Bill Cunningham has been the State Senator for Illinois’ 18th District since January of 2013. The district includes parts of Chicago's Southwest Side and the Southwest Suburbs of Cook County. 

A life-long resident of the South Side and Southwest Suburbs, Cunningham has made promoting public safety and reforming Illinois’ political culture the centerpiece of his time in elected office. Before moving to the Illinois Senate, Cunningham served in the State House of Representatives for two years. He joined the General Assembly after a twenty year career in the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, where he served as Director of Communications to Sheriff Mike Sheahan and as Chief of Staff to Sheriff Tom Dart.

As a top advisor to Sheriff Sheahan, he assisted in the development of the state’s first online sex offender registration website and coordinated efforts to improve monitoring of registered sex offenders. He also helped establish the Sheriff’s Senior Law Enforcement Academy, a community policing program that provides senior citizens with crime prevention tips and free cell phones for emergency use.

As chief of staff, Bill managed Sheriff Dart’s efforts to fight banks and lenders that attempted to wrongfully evict victims of the mortgage foreclosure crisis and worked with the legislature to impose longer prison terms on inmates who attempt to harm the staff at Cook County Jail.

As a husband and father, Cunningham has been active in his community, coaching a youth soccer team and volunteering for charitable causes. He has also worked to improve educational institutions in his neighborhood by serving as a parent representative on the Sutherland Local School Council, where he worked to identify new revenue sources when faced with budget shortfalls and supported new procedures to crack down on fraudulent enrollment.

Bill is a graduate of Mount Carmel High School (1985), and the University of Illinois at Chicago (1990,) where he received a degree in Political Science. Bill and his wife Juliana have two daughters and reside in the Beverly community.