A second Republican candidate has announced plans to run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen next year.
Julie Bickelhaupt is a farmer and chair of the Carroll County Board, a rural county along the Mississippi River border with Iowa. She said she’s running to lower costs for Americans, support farmers and strengthen education, partly through school choice.
“My desire is to work for the people and find out what their needs are and to serve in the best way possible,” Bickelhaupt said in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
The 17th Congressional District covers parts of Bloomington-Normal and parts of central and northwestern Illinois.
Republican Dillan Vancil of Monmouth also has filed for the Republican primary.
Sorensen, a Democrat from Moline who is in his second term, has filed for the 2026 election, but has not formally announced his reelection bid.
Fellow Democrat Montez Soliz of Rockford is also running for the seat.
Economy
Bickelhaupt said she supports U.S. tariffs as a measure she hopes will provide long-term benefit.
“I saw tariffs as something that was probably necessary in order to restructure within the United States and start manufacturing more things in the United States, putting more people back to work,” she said.
As for lowering costs, Bickelhaupt said she would start with energy.
“When energy is more, food costs more, delivery is more. It affects everything,” she said, adding she would support increased production in both renewable and nonrenewable sources.
“Solar [energy] could have a place, but I don’t think it can fill all the needs [that are] needed. Without fossil fuels, you couldn’t even have solar panels or [wind] turbines,” Bickelhaupt said.
Agriculture
Bickelhaupt said she would remove nutrition assistance from the Farm Bill as Republicans have sought to do. It’s been a key area of disagreement between the parties.
“In a perfect world, they would be separate issues, but they are not,” she said.
Bickelhaupt said its’s important to keep programs like SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], but she said she suspects fraud is driving up the cost of the program.
“I think we need to be careful who is getting SNAP,” she said.
The so-called Big Beautiful Bill signed into law last month makes significant cuts to SNAP.
Education
Bickelhaupt said she wants to strengthen education by empowering parents and making more education options available to students “and make sure that it’s used not just in public schools, but can be accessed by homeschooled individuals or those using private school options.”
Congress approved a national school voucher program last month. Illinois rolled back a school voucher program in 2023.
Washington, D.C.
Bickelaupt said she supports what President Donald Trump has done in the first year of his second term.
“I feel like more has gotten done since he’s come back into the presidency in a [more] rapid amount of time than I have ever seen,” she said, citing his attempts to crack down on immigration and bolster border enforcement.
Trump has issued 192 executive orders in the first eight months of his term, more than President Joe Biden and their predecessors signed during their four-year terms.
Executive orders are largely done to bypass Congress. When asked if she was OK with a presumably lesser role for Congress, Bickelhaupt said, “I think you have to start figuring out what’s important there and understanding why those things might happen. Obviously, I’m not in that position at this time, so I would have to learn more. But mostly focusing in on being a network to solve those problems would hopefully be my role.”
The campaign
Bickelhaupt acknowledged Sorensen has name recognition as a two-term incumbent [and a television weatherman for many years] but said his values don’t align with many people in the 17th district
“I’ve seen that he doesn’t always lead the best. He chooses some poor choices within bills and to me that’s just not OK. To me, he’s going far, far left on some of his ideology,” Bickelhaupt said, but could not site specific examples when asked.
“My goal is to align with what most of our district is thinking,” she said.
The mostly rural district leans Democratic. Currently, the Cook Political Report gives Democrats a 3-point edge in the district.
