LINCOLN, ill. Darren Bailey, the forerunner in the Republican primary for governor of Illinois, finished his blunt speech at a senior center in this central Illinois town last week when a voice shouted, “Can we pray for you?”
Mr Bailey readily agreed. The speaker, a youth mentor from Lincoln named Kathy Schmidt, placed her right hand on his left shoulder as he closed his eyes and held out his hands, palms open.
“More than anything,” she prayed, “I ask that in this election you raise up the righteous and defeat the wicked.. ”
The wicked, in this case, are the Chicago-based moderates who aim to retain control of the Illinois Republican Party. And the righteous is mr. Bailey, a far-right state senator unlike any other nominee who has presented the party in living memory as governor.
a 56-year-old farmer whose home in southern Illinois is closer to Nashville than to Chicago, he wears his hair in a cut, speaks with a thick swing and does not rub off his conservative credentials, like so many previous GOP- candidates have. done to try to appeal to suburbs in this overwhelming Democratic state. On Saturday, former President Donald J. Trump called Mr. Bailey at a rally near Quincy, Ill.
Mr. Bailey has carefully outlined $ 50 million plans by Illinois Republican leaders to nominate Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora, a moderate suburban person with an inspiring personal story they believed could win back the governor’s mansion in Springfield in what widely predicted to be a winning year for Republicans.
Mr. Bailey was assisted by an unprecedented intervention by Mr. Pritzker and the Pritzker-funded Democratic Governors’ Association, which together spent nearly $ 35 million to help Mr. To attack Irvin while trying to kill Mr. To lift Bailey up. No candidate for any office has probably ever spent more time interfering in another party’s primary election.
The Illinois governor’s race is now on track to become the most expensive campaign for a non-presidential office in U.S. history.
Public and private polls ahead of Tuesday’s primary show that Mr. Bailey a 15 percentage point lead over Mr. Irvin and four other candidates have. His strength points to the broader shift in Republican politics across the country, away from urban power brokers and to a rural base that requires fidelity to a far-right agenda that is in line with Mr. Trump.
For mr. Bailey, the proposal to tax Chicago, which he mentioned during a televised debate last month, contains the grievances that have long been felt about rural Central and Southern Illinois – places culturally far away and long grieved over the political dominant large city.
“The rest of the 90 percent of the landmass is not really happy about how 10 percent of the landmass directs things,” he said. Bailey said in an interview aboard his campaign bus outside a bar in Green Valley, a 700-person town south of Peoria. “A large number of people outside those 10 percent do not have a voice, and that’s a problem.”
This pitch resonated with the conservative voters who went to Mr. Bailey streamed, which apparently Mr. Irvin compared to Satan during a Facebook Live monologue in February.
“Everything we pay and do supports Chicago, ”said Pam Page, a security analyst at State Farm Insurance in McLean, Ill. Bailey came to see Lincoln. “Downstate just never seems to get any of the fringe benefits or any of the refunds.”
The onslaught of Democratic television commercials that Mr. Irvin attack and mr. Bailey is trying to elevate, frustrated the Aurora mayor, whose campaign was conceived and funded by the same team of Republicans who helped elect Social Democrats like Mark Kirk to the Senate in 2010 and Bruce Rauner as governor in 2014. Their recipe: In strong Republican years, find moderate candidates who can win voters in Chicago’s suburbs – and spend a ton of money.
Mr. Irvin, 52, fitted their account. Born of a teenage single mother in Aurora, he is an Army veteran of the first Gulf War who served as a local prosecutor before becoming the city’s first Black Mayor, the second most populous in Illinois.
Kenneth Griffin, the Chicago billionaire hedge fund founder who is the main benefactor for Illinois Republicans, gave $ 50 million to Mr. Irvin gave up for the primary alone and promised to spend more for him in the general election. Mr. According to his spokeswoman, Zia Ahmed, Griffin, the state’s richest man, will not beat any other Republican in the race against Mr. Pritzker does not support. Mr. Griffin announced last week that his hedge fund and trading firm would move to Miami.
