity.
The infinite length of election cycles leads to electorate burnout. Getting money out of politics and publicly funding elections would make the election season shorter and give lawmakers more time to spend actually making our lives better.
This is a common story from where I grew up in rural Illinois as well. Commonly seen with farmers. I have family members and family friends that passed away from preventable medical conditions because the cost of care was too high when they could barely afford their monthly insurance payment.
His neighbor passes by and says, "Wow that's bad luck."
The man says, "Good luck, bad luck? I guess we'll see."
The next day the man's barn burns down.
The neighbor comes over and says, "Wow, that's bad luck."
"Good luck, bad luck? I guess we'll see."
The next day an insurance adjuster comes by and writes the man a huge check for the barn fire and lost horses.
The man's neighbor see's the check and says, "Wow, that's good luck!"
"Good luck, bad luck? I guess we'll see."
The next day all 30 of the man's horses wander back to his property.
His neighbor sees and says, "Wow, that's good luck!"
"Good luck, bad luck? I guess we'll see."
The next day the man is being taken away in handcuffs because the adjuster came back, found the horses, and had the man arrested for fraud.
Sometimes it takes negotiations, clever maneuvering, and strategic acumen to get what you want; there are many methods that can be used to uphold the will of the people outside of compromising their rights.
It's time we stopped acting polite; the age of decorum is over.
It should use it to bring light to the way we are being stolen from, lied to, and taken advantage of by our employers.
It should pursue full consequences for those that lie to Congress and mislead the people.
It's time for American Working Families to have control of the purse strings - it's time to get what we're owed
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Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2026 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House Illinois District 8 |
Personal |
Footnotes
