Accentuating the schisms that have helped make Republicans the superminority political party in Illinois, former Illinois House GOP leader Jim Durkin said he is endorsing Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker for a third term over Republican nominee Darren Bailey in the Nov. 3 general election.
“His campaign is going nowhere, and he’s on a foolish escapade,” Durkin said of Bailey, adding that the Republican governor nominee has “a delusional egomaniacal view of the world.”
Durkin’s refusal to support Bailey’s second consecutive bid against Pritzker is not surprising. But his public endorsement of the Democrat, in a video the governor’s campaign is scheduled to release Monday, marks a major break for Durkin, who still considers himself a Republican.
More Top Picks Best Golf Balls For High Handicappers
“I’ve worked with Pritzker, and I don’t agree with JB on a lot of things. But the fact is, he and I have worked together,” Durkin said. He cited Pritzker’s investment in infrastructure, the credit upgrades to steady the state’s finances and the governor’s support for “commonsense gun reforms.”
“I look at something that he (Pritzker) has done and this is nothing that Darren Bailey could ever, in his wildest dreams, if he was governor, would he ever be able to accomplish,” Durkin said. “We’ve got to shed Darren Bailey from the party and, I’m speaking for myself, but I am not going to throw away or waste a vote for governor this November, and that’s why I’m voting for JB Pritzker.”
In a statement, Pritzker returned the praise, saying that while the two didn’t always see eye to eye, “I never doubted his devotion to the people of our great state.”
“He was a partner in rebuilding Illinois’ infrastructure and strengthening our fiscal foundation — and an opponent of MAGA extremists driven only by their infatuation with Donald Trump,” Pritzker said. “Leader Durkin has the heart of a public servant, and I am honored to have his support in this campaign.”
Durkin — who in 2023 retired from the legislature after 24 years, including nine as House GOP leader — has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and his populist “Make America Great Again” movement. Durkin blames it for the decline of party moderates, particularly in the Chicago suburbs, once the heart of the party when Republicans were competitive statewide.
He also has long criticized Bailey, a wealthy downstate farmer and former state senator from Xenia. Durkin blamed Trump, and Bailey’s fealty toward him, for the drubbing Republican legislative candidates took in the 2022 general election. Bailey lost that election to Pritzker by nearly 13 percentage points while Democrats grew their state House majority to 78-40 over Republicans, which is the chamber’s current partisan makeup.
Durkin said Bailey’s loyalty to Trump, his opposition to abortion rights and gay rights, and a campaign steeped in his evangelical Christian faith turned off suburban voters in 2022, including women, a key voting bloc in the collar counties.
Bailey this time around has sought to distance himself from Trump and controversial social issues. But he has once again accepted Trump’s endorsement, and Pritzker has relentlessly sought to link him to a president who has lost Illinois three times and to remind voters of Bailey’s conservative stance on social issues.
“He can’t hide from his past and who he is,” said Durkin, who lives in and represented the western suburbs. “He is a right-wing evangelist and he is part of this MAGA fever that has gotten into the party. And this party needs to break that fever like a virus. We need to break that. He has not changed who he is.”
Bailey “can talk a big game, but the fact is that he’s an opportunist,” Durkin said. “He can try to suggest that he now understands Chicago and the suburbs. But the fact is, I know who he is. I know what he’s about. And, he doesn’t reflect the Republican principles that I grew up with or the ones that I ran on over the last 40 years and the ones that I supported.”
“We have lost so many voters because of this intolerance and exclusion that he has preached over the years where suburban Republicans, collar county Republicans, don’t identify themselves as Republican and they stay out of the primary … and that just leaves hardcore conservatives who control it,” Durkin added.
Durkin said his decision to back Pritzker follows such moves as veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove backing a Democrat for statewide office in Texas after lamenting how the state GOP had been infiltrated by “bigots,” and Cindy McCain backing Joe Biden over Trump in 2020. McCain was the wife of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain. Durkin was state chair of John McCain’s 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns.
More Top Picks Storage Patio
Durkin’s previous criticism of Trump and Bailey has drawn enmity from the more conservative elements of the state GOP.
“Jim Durkin can go kick rocks. Jim Durkin is a sellout RINO who has no business being involved in Republicans,” Bailey’s running mate, Aaron Del Mar, said on an Aug. 31 webcast, using the critical acronym “Republican in Name Only.”
In response, Durkin pointed to his decades of campaigning and fundraising on behalf of Republican candidates, awards from the American Conservative Union, his legislative record and his battles with former House Speaker Michael Madigan, the longtime Democratic leader now in federal prison.
“If (Del Mar) wants to call me a RINO based on that, he ought to go back to what he does best, which is serving as (Palatine) township road supervisor. I hear he does a really super job there,” Durkin said.
“My interests are creating a two-party state where we actually have a voice that can connect with suburban collar county and downstate voters,” Durkin said. “You can appeal to downstate voters without having this zealot-type approach toward government. Bailey stands for exclusion and intolerance and that’s now what the party’s about.”
Whether Durkin’s vision of a competitive two-party Illinois can be realized remains an open question.
When he stepped down from the legislature more than three years ago, Durkin said, “I hope that at some point in the near future, and I think we’re getting there, that the party breaks its fever of Donald Trump and understands and learns from the past. Some people will never get there.”