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The Republican primary for governor of Illinois is raising eyebrows because three billionaires are spending tens of millions of dollars to influence Tuesday’s election result – and because one of the billionaires is Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.
Pritzker and the Association of Democratic Governors (DGA) spent $ 30 million on commercials attacking a moderate Republican mayor from the suburbs of Chicago. Critics accuse the governor, who is running for re-election this year, of trying to ensure that his opponent in the general election will be a rural MP who called for the expulsion of the city of Chicago from Illinois.
The gambit can work. Polls show that US Senator Darren Bailey’s candidacy is growing and he received support from former President Donald Trump last weekend.
Meanwhile, Aurora Mayor Richard Irwin, whose campaign was backed by a $ 50 million contribution from hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, declined.
The third billionaire in the battle, Richard Wichline, who owns the shipping company Uline, gave $ 9 million to Bailey’s campaign and donated about the same amount to a political action committee organized to attack Irwin.
But Pritzker’s expenses sparked a conversation.
Kent Redfield, an honorary professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said the state’s most influential Democrat in Tuesday’s Republican primary was the first in the state’s election history.
“They are obviously trying to strengthen Bailey because they think he is the weaker candidate. Because if it’s between Pritzker and Irwin … it’s a much tougher battle, “Redfield said.
After Pritzker began heading for Irwin in the spring, Bailey got up. Pritzker is expected to win against one contender: Beverly Miles. Bailey led the Republicans, followed by Irwin, then Gary Rabin, former State Senator Paul Schimpf, Jesse Sullivan and Max Solomon.
Both Pritzker and the DGA also cite Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, which overturned Rowe vs. Wade to distinguish between the governor and his Republican opponents, some of whom praised the decision, which deprives the constitutional right to abortion. Jael Scheinfeld, a DGA spokeswoman in Illinois, called Pritzker “the latest line of defense to protect women’s access to safe, legal reproductive care.” She added: “Voters will remember this in the ballot box.”
Pritzker, speaking at an abortion rights event last month, tried to please voters outside of Chicago and its suburbs. “As you move to the outskirts, we also win over voters because they understand that the radical right is not what Illinois is for and does not represent suburban women,” he said.
All Republican candidates, with the exception of Solomon, support abortion if a pregnant woman’s life is in danger. Irwin, Sullivan and Schimpf say abortion is justified in cases of rape and incest. Rabin doesn’t, and Bailey hasn’t answered the question directly yet. He only said he supported abortion if it protected the pregnant woman’s health.
The governor also sparked speculation about presidential aspirations. This month, he traveled to New Hampshire to speak at the state’s annual congress of Democrats. While on the East Coast, he campaigned for other Democratic candidates, including Gov. Maura Healy and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, and lobbied the Democratic National Committee to host its four-year meeting in Chicago in 2024.
The changing demographics in Illinois have allowed Democrats to win elections by dominating fewer counties than was required in the past, even though Republicans are winning more counties across the state. The counties now controlled by Democrats – Chicago and its counties – are among the most populous and racially and ethnically diverse. By comparison, support for Illinois Republicans now comes from large areas in the lower state, where population growth is either stagnant or shrinking.
Nothing illustrates this change more than the 2020 general election, when President Biden defeated Trump by 17 percentage points, enduring only 14 of the state’s 102 counties. (By comparison, Barack Obama won 46 counties in 2008.) Similarly, Pritzker successfully defeated incumbent Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018, enduring only 16 counties. Pritzker’s strength came from the northeastern pocket of the state — Cook County, which includes Chicago, and four of the five collared counties — and he hardly campaigned elsewhere.
“Republicans don’t seem to have enough voters and not enough growth,” Redfield said. “Although they may have strong voters, their base is shrinking. Rural Illinois is not growing. “
Some areas of lower or central Illinois are closer to St. Louis, Louisville and Nashville than to Chicago. The outrage has been raging for decades. In a major debate last month, Bailey expressed this anger, calling Chicago a “criminal, corrupt, dysfunctional hellhole.” In 2019, he sponsored a bill to declare the city the 51st state and separate it from the rest of Illinois.
On Saturday, Trump backed Bailey, calling him “the only man who will take over and defeat one of America’s worst governors.”
The approval, made at the Illinois Central Fair, is unlikely to win many Bailey voters closer to Chicago.
Pritzker and the DGA spoke directly to these voters, airing television commercials adapted for the Republican primary. One ad is just a collage of videos of Irwin, who calls Pritzker a “great friend” and praises how he handles the coronavirus pandemic. “Why is he running at all?” The narrator asks.
Some warn that the Democrats’ strategy is uncertain. Wayne Steger, a political scientist at DePaul University in Chicago, said that given the unfavorable climate for Democrats, the plan could have the opposite effect.
Several factors could work against Illinois Democrats in November: Rising inflation and gas prices are hitting the hearts of suburban residents accustomed to driving long distances on the broad map of the Chicago region. Greater diversity in the suburbs, especially among the growing Spanish population, which opposes abortion and could be strengthened by last week’s Supreme Court ruling.
“Each of these issues can make a big difference,” Steger said in the general election. “If the national wave against the Liberal Democrats catches fire in Illinois, it could unite the Republicans,” Bailey said.
At the start of the Republican primary, Irwin appeared before the favorite. He had the support of Griffin, the richest man in Illinois, whose money was largely responsible for helping Rauner’s election in 2014. The founder and CEO of Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge fund, Griffin spent millions attacking. Pritzker and his policies in recent years. Last week, he announced he was moving to Florida.
But Irwin was not the favorite of the more conservative Illinois Republicans. Trump’s tenure has helped bring up local hard-line candidates such as Jeanne Ives, a former Chicago suburban MP who narrowly lost to Raunner in 2018. She supports Bailey and called Irwin a “Democrat, not a Republican” on social media.
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