Meet Mike Vick

A man holding a sign that reads 'American Solidarity Party' with the words 'Life, Justice, Peace, Environment' around a red circle and a blue bird silhouette in front of the U.S. Capitol building during a protest or rally.

In 2023, I attended the March for Life in Washington D.C. for the first time, joining friends from the Solidarity Party and thousands of activists from across the country.

My family has lived right here in Illinois since long before I was born. Both my paternal grandparents were born in southern Illinois, and later moved to Kankakee. I deeply love this state. I would like to see working families thrive, and I have the dedicated, on-the-ground activist background to prove it.

I am the host and executive producer of the podcast Unorthodoxing, a weekly news analysis and interview show, featuring unique political takes on the news of the week and interviews with outside-the-mainstream guests you won’t see on the nightly news. Unorthodoxing is the talk show where uncommon politics finds common ground. Our Substack also features writers from the consistent life ethic movement.

I am executive advisor to Pastor Chris Butler, senior pastor at Ambassador Church in South Holland, Illinois, co-host of the AND Campaign’s Church Politics podcast, and former director of Christian civic formation for the Center for Christianity and Public Life. I also produce the Nuclear Option Podcast, a production of the WeSchool Education Foundation, founded by Pastor Chris and his wife Aziza Butler.

I served on the national leadership team of the American Solidarity Party from 2024 to 2026 and continue to serve as vice chair of the Illinois Solidarity Party. I previously worked as national development director for ASP. In 2024, I was ASP’s endorsed candidate for Congress in Illinois’ second congressional district.

I serve as editor of the Chicago Civic Update, a weekly publication of Chicago chapter of the AND Campaign, and also serve as a coordinator for the chapter. AND offers a Biblical framework to engage politics with non-partisan, common-sense education, equipping believers to confront tribalism and promote unity. I still serve on the core team of AND’s Chicago chapter.

I began my career as a journalist, working as a reporter for Catholic San Francisco newspaper, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

I later worked as an associate producer and web editor for a local television news affiliate.

Three men standing indoors, one holding an achievement certificate, with a colorful stained glass window in the background.

In 2023, I graduated from AND Campaign’s Christian Civic Leadership Academy. I’m pictured here with AND’s president and founder, Justin Giboney, along with my pastor, friend and mentor, Chris Butler.

In 2016, I began a career in political activism, organizing home care and childcare workers for SEIU Healthcare in Chicago, fundraising for the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate Working America, and fundraising for Greenpeace in Chicago.

I was the field canvass director for the non-partisan group Citizens Action Coalition, Indiana’s largest consumer advocacy organization, specializing in utility, energy and environmental policy.

I served as the political director for the congressional campaign of Pastor Chris Butler during the 2022 Illinois Democratic Party primary.

I found the Solidarity Party in 2020 while running as the nominee of the Democratic Party for state representative in Indiana’s 29th district. I enthusiastically endorsed Brian Carroll and Amar Patel for president and vice president that year. I believe I am the only nominee of a major party to have done so, a distinction that did not win me many friends among the leadership of my former party, though I was happy for whatever attention this brought to ASP.

I was born in 1982 in Daly City, California, a suburb of San Francisco. I grew up in Crescent City, California, a coastal city near the Oregon border. Before my sophomore year of high school, I moved back to the Bay Area, and attended South San Francisco High School.

A young girl and a young man are standing outside in front of a stone-edged flower bed with yellow and red flowers. The girl is wearing a white sweater and dark skirt, while the young man is dressed in a dark blazer, white shirt, and tie. They are smiling at the camera. Buildings and parked cars are visible in the background.

Pictured at left is my sister Jessica. This photo was taken in outside the restaurant where my parents took us for my middle school graduation.

In 1998, while on vacation visiting family in western Kentucky and southern Illinois, my dad decided that the best decision for our family was to move to his birthplace, Paducah, Kentucky.

I graduated high school there in 2000 with a Commonwealth Honors diploma. That same year, I voted in my first election. Wanting to see the Democratic Party become more progressive, I decided to support the Green Party candidacy of Ralph Nader. Though I continued to desire that the Democrats be truer to the ideals I grew up hearing about that largely originated with the New Deal, I continued to support the Democratic Party for many years subsequent to this early foray into third party electoral politics, though it foreshadowed my later independent activism.

