For more than 20 years, North Riverside resident Eric Su has worked as a fitness trainer. Now, he’s taking an unexpected step in his career: running for public office.
Su, 48, is running for state representative in District 21, vying for the seat held by Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid since 2023.
“For most of my life, I have never thought about it,” Su told the Landmark of making the move to run.
According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, Su, who registered as a Republican, is so far the only candidate who’s filed to run in the district. If no other Republicans file to run, Su will automatically win the party primary in March and be fast-tracked to the general election against the Democratic candidate next November if he earns the 500 signatures required to place himself on the ballot.
As of Aug. 15, he’d collected about 200 of those signatures since petition circulation began on Aug. 5, he said.
Su said he first became interested in politics in 2020, when he saw fellow Asian American Andrew Yang run for president. Yang inspired him to become an election judge that year.
Then, last November, Su said he received a text from Illinois Policy, a nonprofit advocacy group pushing for an “effective, efficient, honest and transparent” government that is accountable to taxpayers, with a survey asking what he would do if he found himself elected to public office.
“I filled it out, and it was back in March that I got a call back from Dan Patlak,” the group’s director of advocacy, he said. “He wanted to know if I was still interested in doing something or running for any office. We started talking, and he explained to me what was available, and we took it from there. Now, I’m running.”
Su named health care, education and property taxes as his top three issues in descending order. His campaign website also lists jobs, public safety, immigration and education as his other top issues.
When asked for his plans to tackle the issues, Su didn’t specify how he would make health care more accessible, education stronger or property taxes lower, though his website lists one “creative idea” for each of his top six issues.
For health care, his idea is a health savings match program that would see Illinois match low-income families’ contributions to health savings accounts.
To lower property taxes, Su suggests an incentive that would give tax discounts to residents who live in their homes for more than a decade.
For education, his idea is to launch “learn & earn labs” for public high school students to make money or earn credit while working on projects for businesses, “connecting education to employment.”
“What I’ve come to hear was that people wanted a fresh voice, a different perspective, maybe different solutions and some ideas that might not be so party line-associated,” he said. “That’s where I, perhaps, could come into the picture.”
While he’s running as a Republican, Su said he does not support President Donald Trump or his administration.
“I want to be a voice for the people with a clear perspective,” he said. “I hope people see that we share similar values. That’s really the big picture, and they can trust that I’m not going to be just a Republican. I actually don’t stand for Trump. I can honestly say that I dislike the way he’s handling a lot of the issues. He’s definitely way [more] extreme than I would probably have approached certain things.”
Su said it wasn’t a strategic move, either, although he could win the Republican primary for the district by default. He said he hoped his party affiliation and views on the issues would draw out “closet Republicans,” who he said may be registered as Democrats to vote but fall ideologically more in between the two major political parties.
“To be honest with you, I actually have a lot of similarities or, if you will, common thoughts like the Democrats. I do,” he said. “I want to bring more Republicans out, because I feel like their voice isn’t being heard, too, because [the district has] been so heavily dominated by a Democrat. I want to have that open the conversation.”
Despite running from the opposite side of the aisle, Su said he has “nothing negative to say” about Rashid.
“I actually have a lot of compliments because he’s doing what the people ask him to do,” he said. “He’s basically being the voice for the people in District 21. I see that. I hear that, OK? Having said that, are there areas that maybe he could focus on more and improve? I would say, specifically, maybe, on the health care.”
With his history in fitness, he said he wanted to offer more incentives to improve the quality and accessibility of health care to District 21 residents.
Just 10 days into his campaign, Su said canvassing door-to-door to collect signatures so he can get on the ballot has been “quite interesting.” Some people have slammed the door in his face, he said, while others have agreed to sign his petition without even hearing his positions.
“I remember the reason why I’m doing it. It brings me back to the point of, there’s a big, big need for representation. There’s a big need for a fresh voice,” he said. “All these issues that are burdening families, whether it be the health care or the high taxes, it affects me, too, and someone has to step up. I felt like, what better time than now to do that?”
