Illinois' fall campaign kicks off overshadowed by distractions

Labor Day marks the unofficial yet traditional launch of the fall general election campaign, and for the major candidates it also means a shift in focus from downstate fairs, tours and rallies to the vote-rich Chicago area, where statewide races are typically decided.

While politicians fanned out across the state this weekend for holiday parades and other events, this year’s campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate have been notable for the distractions — national politics, internal infighting, cash concerns and future aspirations — that have clouded the candidates’ messaging.

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Among Chicago voters, there’s also the distraction of a looming mayoral race that has drawn more interest than what many may view as a perfunctory Nov. 3 state election.

All campaigns ultimately come down to a referendum on the candidates, and this general election is no exception.

For Democrat JB Pritzker, that means his tenure in office, as he seeks a rare third term as Illinois’ chief executive while potentially seeking a White House bid two years hence. For his Republican challenger, former state lawmaker Darren Bailey, that means trying to escape the yoke of an unpopular-in-Illinois President Donald Trump, as well as memories of Bailey’s nearly 13-percentage-point loss to Pritzker four years ago. Meanwhile, an independent candidacy from little-known former GOP political operative Collin Corbett looms.

In the U.S. Senate race, the battle to succeed retiring Illinois senior Sen. Dick Durbin comes down to Pritzker’s two-time former running mate, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, and business owner and ex-state Republican Chair Don Tracy. Stratton has largely treated Tracy as a distraction by ignoring him. Tracy has sought to paint Stratton as part of the Democrats’ leftward progressive-socialist wing but has few outside resources to try to deliver his message.

The leading candidates atop the GOP ticket — Tracy, from Springfield, and Bailey, a former state representative and senator from Xenia — are both from downstate, a vivid reminder of how regionalized the Republican Party has become as Illinois’ more populous northeastern region has grown more Democratic.

Both men also lack the big money from major donors who have helped fuel past GOP campaigns. Four years ago, Bailey was boosted by more than $50 million from national uber-conservative donor Richard Uihlein of Lake Forest. Uihlein backed a Bailey opponent in the March primary, though late last month Uihlein gave Bailey a token $6,900 contribution.

Pritzker, by contrast, an entrepreneur and an heir to the Hyatt hotels fortune, has put nearly $440 million of his own wealth into his campaign fund since his first winning bid for governor in 2018, including $65 million last month. In that time period, he has spent $375 million.

That funding gap has left Bailey running a low-budget, social-media-driven campaign focused on the key 2026 political theme of “affordability,” as he throws out campaign pledges with little explanation of how he would accomplish them if he won — particularly with a General Assembly that will likely be overwhelmingly Democratic.

Bailey has proposed capping and reducing local schools’ dependence on property taxes by increasing the state’s share of education funding. But he has not said where those billions of dollars of state school revenues would come from.

Illinois spends about $45 billion on public grade and high schools, with property taxes covering about 64% of that total, state funds handling less than a quarter and federal sources responsible for 12%. Raising state school funding enough to meaningfully cut property taxes would be virtually impossible without a major state tax increase, which Bailey opposes. Even the state’s current Evidence-Based Funding Formula for schools falls billions of dollars short of its own adequacy goals.

Bailey also has promised to end tolls on the Illinois Tollway without fully addressing how that would be done.

Abolishing the toll roads would require the state to pay off $8.2 billion in outstanding bonds, decide whether to continue a 15-year, $26.5 billion capital construction and repair plan, and shift at least $460 million annually for routine maintenance and operations from motor fuel taxes currently funding state highways, including roads in Bailey’s downstate base, according to tollway and bond documents.

Bailey’s arguments about property taxes and a looming 2027 toll hike could be potent political issues for voters. But his main adversary may not be Pritzker so much as himself, given his past positions on social issues, including opposition to abortion and gay rights, his criticism of Chicago and sanctuary immigration policies amid federal raids and his previous overt eagerness for Trump’s approval.

In this latest campaign run, Bailey has sought to downplay that past, saying he wants to focus on issues that unite Illinois. He calls reporters’ questions about Trump a distraction.

Yet Bailey, a successful downstate farmer, has expressed support for Trump’s tariffs, even as they have reduced the market for Illinois’ corn and soybeans. Of the tariffs, Bailey has said they are “a short-term pain for a long-term gain” and “the only tool that we have to get competitive again.” He has also sought to divert questions about the effects of Trump’s war in Iran on fuel and fertilizer products as Democratic talking points.

Bailey, who won Trump’s endorsement for governor against Pritzker four years ago, says he wouldn’t turn a presidential endorsement down again if he got one. And while he frames questions about Trump as an attempt to knock him off message, he has occasionally raised the subject himself — pointing out a few differences he has with the president, including his opposition to Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo XIV over the Iran war and Trump’s push for data center development amid widespread and growing public resistance.