After high school, I attended Campbellsville University, a small Baptist school in central Kentucky. My original major was chemistry, and I planned to become a medical doctor. sophomore year, I transferred to the University of Louisville, where I decided to switch my major to political science.

A young man in a red shirt and jeans standing on a concrete platform near a harbor, smiling and posing with a bronze statue of a ship captain at a ship's wheel, with boats, water, and trees in the background.

Pictured in 2013 in one of the more picturesque spots in Chicago, the famous Navy Pier. I announced my gubernatorial race not far from this very spot.

During the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college, I moved back to the Bay Area. I graduated cum laude with a bachelors degree in political science and a minor in journalism from the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit university.

My first job out of college was working as a reporter for Catholic San Francisco newspaper, a midsized weekly publication that serves as the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. While there, I had occasion to cover the trial of two priests charged in connection with a protest against torture at a military facility that trained interrogators, as well as do field reporting in Haiti related to relief work done there by the group Cross International.

In 2009, I moved back to Kentucky, where I worked at a local NBC news affiliate, first as an associate producer and later as the web editor and social media manager. I oversaw an overhaul of the website and the creation of our first apps.

A woman with glasses kneeling next to a young girl and a boy, all smiling outdoors in a backyard with grass and dogs.

Pictured here with my grandmother Audrey Vick in 1984 outside her home in Brookport, Illinois, along with a neighbor and our family dogs.

While working again at the NBC affiliate, I decided to get out of the news business altogether. While I still deeply respect journalism as an institution, I wanted to do something more hands-on. Given my background in political science and desire to help make the world a better place, I moved up to the Chicagoland area to take a job as an organizer for SEIU Healthcare, where I worked to educate home care and childcare workers on their rights and the benefits of joining the union. I later worked for Working America, AFL-CIO’s community outreach organization, and the environmental activist group Greenpeace.

In 2016, I worked again for SEIU, this time in northwest Indiana, where I did canvassing for John Gregg, the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor. During that election, I also volunteered much of my free time to the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. When Senator Sanders did not win the nomination, my disillusionment with the Democratic Party led me to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

In 2018, I moved to Noblesville, Indiana, where I worked as an intern for the Indiana Democratic Party at its headquarters in Indianapolis. I later served IDP out of then-Senator Joe Donnelly campaign office as a tracker, a job that entails following an opposing candidate to all events and obtaining video and audio recordings of those appearances, as well as asking the candidate pointed questions on camera. This job felt similar to my previous work as a journalist, and I enjoyed the travel all around the state following the campaign of then-Senate hopeful Mike Braun, who won that race and now serves as the state’s governor.

Three people standing outside on a sidewalk holding protest signs. The person on the left is a young man wearing a black beanie and black jacket, holding a sign that says 'Keep Abortion Out of Pharmacies.' The person in the middle is a young woman with long dark hair, wearing a black coat and gray pants, holding a sign that says 'CVS Trades Pulses for Profits.' The person on the right is an older man with white hair and glasses, wearing a black hoodie and gloves, holding a sign that reads 'Pharmacies = Murder-Free Zones' with a yellow capsule pill illustration. There is snow on the ground and a building with multiple floors and balconies in the background.

After that election ended, I joined Citizens Action Coalition, Indiana's oldest and largest consumer and environmental advocacy organization, advocating on behalf of Hoosiers on issues regarding energy policy, utility reform, health care, pollution prevention, family farms and independent redistricting. I deeply enjoyed this non-partisan, issue-oriented work, and served first as a field canvasser, later being promoted to field canvass director. During the COVID pandemic, I worked from home for CAC as a phone canvasser.

In 2021, when I had the opportunity to come back to Illinois and join Pastor Chris Butler’s campaign, I jumped at the opportunity to return to a state I now think of as home. Now, embarking on this journey as a candidate for governor, I hope to bring both my experience and my passion to every corner of Illinois, showing people a better way to do civic activism and calling on our nation’s highest ideals to chart a better path forward for Illinois families.