Bailey's Needless Fight
2022 GOP nominee for Governor Darren Bailey walks off the stage after conceding the race to Governor JB Pritzker. Bailey is running for Congress in 2024. (Photo: Chicago Tribune)
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OPINION
The entry of Darren Bailey into the southern Illinois-based 12th Congressional District, where the former state Senator and 2022 GOP nominee for Governor is challenging incumbent Mike Bost, is a textbook example of how modern politics has become overwhelmed by personality-driven ego trips and seemingly no longer has anything to do with policy.
Bailey, the über-conservative firebrand, ran a weak General Election campaign in 2022, dragging down the ticket below him, especially in the suburbs, in his 11-point trouncing at the hands of Governor JB Pritzker.
Now, he’s back, challenging a popular conservative in a primary in a safely Republican district because…well…for what reason, exactly?
“We find ourself engulfed in a storm of woke nonsense,” Bailey said in his announcement speech on his Clay County farm on Independence Day. “Woke nonsense that seeks to divide us. Woke nonsense that is eroding our values.”
That’s a heckuva campaign slogan: “The Woke Nonsense Stops Here.”
In his address to around 250 supporters Tuesday, what policy proposals did Bailey lay out? Lower taxes? Pro-life legislation? A fix to our immigration system? Nope, back to those radical wokesters.
“I refuse to stand by while the radical left rips apart the very fabric of our society,” he said. “Together, we must rise up and fight back against this assault on our freedoms.”
The problem with this full-on wannabe Trump/DeSantis/Tucker Carlson clone of a campaign message is that Bailey isn’t that far off from Bost on any important policy issue. Bost is a reliably conservative vote who has even pandered to the right in recent years, joining the chorus of knuckleheads who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and, with the Bailey primary looming, voted with the far right against the debt ceiling compromise bill earlier this summer.
That doesn’t leave Bailey many avenues for attack.
Bailey is also starting the race in a significant fundraising hole. Bost will likely end the second quarter with close to a million dollars in the bank. Bailey starts at $0 and couldn’t transfer any of his state account into a federal account (though, his state account had less than $30,000 cash at the end of March.)
Bailey has charisma to drive out the evangelical base, but Bost has the money and organization to drive out the traditional GOP voter (as much as they still exist.) The Speaker Kevin McCarthy-controlled National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) already came out strongly for Bost and is willing to go hard to protect his incumbent. Bailey is banking on an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, but Trump has shown no inclination of wanting to get involved in the race (and likely won’t if it doesn’t benefit him.)
Bailey is setting sail on a vanity project. He wants a stage. He wants a platform. It will be mean, it will be scorched earth, it will be expensive, and it will divert Republican resources from other priorities downstate.
Is a needless fight really worth all that?
