Meet Gary Pierce
President Abraham Lincoln helped take a fledgling, regional third party and turn it into a dominant national force, all without the Internet. It can be done!
My mother brought us north to Illinois more than sixty years ago. She didn't do it for a change of scenery. She did it because she wanted something better for her family, and she believed Illinois could give it to us. That decision has shaped how I think about this state ever since. Illinois isn't just where I happen to live. It's the place my mother chose, on faith, so her children could have a real shot at something better. I've spent most of my adult life trying to make sure that same shot is still there for other families.
I graduated from East Aurora High School, and not long after, I enlisted in the United States Navy, serving from 1979 to 1981. The discipline and sense of duty I found in the service never left me. When I came home, I went back to school with a purpose, first at Waubonsee Community College, where I earned my associate degree in political science, then later a bachelor's degree in social work from MacMurray College, and eventually a master's degree in Human Services from the University of Illinois Springfield. Each step built on the last, moving me steadily toward the work I now consider my calling.
For more than a decade, I served as a certified alcohol and drug counselor, sitting across from people on some of the hardest days of their lives. I also became an ordained minister, and I now serve at Key of David Ministries. Between ministry and addiction recovery work, I've spent 25 years doing what amounts to the same calling under two different titles. Addiction doesn't check someone's zip code, their politics, or their bank account before it takes hold. Neither does grace. I've walked alongside people from every walk of life — parents trying to get clean for their kids, folks facing poverty and systemic neglect, people the system had quietly written off — and every one of them taught me something about dignity. I came away from that work believing that every life has worth, that every voice deserves to be heard, and that real leadership isn't about accumulating power. It's about lifting burdens off people who are already carrying too much, and defending rights I believe are God-given, not handed down by politicians who can just as easily take them away.
In March, I attended a No Kings Rally to talk about issues and my effort to bring independent politics to Illinois.
That conviction is also why I've spent so much of my life serving my community outside the counseling office. I've served as social and political chairman of the Ministerial Alliance of Springfield & Vicinity. I've worked as an election judge in numerous elections, spent ten years as a precinct committeeman, and served as a poll watcher. Over the course of my time in politics, I've personally registered more than 500 people to vote. None of that work makes headlines, but I've always believed democracy gets built in rooms like that, in church basements, precinct meetings, and folding tables outside the library, long before it ever shows up on a ballot.
My own name has been on that ballot more than once, too. I ran for a local school board seat in 2012, because I believe strong schools are where strong communities start. In 2016, I ran in the Republican primary for the 96th District of the Illinois House of Representatives. I came up short, but I learned just how badly our state needs leaders willing to have honest conversations instead of scripted ones. Two years later, watching that same district still waiting for someone the two parties hadn't already picked for it, I ran again as a write-in candidate, and I did it once more in 2020. In 2014, I even tried to start my own political party, the JOBS Party. It didn't take off, but the instinct behind it never left me: Illinois families deserve more than two predetermined options every November, and somebody has to keep insisting on that, even when it doesn't work the first few times.
Pictured at right is my former running mate Alejandro Cabrera during petitioning efforts to try to get on the ballot here in Illinois.
That instinct is what led me to run for Governor of Illinois on the Independence Party ticket, alongside my running mate, Alex Cabrera. It turned out to be one of the most meaningful chapters of my public life. Together we built a campaign around a simple idea: that the government exists to serve citizens, not to protect the comfort of political insiders.
We talked with people in Chicago neighborhoods and downstate farm towns alike who felt entirely unrepresented by either party. We built a platform around lifting up struggling communities, defending fair elections, and implementing policies that serve working families. We put in the work required of any outsider trying to earn a place on the ballot in this state, which is never small. I’m deeply proud of what we accomplished, showing that independent thinking can reach voters in every part of this state.
I came away from that campaign more convinced than ever that Illinois is hungry for something different, and that the fight to give voters real alternatives — something beyond the same two machines trading power back and forth — is far from over.
That conviction is exactly why, when the opportunity came to join the Illinois Solidarity Party, I didn't hesitate. I've spent years praying for a chance to help build something that could last, not just another protest vote, but a genuine institution that could stand for generations the way the two entrenched parties have. Illinois, and this country, don't belong to corporations and lobbyists.
I believe our political system can still be restored to what it was always supposed to be: government of the people, by the people, and for the people. When I looked at what this movement was building, alongside people who share that conviction, I knew I wanted to be part of it in whatever role I could serve. I'm honored that the Illinois Solidarity Party has now endorsed me as its candidate for Lieutenant Governor, running alongside Mike Vick, our Illinois Solidarity Party candidate for Governor.
I’ve been married to my wife for 44 years now, and we have four grown children. I've built my life around the belief that family, faith, and community are what hold this state together, not Springfield's insiders, and not the political machines in Chicago. I'm also passionate about something that doesn't get talked about honestly enough in politics: healing the divide in this country, including the divide around race. I don't think that healing comes from more government programs. I think it comes from neighbors seeing each other again.
My wife Shari has been standing with me for 43 years.
My own family's story started with a mother who moved north because she believed Illinois could be a place of opportunity. I've spent my career, and now my public life, trying to make sure that's still true, especially for the families to whom the two parties have stopped bothering to talk.
As I like to say: we don't need more government. We need better neighbors, stronger communities, and leaders who actually serve.
That's the leadership I've tried to practice for 25 years in ministry and recovery work. It's the leadership I'm ready to bring to the Lieutenant Governor's office, serving alongside Mike Vick and the Illinois Solidarity Party ticket.