One of the candidates was carrying a flamethrower. Another handy garden scissors.
And tens of millions of dollars later, the state of Illinois has reached the end of a massive season of television and digital advertising where competing campaigns sought to turn each other into political sawdust.
GOP primary voters will choose from a six-candidate field in a campaign that could redefine the Illinois Republican Party, which has fallen in hard times after controlling the state executive mansion for 26 years in a row with a series of socially moderate , sometimes fiscally conservative. governors. It is shaping up to be one of the government campaigns with the most cash in at least a quarter of a century of American politics, thanks to the deep pockets of the richest men in Illinois.
The winner of this race will determine if the state GOP continues as a center-right party in Illinois, as it did during its salsa days, or if it is recognized as a subsidiary of former President Donald Trump with all the his conspiratorial greatness and denying elections. .
During the final hours of the governor’s primary, Trump came to Illinois on Saturday to give his kiss of approval to state Sen. Darren Bailey, R-Xenia, the state’s grain farmer with a different, rural touch to the his voice that suddenly caught fire in the race while calling Chicago a “hell hole.”
“Darren is just the man to take on and defeat one of America’s worst governors, JB Pritzker. He’s one of the worst,” Trump called out to more than 2,000 supporters in a campaign rally shortened by a storm near Quincy while Bailey was by his side, radiant.
Bailey has done much of his communication with voters with a daily chat on his Facebook page, which is a mix of personal jokes about his day, the Democratic school and the old Sunday school built around the scripture readings and prayer. Last weekend, he didn’t mention any of his Republican rivals by name, and instead almost seemed to go beyond the primaries in a fall clash against Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.
Governor JB Pritzker greets the crowd during the 51st Annual Pride Parade on the North Side, Sunday, June 26, 2022.
Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times
“Tuesday is the big day,” Bailey said on his campaign Facebook page. “It’s when we start the change in Illinois, and I can assure you that Governor Pritzker is very, very worried and scared of this moment because he knows the people of Illinois are tired of what’s going on.”
Bailey stepped up in the polls during the final months of the campaign and entered election day Tuesday ahead of Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin; Petersburg venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan; Bull Valley businessman Gary Rabine; former state senator Paul Schimpf of Waterloo; and Hazel Crest attorney Max Solomon.
If recent polls are correct, Sullivan may outperform Irvin. And the last few weeks of Sullivan’s campaign show that he is doing everything he can to try to make this happen, including attending the Trump rally in which the former president opted for Bailey.
Bailey turned around early political predictions that Irvin would be the undisputed favorite in the race under Chicago hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin declared Irvin as his choice to oust Pritzker this fall.
With Griffin’s endorsement came a staggering $ 50 million in checks to Irvin’s campaign, and a political look.
All that money from Griffin didn’t clear the field for Irvin. Instead, it made him the target of a multifrontal assault of negative attack announcements funded by Pritzker, the Association of Democratic Governors, Bailey and others, while showing the mayor who previously voted Democratic as a fake Republican. By raising Bailey’s conservative credentials, Pritzker cleverly portrayed Irvin as out of touch with the GOP base.
Irvin also did no favors through his performance at a May press conference designed to attack Pritzker for the deaths of 36 COVID-19 residents at the LaSalle Veterans House during the 2020 pandemic peak.
Instead of getting the headlines, Irvin was unable to give journalists consistent answers about his positions on abortion and what he would do if Roe v. Wade was overturned, a really important question given last week’s Supreme Court ruling reversing the historic case of abortion. Irvin also stumbled when asked if he had voted for Trump in 2016.
For Republican primary voters, these are two important issues, with a Chicago Sun-Times / WBEZ poll showing that likely GOP voters in Illinois are very much in favor of Trump. Fans of the party seemed to be taking note of Irvin’s awkward non-responses as he writhed into the microphone that day.
Then, just days before the election, Irvin’s main sponsor, Griffin, announced that he would move his hedge fund and market creation companies to Miami. Griffin’s camp insisted that Irvin’s fallen popularity had nothing to do with the decision.
The increase in support of the Bailey GOP was first evidenced in the Chicago Sun-Times / WBEZ poll, conducted on June 6 and 7, which showed him 15 percentage points ahead of the mayor of Bailey. ‘Aurora.
If Bailey ends up winning Tuesday, voters will embrace a Springfield rookie who passed a term in the Illinois House before moving to the state Senate last year. He was part of a group of legislators in central-eastern Illinois known as the Eastern Bloc, a group that seemed to have little to do with the wing of the GOP establishment and that regularly put its nose to it. to Pritzker as a far-left mass.
Bailey put his name on a resolution designed to cut Chicago off Lincoln Land as a 51st state.
And it became a legal headache for Pritzker when he sued the governor early in the pandemic for his stay at home and other executive orders for COVID-19, moves that showed an early promise for Bailey, but that eventually they failed.
In the midst of all this, Bailey was kicked out of the House floor for refusing to wear a mask.
During his campaign, Bailey created his Facebook persona and used the social media platform as a daily place for conversations from the studio at his Clay County cottage, nearly 250 miles south of Clay County. Chicago.
Citadel founder Ken Griffin invested $ 50 million in Richard Irvin’s campaign, but polls show it could be in vain.
On Monday, Bailey completed the final stage of a 102-county change across the state, offering a case study on the political turmoil and a contrast to Irvin, who participated in an almost garden-like strategy. of roses, apparently designed to strengthen your chances in the fall. .
Irvin, who was christened “JB Pritzker’s worst nightmare” in his ads, was in the campaign in moderation and was rarely accessible to reporters. Last week, Irvin’s public agenda showed him with three stops Tuesday and Wednesday and visits Saturday to Manhattan and a Grundy County pub whose name offers a political date as good as any Illinois politician could look for. : Honest Abe’s Tap & Grill.
Irvin’s supporters stood by his candidate, although it seemed that a sense of reality had been created due to his lack of brilliance in the polls.
“I still maintain my statements that he is the strongest candidate to challenge JB Pritzker in November, but JB Pritzker has done a great job interfering in the Republican primaries, and it looks like he will achieve what he set out to achieve. – the weakest of the group, ”said House minority leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, who co-chairs the Irvin campaign.
“Mother Teresa would look like the dark knight if she were there [Irvin’s] position. This is what happens. Every imperfection you have and anything you’ve done throughout your life will expand by a thousand because of this business and how it’s managed, ”Durkin said last Thursday.
But with the victory possibly in his hands, Bailey told his Facebook followers over the weekend that his candidacy will mark the beginning of a new era of conservatism that will transform Illinois and Chicago.
“Look back at Illinois and find out when was the last time Illinois had a Conservative Republican governor who stood up and did something. It’s been a long, long time,” he said. “And I can assure you that since d ‘those days, Illinois has plummeted. We have become a laugh. … Friends, these days are coming to an end ”.
Dave McKinney and Tina Sfondeles cover Illinois politics and government for WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.