Time for the Illinois GOP to Change or Die
Then-U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Salvi, now the Chair of the Illinois Republican Party, and gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey campaign together in 2022. (Photo: Chicago Tribune)
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OPINION
If Tuesday’s results for Republicans in the primary election, especially in statewide races, shows anything, it shows the GOP is in the worst position it has ever been to win in Illinois.
Darren Bailey, the GOP nominee for Governor, is almost assured to lose to Governor JB Pritzker.
Democrats just nominated Juliana Stratton, who is no policy heavyweight and espouses the most progressive ideas of any major party Senate candidate we’ve ever seen. Republicans nominated a soon-to-be 76-year-old state GOP chair for the office who began his general election messaging Wednesday by attacking welfare recipients in a radio interview.
The GOP candidates for Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Comptroller may as well not even exist. There isn’t even a GOP candidate for State Treasurer (leaving an uncontested race for now for the first time in at least 90 years).
None of the congressional races in the state this fall will be competitive.
The House and Senate Republicans are projected to lose seats in their already superminority caucuses in November.
The party is without leadership, rudderless, without money, and being dragged down in the city and suburbs by a President with trash polling numbers.
The question is: how does the party dig out of it?
It may be time to come to the realization that the Republican Party of today simply can’t.
What about today’s current party structure makes you believe the GOP can be competitive in Illinois, during or after the era of Donald Trump?
It’s abundantly clear the GOP needs to do a full-on rebuild of everything it does from the state party apparatus, to fundraising, to candidate recruitment, to campaign management.
But who is going to lead them out of it? That is the likely question that can’t be answered. Who, outside of some Facebook rabble rousers who think they have all the answers, would actually take on such a task. And the “normie” Republicans that are left in the party already know it’s an uphill battle with a divided, clueless party.
Maybe it’s time for something different. Maybe the business community, which has abandoned the GOP in the post-Rauner era, starts recruiting and funding independent legislative candidates outside of the current party structure? Maybe you build a new farm team to make a real run at 2030.
Maybe it’s time to just light it all on fire and start a third party.
This isn’t working. Republicans know it. Democrats laugh at it. Voters lose with one party rule.
On the current track, it’s not going to get better anytime soon.
