Primary Voters Need to Get the Message to Save GOP
GOP primary voters nominated conservative Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) for Governor, but do they need to start nominating more moderates to win statewide races?
Illinois Republican candidates aren’t winning.
The GOP has lost 10 statewide elections in a row (counting two presidential races) and since 2016, the party has won just 3 of 14 seriously contested congressional races.
Republicans endured a drubbing last Tuesday that found GOP gubernatorial nominee Darren Bailey losing by 11-points to Governor JB Pritzker, continued its drought from statewide office, and lost all five contested congressional races in the state.
Does the GOP still have time to redirect its message and turn around their losing ways, or are they bound for irrelevancy in the style of California Republicans? (The California GOP hasn’t won a statewide race since 2006.)
Former Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady says Bailey was too conservative to win statewide.
“Had we had a consensus candidate, we could have won,” Brady said. “North of I-80, the party is non-existent.”
Nick Klitzing, a southern Illinois native and former Executive Director of the Illinois Republican Party says Bailey’s campaign only reached the most conservative voters in the state and the majority of voters weren’t interested in what he had to say.
“They were not buying what we were selling,” Klitzing said. “Darren Bailey only got the votes of the most hardcore Republican voters in the suburbs. He underperformed among soft Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in the suburbs and got destroyed among Democrat-leaning independents who decide elections in Illinois. The numbers don’t lie.”
Former Governor Bruce Rauner won DuPage County, the state’s second largest county, with 61% of the vote in 2014. JB Pritzker won the county by around 8,000 votes in 2018. In 2022, Pritzker leads Bailey by around 50,000 votes, earning nearly 56% of the vote in the county.
Greg Hart, a moderate Republican who lost a heavily contested race for DuPage County Board Chairman last week by 2.5 percentage points says voters rejected extreme conservative candidates.
“What’s abundantly clear is that people in the Illinois suburbs sent a loud message that they reject the political extreme,” Hart said. “In many cases, [at all levels] of the ballot, we had candidates that were running that did not match the values that suburban voters cared about.”
Hart outperformed Bailey by around 25,000 votes in DuPage County.
Aaron Del Mar, a Filipino-American, former Cook County GOP Chairman, member of the State GOP Central Committee, as well as Lieutenant Governor candidate in the 2022 primary says it comes down to the kind of candidates Republican primary voters choose.
“We, as a party, need to do a better job with candidate selection. This race, in my opinion, was over in June,” he said. “Locally, nationally, poor candidate selection, underfunding, and an electorate that is easily gaslit by false information led to an abysmal result.”
Democrats hammered home a pro-abortion rights message and pushed against Republicans for their anti-abortion positions, specifically in the suburbs. But, Brady says, abortion wasn’t the deciding factor.
“This was about Trump, not abortion,” Brady said. “Donald Trump has so damaged the Republican brand, particularly in Illinois. He lost the state by a million votes twice, and our nominee said he was fully behind Trump in 2024. Do you want to win or do you want to get to the General and take a vacation? It’s not working. It’s not a winning combination.”
Klitzing, who worked in the Rauner administration, says Republican voters need to start to aim to win a General Election instead of picking the most ideological conservative.
“Those candidates cannot win general elections except in hardcore Republican districts,” Klitzing said. “Republican primary voters have to stop demanding purity, because the candidates espousing purity are unelectable. None of those will lead to actually electing people who can accomplish conservative policy positions in Illinois. Maybe in Missouri, Tennessee, or even Florida, maybe. Not Illinois.”
Hart says it has to do with open minds on social issues.
“We have a choice to make. We have to ensure that we are more comfortable with divergent views on [social] issues and that we can be a big tent party,” he said. “Those are the types of candidates you’ve seen have success in the state of Illinois and if the Republican Party wants to win and attain any position of relevance in the state, that’s the route that they’re going to have to take.”
But outgoing Congressman Rodney Davis (R-Taylorville), who lost a primary to a more “pro-Trump” opponent in June says the key to success isn’t just moderating on social issues.
“Winning is not just about one issue like where a candidate stands on pro life issues, it's about consistency, trust and likability,” Davis said. “All the successful statewide GOP victories in past were people who exceeded in those three traits at the time they were elected. Unfortunately, Pritzker had a tremendous financial advantage that Bailey couldn't make up. A lack of consistency of where he stood on issues by Bailey cut into his ability to prove he is likable and can be trusted.”
Davis said Bailey’s acceptance of 2020 election denial theories in the primary made it difficult for him to walk back the comments in the fall.
But Del Mar says social issues were a major deciding factor in the suburbs.
“Illinois is not ready for a strong social conservative no matter where they’re from or who they are,” he said. “Until the primary electorate realizes that (agreeing on some issues) is better than none, we’re never going to win.”
Can Republicans be sold on nominating more moderate candidates? Brady says they need to see the recent failures and try something new.
“There’s plenty of room for Republicans to win,” Brady said. “When we started losing is when [conservatives] decided the only way to win was to go too far right.”
Brady says Republicans need to reformulate their entire party structure and called on all Republican leaders, like state party chairman Don Tracy to resign.
Republicans seem to know something needs to change.
“We got taken to the wood shed, and if we don’t reevaluate, restructure, and reform our party, that’s going to continue to happen,” Del Mar said.
Hart says it’s about playing a game of addition.
“The way for the Republican Party to rebuild and have further electoral success across the state, regardless of what region our candidates [are from], is to embrace a big tent approach that focuses on a candidate’s ability to match their districts,” Hart said. “Republicans [don’t] need to fit the same mold on every single issue, but the lack of tolerance and diversity of viewpoints in the Republican Party is what has cost us.”
With gigantic losses stinging the GOP, Davis said he still has hope for the future.
“This is not the end of the GOP at all,” Davis said. “We will see statewide wins again, but we blew a tremendous chance this election cycle.”
While suburban Republicans were dealt a huge blow on Election Day, some southern Illinois Republicans aren’t down on their future prospects. In Madison County, the GOP won three gerrymandered judicial subcircuits and flipped a State Senate seat. Local operatives say good candidates and a strong vote by mail program helped them succeed.