LINCOLN, Ill. – Darren Bailey, the Republican primary favorite for the governor of Illinois, was finishing his speech last week at a senior center in this central Illinois city when a voice shouted, “We can pray for you. ? ”
Mr. Bailey readily accepted. The speaker, a youthful Lincoln mentor named Kathy Schmidt, placed her right hand on her left shoulder as she closed her eyes and extended her hands with her palms open.
“More than anything,” he prayed, “I ask that in this election you raise the righteous and kill the wicked.”
The bad guys, in this case, are the Chicago moderates who aim to maintain control over the Illinois Republican Party. And the fair is Mr. Bailey, a far-right state senator who does not look like any candidate the party has proposed as governor in living memory.
A 56-year-old farmer whose home in southern Illinois is closer to Nashville than Chicago, wears his hair cut to the crew, speaks loudly and does not clarify his conservative credentials, as so many GOP leader candidates have done. previous. made to try to attract the suburbs in this mostly democratic state. On Saturday, former President Donald J. Trump supported Mr. Bailey at a rally near Quincy, Ill.
Mr. Bailey has turned upside down $ 50 million plans by Illinois Republican leaders to appoint Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora, a moderate suburban with an inspiring personal history that they believed could reclaim the governor’s mansion. in Springfield in what is widely anticipated. a winning year for Republicans.
Mr. Bailey has received the help of an unprecedented intervention from Mr. Pritzker and the Pritzker-funded Association of Democratic Governors, who have spent nearly $ 35 million jointly attacking Mr. Pritzker. Irvin as they tried to lift Mr. Bailey. No candidate for any office is believed to have ever spent more to interfere in another party’s primaries.
The Illinois governor’s career is now on track to become the most expensive campaign for a non-presidential office in U.S. history.
Public and private polls ahead of Tuesday’s primaries show that Mr. Bailey has a 15 percentage point advantage over Mr. Irvin and four other candidates. His strength indicates the broader shift in Republican politics across the country, away from urban power intermediaries and toward a rural base that demands allegiance to a far-right agenda aligned with Mr. Trump.
For Mr. Bailey, the proposal to demand Chicago, which he called “a hell hole” during a televised debate last month, encapsulates grievances that have been heard for a long time in rural central and southern Illinois. culturally distant and very resentful places of the great politically dominant city. .
“The rest of the 90 percent of the land mass is not really happy with how 10 percent of the land mass runs things,” Mr. Bailey in an interview aboard his campaign bus outside a bar in Green Valley, a town of 700 people. people south of Peoria. “A lot of people out of that 10 percent don’t have a voice, and that’s a problem.”
This argument has resonated with conservative voters who met with Mr. Bailey, who seemed to compare Mr. Irvin with Satan during a Facebook Live monologue in February.
“Everything we pay and do is compatible with Chicago,” said Pam Page, a security analyst at State Farm Insurance in McLean, Illinois, who came to see Mr. Bailey and Lincoln. “The center of the state never seems to have any of the benefits or any of the bribes.”
The attack on Democratic television advertising that attacked Mr. Irvin and tried to elevate Mr. Bailey has thwarted the mayor of Aurora, whose campaign was conceived and funded by the same team of Republicans who helped choose moderate socialites such as Mark Kirk in the Senate in 2010 and Bruce Rauner as governor in 2014. His recipe: In the strong Republican years, find moderate candidates who can beat voters in the Chicago suburbs and spend a lot of money.
Mr. Irvin, 52, adjusts to his bill. Born to a teenage single mother in Aurora, he is a veteran of the First Gulf War Army who served as a local prosecutor before becoming the city’s first black mayor, the second most populous in the world. Illinois.
Kenneth Griffin, the billionaire founder of Chicago hedge funds who is the main benefactor of the Illinois Republicans, gave $ 50 million to Mr. Irvin only for the primaries and promised to spend more for him in the general election. Mr. Griffin, the richest man in the state, will not support any other Republican in the race against Mr. Pritzker, according to his spokesman, Zia Ahmed. Mr. Griffin announced last week that his hedge fund and his trading company would move to Miami.