While Mr. Irvin, a longtime Republican who nevertheless voted in a series of recent Democratic primary elections in Illinois, expected an expensive dogfight in the general election, he was frustrated by the primary season intervention of Mr. Pritzker, a billionaire who is America’s richest. elected official.
“It has never happened in the history of our nation that a Democrat would spend so much money to stop one individual from becoming the Republican nominee,” he said. Irvin said in an interview after taking a tour of a manufacturing plant in Wauconda, a well-to-do suburb north of Chicago. “There are six Republican primary opponents — six of them. But if you turn on the television, I’m all you see. ”
Mr. Griffin said that “JB Pritzker is afraid to oppose Richard Irvin in the general election.”
He added: “He and his accomplices at the DGA have spent tens of millions of dollars shamelessly interfering in the Republican primary in an effort to deceive Republican voters.”
Mr. Pritzker said ads that Mr. Bailey’s Conservative credentials emphasize the same message he plans to use in the general election. He said he was not afraid to speak out against Mr. Irvin to run or for the millions that Mr. Griffin will not spend on his campaign.
“It’s a mess there,” he said. Pritzker said in an interview Friday. “They are all anti-choice. Literally, you can go down on the list of things that I think really matter to people across the state. And, you know, they’re all awful. So I will take any of them and I will beat them. ”
The primary race alone drew $ 100 million from TV commercials. Mr. Pritzker has spent more money on TV commercials than anyone else who has performed for any office in the country this year. Mr. Irvin is second, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company.
Far behind them is mr. Bailey, whose primary financial benefactor is Richard Uihlein, the billionaire mega-donor of far-right Republican candidates, who donated $ 9 million of the $ 11.6 million that Mr. Bailey raised another $ 8 million for a political action committee. what mr. Attacked Irvin as insufficiently conservative.
Presidential politics for both parties threatens the primary.
Mr. Irvin will not say who he voted for in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and declined in the interview to say whether he was Mr. Trump would support if he were elected president in 2024. He did not call President Biden “the legitimate president. ”And said former Vice President Mike Pence performed his constitutional duty on January 6, 2021.
As the primary approaches, established Republicans across the state are concerned about the prospect of Mr. Bailey will tow out the entire GOP ticket in November.
Understand the 2022 midterm elections
Why are these mid-term races so important? This year’s race could tip the balance of power in Congress to Republicans, causing President Biden’s agenda for the second half of his term to stumble. They will also test former president Donald J. Trump’s role as a GOP kingmaker. Here’s what to know:
Representative Darin LaHood predicted an “overwhelming” Bailey primary victory in his Central Illinois district, but warned he would be toxic to general election voters.
“Bailey is not going to play in the suburbs,” said Mr. LaHood, who did not endorse a primary candidate. “He has a southern accent, a southern accent. I mean, he should be running in Missouri, not suburban Chicago. ”
Former Gov. Jim Edgar, the only governor of Illinois from outside the Chicago area since World War II, said Mr. Bailey’s turnout shows that party leaders “do not have the grip or control of their constituents as they did in the ’80s and’ 90s.”
Mr. Bailey’s supporters say the real battle is for the soul of the Republican Party. For them, winning the primary and taking control of the state party is just as important, if not more so, than winning the general election.
Thomas DeVore, his lawyer in the pandemic lawsuits against Mr. Pritzker, is on a list with Mr. Bailey. On the campaign trail, he wears unstamped golf shirts that reveal his forearm tattoos – “Freedom” on his right arm, “Liberty” on his left.
““Whether Darren and I win the general election or not, if we can at least gain control within our own party, I think in the long run we have an opportunity to be successful,” he said. DeVore said at their stop in Green Valley.
And David Smith, the executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, an anti-abortion organization whose political arm Mr. Bailey endorsed, saying the GOP race is about cutting out the party’s moderate elements.
“This primary, “he said,” should purge the Republican Party of those who are self-serving snollygosters. “
katie edmondson reported by Mendon, Ill.