Bailey also faces a Republican base beset by conspiracy theories and infighting over the party’s leadership, something that led Tracy to resign as state GOP chairman in June 2024 after three and a half years in the post.

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At Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair last month, Bailey made a pitch for party unity. That same day, his running mate, Aaron Del Mar, a member of the governing Republican State Central Committee, made an unsuccessful closed-door pitch for $150,000 from the state GOP for get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of the statewide ticket. His request was rejected because no plan existed on how to spend the money.

Just days ago, Del Mar appeared in a Facebook video with Thomas DeVore, the party’s unsuccessful 2022 attorney general candidate whose law license was suspended for 60 days last year for various infractions, including having a sexual relationship with a client. Del Mar vented his frustrations with the state GOP.

In the video, DeVore noted that new state GOP Chair Bob Grogan, the former DuPage County auditor, serves as treasurer of the campaign fund of Ted Dabrowski, whom Bailey defeated for the 2026 GOP governor nomination. DeVore said rather than help Bailey, Grogan wants to help Dabrowski become the 2030 nominee.

“I would like to think that that’s not true,” Del Mar told DeVore of Grogan as they sipped bourbon. “I have my concerns certainly.”

With Del Mar, of Palatine, serving as a regional tour guide and liaison for downstater Bailey, the GOP candidate for governor vowed that for his second bid, he would campaign heavily in Chicagoland, even renting an apartment in the South Loop. Yet Bailey has been forced to spend a large amount of time downstate trying to shore up support and encourage Republican turnout.

“Those counties that I won (in 2022) 90%, 97% of the vote — we won with a 40% turnout. We have got to win those counties with a 70% turnout,” Bailey said Wednesday after a campaign event in suburban Norridge.

“I’m confident with what we’ve been doing. Very confident,” he said. “So we are here for the next, whatever that is, 60 days. We’re here. I believe this is when it matters.”

As for Pritzker, the Democratic incumbent has largely recycled elements of his 2022 campaign against Bailey, returning to the argument that the Republican’s views are “too extreme” for Illinois voters. His well-funded, self-financed campaign has also given him room to explore a potential 2028 Democratic presidential bid. On Wednesday, he was in New Mexico — the fourth state on Democrats’ new 2028 primary calendar — meeting with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deb Haaland.

For as much as Pritzker is technically running against Bailey, he’s focused much more on his opposition to Trump and made little mention of his actual GOP opponent. It’s prompted a frustrated Bailey at one event to contend that Pritzker “hates President Trump more than he loves Illinois.”

Still, take Pritzker’s speech at a rally in downstate Belleville late last month, part of a statewide bus tour of Illinois. It appeared to be more of a primer for a presidential run than a presentation by a governor seeking reelection.

“Our state is under siege by a petty, corrupt man in Washington, who ran for president because he wanted to live in a palace and get rich. Our state is under siege by the skilled sycophants who surround the president and use his base desires as cover for their own destructive agendas. Our state is under siege by the many, many Republicans who are either too infatuated or too frightened to fight Donald Trump for the people they serve. Republicans like Darren Bailey,” Pritzker said.

“You can be a lot of things and be an effective governor, but one thing you cannot be is a coward. And right now, Darren Bailey and the Republican Party is deathly afraid of reality,” Pritzker said.

Pritzker said “the old social contract” of going to school, working hard, learning a skill, finding a job and affording a house has been broken under Trump. Political leaders, he said, need to refocus the conversation to voters who “are holding it together with duct tape and string” and want them to do more to make their life better rather than be forced to live a life of just “getting up, going to work and grinding it out until you die.”

“I’m willing to confront the people in my own party who are too feckless to fight, and I’m willing to confront the people in the Republican Party who are too cruel to lead,” he said.

As the rhetoric begins to heat up in the governor’s race, the general election for the rare open-seat U.S. Senate contest has been quiet.

Stratton, making her first bid for statewide office as a solo candidate, won a bruising race for the Democratic nomination with help from Pritzker. But her subsequent campaigning has not been notable and has been largely limited to obligatory Democratic events and Pritzker bill signings.

Stratton was absent from the traditional agricultural roundtable organized by the Illinois Farm Bureau, despite her role as head of the Governor’s Rural Affairs Council and her launch of the “Ag Connects Us All” initiative to promote the state’s largest industry. Stratton was in Martha’s Vineyard for events that included a Democratic National Committee fundraiser, something Tracy called a “misplaced priority.”

“If I were a Chicago Democrat trying to run statewide and win, and not just one county, I would certainly not ignore a part of the state that I don’t know and understand,” Tracy said. Stratton’s campaign said she had plans to meet agriculture officials the following week.

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Tribune reporter Jeremy Gorner contributed.