Mark Curran is Banking on Law & Order
Former Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran is running a long shot campaign for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Dick Durbin.
When political analysts discuss which Senate races will decide who controls the chamber in 2021, Arizona, North Carolina, Maine and Colorado get the attention. Illinois? Not so much.
Dick Durbin, Illinois’ senior senator, is up for re-election in a race the Cook Political Report rates as “Solid D”. Durbin has roughly $5 million in his campaign coffers to win his fourth term.
Standing in his way is Republican candidate Mark Curran, the former Lake County Sheriff.
“I feel like I’m the right guy at the right time,” Curran said. “At some point, somebody has to step up and say, ‘enough is enough. Move on, guy. See how hard it is for the rest of us out there who have to make a payroll, who have to make a mortgage’ and what have you. Dick Durbin has really never had a job that’s not a government job.”
Curran may not have widespread name recognition or the cash to make Durbin sweat, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a glass half full kind of guy.
“I’m somebody that has that background people are desperately going to want,” he said. “It’s about a grassroots ground game.”
Federal Elections Commission records show Curran has around $20,000 to run his campaign. Curran contends big donors don’t want to cross Durbin, the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate. The former sheriff is banking on the “law and order” message promoted by President Trump to resonate with voters around the state.
“Now you got a guy who’s running for United States Senate who arguably has more law enforcement experience than anyone who’s ever been there, certainly anybody that’s there right now,” the longtime sheriff said. “It’s a perspective I think the country could use right now.”
The wild card in the race is millionaire businessman Willie Wilson. He’s running as an independent, bankrolling his own campaign and could siphon heavily Democratic African American votes from Durbin.
Curran senses an opening. He’s confident he’ll carry the more Republican-friendly areas of southern, central and western Illinois. He says the election will be decided in his neck of the woods, in northern Illinois. Trump lost Lake County by more than 20 points in 2016. Curran lost his re-election bid in 2018 by 137 votes.
“I’m going to do better than Donald Trump in these collar counties (of Chicago),” Curran said. “He’s my president and I think he’s done a good job, but I don’t have his baggage. People haven’t witnessed me go after people in a way they find unseemly or what have you so I’m going to do better than him up here (in northern Illinois).”
Curran said the potentially competitive Cook County State’s Attorney race between Democratic incumbent Kim Foxx and Republican challenger Pat O’Brien will help his margins in Chicago. He thinks capturing even just a quarter of the vote in the city will give him a shot to pull off an upset. The stars would need to align for Curran’s vision to become a reality. Even though moderate Republican Senator Mark Kirk won in 2010, he was soundly defeated in the last presidential election year in 2016.
In a year when the unimaginable keeps happening, Curran wouldn’t mind being the latest “only in 2020” storyline.