John,

On Monday I submitted our campaign’s petition signatures to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Thanks to grassroots support from across the country and my team's hard work we collected enough signatures to make it on to the ballot.

It was our campaign’s first big win and we could not have done it without you. Thank you to the more than one thousand Illinoisian’s who signed our petition, with these signatures comes a loud and resounding enough is enough. The people of rural Illinois need a fighter and they have spoken.

One of our canvassers and I in the field collecting signatures.

It was a major victory but it's only just the beginning. In fact, even with enough signatures to have made the ballot, danger still could loom around the corner for us.

We’ve received intelligence that the Illinois Republican party is weighing a challenge to our petitions in an attempt to keep us off the ballot.

If they do challenge our signatures we will enter into a legal battle against the full onslaught of the Illinois Republican Party in which they will scrutinize every signature of ours under a magnifying glass.

We cannot afford to get bogged down in a costly signature fight for ballot access but we need to start circling the wagons and begin preparing for the very real possibility of this. The rural people of Illinois are hurting and we cannot afford for them to fall even further behind if we lose our razor thing majority in Congress this November.

John, can I count on you to make a contribution of whatever you can spare to help my campaign prepare for a Republican operation to throw us off the ballot?

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