Chirinjeev Kathuria

Serial entrepreneur Chirinjeev Kathuria lost the Illinois Republican primaries for the U.S. Senate to millionaire-turned-teacher Jack Ryan.

Ryan, who lead from the start of counting, received 35.8 percent of the vote while Kathuria had 0.8 percent, ranking last in the list of eight candidates vying for the candidacy.

Barack Obama, a state legislator and former civil rights lawyer, won the Democratic nomination on March 16 with nearly 53 percent of the Democratic vote to try to become the first black Senator in the history of the United States.

The Illinois Senate seat fell vacant when Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared he would not run again. The Illinois seat is crucial for both parties as it would tip the majority in the upper house in favor of the Democrats if Obama was to win in the election slated for Nov. 2.

Kathuria, whose campaign stressed his ethnic roots and played on the theme of trying to broaden the Republican Party’s base by bringing in more minorities, seems to have failed to make his message heard by the grassroots Republicans.

With multimillionaires running for the spot from both parties, Kathuria had also pledged to put millions into his campaign. At one point a local paper questioned Kathuria’s credentials, resulting in a lawsuit.

On the Democratic party front, things got nasty with seven candidates running, and Ryan, a businessman, was plagued by a negative campaign over his divorce from actress Jeri Ryan.