Illinois Solidarity Party

The Illinois Solidarity Party was an American political party in the state of Illinois. It was named after Lech Wałęsa's Solidarity movement in Poland, which was then widely admired in Illinois because of its very large Polish-American population, especially around Chicago.

The party was founded in 1986 by Senator Adlai Stevenson III in reaction to the Democratic Party's nomination of two followers of Lyndon LaRouche in the race for high state offices: Mark Fairchild, who was running for Lieutenant Governor, and Janice Hart, who was running for Illinois Secretary of State. Stevenson, a Democratic candidate for Illinois Governor, did not want to run alongside anybody associated with LaRouche's organization.

The Solidarity Party continued to exist, unaffiliated with Stevenson, after the 1986 election. In the 1987 Chicago mayoral election, Edward Vrdolyak ran for mayor of Chicago on the Illinois Solidarity Party ticket, which provided the major opposition to incumbent Harold Washington, Chicago's first African-American mayor. Vrdolyak lost to Washington by a final tally of 53%–43%.

The party's continued existence afterward made it an easy target for other small political parties to "take over" whenever necessary. One such group was the New Alliance Party (NAP), which was largely unknown in Illinois but still managed to run some of its candidates for local offices. The NAP founder Lenora Fulani campaigned as a Solidarity Party presidential candidate in 1988 and 1992.