Overview

• Jackson announced his run in a video timed to his father's 84th birthday, invoking the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1984 Democratic National Convention speech and a message of redemption.
• His team says the exploratory committee will convert into a principal campaign committee, and receipts and disbursements from the exploratory phase will be reported retroactively in the first FEC filing.
• He reports collecting about 8,000 nominating petition signatures and is seeking roughly 2,000 more to bolster his ballot position.
• The Democratic field already includes State Sens. Robert Peters and Willie Preston, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Yumeka Brown, among others.
• Jackson left Congress in 2012, later pleaded guilty to conspiring to misuse about $750,000 in campaign funds, was sentenced to 30 months in 2013, and served part of that term before release to a halfway house in 2015.