While Mr. Irvin, a longtime Republican who, however, has voted in a series of recent Democratic primaries in Illinois, was expecting an expensive dogfight in the general election, feeling frustrated by the intervention of Mr. Pritzker, a billionaire who is the richest in America. elected official.
“This has never happened in the history of our nation for a Democrat to spend so much money to prevent an individual from becoming the Republican Party candidate,” Mr. Irvin in an interview after visiting a manufacturing plant in Wauconda, a well-known place. suburb to do north of Chicago. “There are six opponents in the Republican primaries, six of them. But when you turn on the television, all you see is me.”
Mr. Griffin said “JB Pritzker is afraid to face Richard Irvin in the general election.”
He added: “He and his fellow DGA have shamelessly spent tens of millions of dollars intervening in Republican primaries in an effort to deceive Republican voters.”
Mr. Pritzker said the ads emphasized Mr. Conservative’s credentials. Bailey had the same message he plans to use in the general election. He said he was not afraid to sue Mr. Irvin or the millions that Mr. Griffin would spend on his campaign.
“There’s a disaster,” Mr. Pritzker in an interview Friday. “Everyone is anti-election. Literally, you can go down to the list of things that I think really matter to people across the state. And, you know, they’re all terrible. So I will take any of them and win them. “
The main career alone has grossed $ 100 million in television advertising. Mr. Pritzker has spent more money on TV commercials than anyone who shows up at any office in the country this year. Mr. Irvin ranks second, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company.
Far behind them is Mr. Bailey, whose main financial benefactor is Richard Uihlein, the billionaire mega-donor of far-right Republican candidates, who has donated $ 9 million out of the $ 11.6 million that Mr. Bailey has raised and sent 8 million more to a political action committee. who has attacked Mr. Irvin as un conservative.
The presidential policy of both parties hovers over the primaries.
Mr. Irvin will not say who he voted for in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and in the interview he declined to say whether he would support Trump if he ran for president in 2024. He said President Biden he was “the rightful president.” ”And said former Vice President Mike Pence had fulfilled his constitutional duty on January 6, 2021.
As the primaries approach, statewide Republicans are worried about the possibility that Mr. Bailey dragged the entire GOP ticket in November.
Rep. Darin LaHood predicted an “overwhelming” victory in Bailey’s primary in his central Illinois district, but warned it would be toxic to general election voters.
“Bailey will not play in the suburbs,” Mr. LaHood, who has not supported any candidates in the primaries. “It has a southern accent, a southern accent. I mean, it should work in Missouri, not the suburbs of Chicago.”
Former Gov. Jim Edgar, the only Illinois governor outside the Chicago area since World War II, said the rise of Mr. Bailey demonstrated that party leaders “do not have the reach or control of their constituents as they did in the 1980s.” and the 90s ”.
Supporters of Mr. Bailey says the real fight is for the soul of the Republican Party. For them, winning the primaries and taking control of the state party is as important, if not more so, than winning the general election.
Thomas DeVore, his attorney in the pandemic lawsuits against Mr. Pritzker, appears as attorney general on a blackboard with Mr. Bailey. In the campaign, he wears loose-fitting golf shirts that reveal his tattoos on his forearm: “Freedom” on his right arm, “Liberty” on his left.
“Whether Darren and I win the general election or not, whether we can at least get control within our own party, I think in the long run we have a chance to succeed,” Mr. DeVore at his stop in Green Valley.
And David Smith, the executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, an anti-abortion organization whose political arm supported Mr. Bailey said the Republican race was about excluding moderate party elements.
“These primaries,” he said, “must purge the Republican Party of those who are selfish snollygosters.”
Catie Edmondson contributed reports from Mendon, Ill.