This is the Darren Bailey Republicans Feared
GOP nominee for Governor Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) waves to the crowd when Donald Trump acknowledged him at a rally June 25 near Quincy.
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OPINION
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the one thing most likely to keep Darren Bailey from being elected Governor in November is Darren Bailey.
After a five year old video surfaced last week showing Bailey comparing abortion and the lives it takes to the Holocaust. Bailey couldn’t help himself. While visiting the Kendall County Fair this weekend, Bailey told a local radio reporter he was “right.”
“The Jewish community themselves have told me I’m right,” Bailey responded to a question about whether he should apologize. “All of the people at the Chabads that we met with and the Jewish rabbis said ‘you’re actually right.”
This guy.
Chabad is a religious organization celebrating a sect of Judaism.
A Jewish Republican friend of mine told me last night “even if someone at Chabad said that, they aren’t mainstream Jews,” the friend said. “Also, no one at Chabad said that.”
And, of course, it plays up into what Pritzker wants the election to be about.
“To equate the Holocaust to a woman’s right to choose is not only disturbing, but it’s also disqualifying,” Pritzker said in a statement Tuesday. “This kind of false equivalence shows exactly the type of man and leader Darren Bailey is.”
I argued when the video came out last week that Bailey was making a numbers to numbers comparison on the lives ended in abortion to the number of Jews killed. It was stupid and clunky then and all he had to do to put it past himself was to offer an apology and admit it was a mistake to compare the two events.
But he just can’t keep his mouth shut.
This is the Darren Bailey Republicans thought they were going to get when they argued he couldn’t win a general election. He has a tendency to pop off down the road of crazy and clueless and peddle different theories and messages in different parts of the state. He isn’t raising money and he’s dragging the race into a referendum on issues he can’t win on.
I’ve heard there is independent polling showing Bailey down 15-17 points, which is reaching a level that he’s going to drag congressional and legislative candidates down the hole, too. Instead of a scenario where Republicans could have won back the House (or made significant gains), they’re now completely underfunded and facing the possibility of losing 5-7 more seats, which could put 80 Democrats in the chamber next year. The Senate, with just 18 Republicans, could realistically lose 5 seats (UPDATE: multiple sources have corrected that figure as 3 seats) if the conditions deteriorate to further for the GOP.
He can clean up this mistake, but can he clean up the next one? Or the one after that? Or the one after that?
Someone who cares about Bailey needs to sit him down and tell him the truth: you’re probably not going to win. He should be encouraged to run a campaign that focuses solely on economic issues and Pritzker’s failures as Governor and not to take any bait on any social issue. He can lose with class or he can take the GOP with him.
It’s your choice, Senator.