CHICAGO — Illinois’ Republican candidates for governor are seeing their efforts to focus on local issues clouded by the overwhelming shadow of former President Donald Trump and his control over the national GOP.
As the five potential challengers to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker have all sought to use crime as an issue to make inroads with suburban voters where the GOP once held sway, the Republican National Committee last week declared the deadly Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection was just “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
It’s the latest example of how Trump and Republicans aligned with him have stepped on a message the party’s local candidates believe can move them into the future and away from the former president’s obsession with re-litigating the 2020 election that he lost.
“Trump’s a wild card. We know that. We know this whole thing is a wild card. Everybody in the Republican apparatus, running a campaign or whatever, they’re all petrified, I’m sure, of what’s going to happen going down the road,” Christopher Mooney, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said.
“When I say anything can happen, it’s more like he can say anything at any given moment that they’re going to have to justify,” Mooney said.
The five Republicans running for governor — Bull Valley businessman Gary Rabine, Petersburg cryptocurrency venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, state Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia and former state Sen. Paul Schimpf of Waterloo — have all done their best to dance around Trump and thread the needle of alienating neither Trump supporters nor anti-Trump moderates and independents.
Trump lauded the RNC’s statement on Jan. 6, which also censured Republican U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump branded the two Republicans as “horrible RINOs (Republican In Name Only)” who sit on what he called the House “unselect committee of political hacks” that is probing the insurrection and the former president’s role in it.
Some Republicans have criticized the RNC’s censure motion, led by Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who called Jan. 6 “a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election” of Democrat Joe Biden.
And Kinzinger, leader of an organization seeking to wrest control of the national GOP from the former president, tweeted that “every Republican” needs to be asked about the RNC’s resolution “until they answer it clearly. The time for choosing is now.”
The Republican candidates for governor in Illinois have had varied responses to Trump, his lies about the election and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Rabine, a Trump fundraiser, has said he is “not smart enough” to know if the 2020 presidential election was stolen as the former president falsely contends. Irvin and Sullivan have acknowledged Biden is president but have not said if they think the election was stolen or if they voted for Trump.
Six days after the insurrection, Bailey said on Twitter that Republicans “should stand up for our Republican president, and stand against the yearslong, nonstop personal and political assault against him led by an out-of-touch Democrat party and a few nominal Republicans, like Kinzinger.”
Schimpf acknowledged voting for Trump in 2020 but said the former president failed to make his case in court and did not win the election.
When the candidates and their campaigns were asked directly if they agreed with the RNC’s description of the insurrection, the general response was that they are focused on Illinois and that lawbreakers should be prosecuted.
Only Schimpf directly addressed the RNC’s action, calling it “misguided” and said that those who “chose to break the law … should be held accountable.”
But Schimpf, a former military prosecutor, said the RNC’s position “will have no impact” on the governor’s race and Pritzker’s “disgraceful lack of support for law enforcement.”
Rabine sought to paint the RNC’s action as irrelevant to the state election.
“I am running for governor of Illinois. I don’t focus on what the RNC does or says. I’m focused on Illinois,” Rabine said. “J.B. Pritzker has failed miserably in his most primary function as governor — keeping people safe and everyone here knows that. Statements by anyone, including the RNC, have no impact whatsoever on my mission to clean up J.B.’s crime mess.”
Rabine understates his interest in national Republican politics. He is an advisory board member of Turning Point USA, the controversial Trump-aligned conservative youth group founded by Illinoisan Charlie Kirk. Its political arm has endorsed his candidacy. Rabine also is a member of the Republican Governors Association.
Sullivan also said that he is focused on Illinois issues, while saying “people who break the law should be prosecuted, period.”
“This is something that J.B. Pritzker and Illinois Democrats fail to recognize each and every day, as they continue to erode accountability in our state,” Sullivan said.
Irvin’s campaign did not directly address his view of the RNC’s action. Instead, the campaign said he supports peaceful protest “but believes anyone who breaks the law should be rightfully prosecuted.”
Irvin accused Pritzker of using the RNC’s declaration as a “distraction from his disastrous record” on crime.
Bailey, who prompted Kinzinger’s tweet by walking out of a Statehouse news conference when asked about the RNC declaration, said later that “anybody that breached that (U.S. Capitol) should be tried or should be punished.”
Asked by a reporter if the RNC’s labeling of the Jan. 6 riot as “legitimate political discourse” undermines local Republican attacks of Pritzker on crime, Bailey said: “No. It frustrates me that people did indeed pass law enforcement officials and come in on (government) property as they did when the doors were closed. It shouldn’t have happened.”
A Bailey campaign volunteer from Chicago, Lawrence Ligas, is facing charges over illegally entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The Bailey campaign said he was not a paid staff member.
Despite Republican attempts to try to portray questions about Trump and his RNC allies as a distraction, Mooney, the political scientist, said the inquiries are likely to continue every time the former president creates a fresh controversy.
Candidates courting the support of Trump and his voters will have to reconcile their anti-crime-message with the Republican Party’s message that the insurrection was “legitimate political discourse,” Mooney said.
“They need to be aligned with Trump to win the nomination and that’s a fundamental problem. You’ve got two different electorates — the Republican primary electorate and the general election electorate. Those are two completely different things,” Mooney said.
“The Democratic electorate is also very different, but it’s closer to the general election electorate because there are fewer Republicans in the state. And where Republicans live, in less populated areas of the state, they’re all-in Trump people,” he said.
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