At national convention, Illinois’ beleaguered GOP portrays calm amid internal storm

[July 16, 2024]  By PETER HANCOCK
& HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
[e-mail]

MILWAUKEE – Illinois Republicans appeared upbeat and optimistic as the GOP’s national convention got underway Monday, calling for unity and showing little sign of the internal party struggles that have been brewing for years.

“Everybody’s got a lot of energy. We’re all really hopeful and looking forward to November and just killing it, you know, figuratively,” Laurie Schaefer, a delegate from Crete, said as she picked up her credentials Monday morning. “And everybody’s wonderful. I haven’t met one down, depressed person with like a ‘we’re not going anywhere’ kind of attitude. Everybody’s, ‘we’re in it to win it,’ and I love it.”

Delegates from across the country prepared to nominate Donald Trump as their presidential candidate again in 2024, just two days after an assassination attempt on the former president.

On Saturday, while campaigning at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump was grazed by a bullet and one spectator at the rally was killed.

The event, carried live on many television networks, shocked much of the nation. But Trump’s supporters were quickly buoyed by his reaction, rising up from the stage floor, raising his fist and yelling “fight” while his ear dripped with blood.

“We thank you for sparing Donald Trump from the almost certain death on Saturday,” Illinois National Committeewoman Demetra DeMonte said during a prayer as the state delegation sat down for a morning breakfast. “Surely, you sent an angel to gently touch his face to move it so ever slightly to avoid the fatal shot from the assassin's bullet. This is just your most recent blessing of this man of ultimate courage and resilience, who was injured and prevailed over his enemies who have sought to destroy him.”

Although the shooting is still under investigation, several commentators have suggested it may have been prompted, at least in part, by extremist political rhetoric and the nation’s polarized political culture. President Joe Biden called on Americans to “lower the temperature” of their political rhetoric in an oval office address.

U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, of Murphysboro, said Monday that Trump himself has started to change his own rhetoric, but not his campaign issues.

“It doesn't change the issues,” Bost told reporters after the breakfast. “Maybe it changes the way, one, the president, Donald Trump, looks at each issue and how he deals with people. But, two, it also showed not only this nation but the world when he came up from that shot, that he's a fighter.”

Bost – a five-term incumbent – acknowledged the “tough” primary fight with his challenger, former state lawmaker and unsuccessful GOP candidate for Illinois governor in 2022, Darren Bailey.

Bailey tried to cast him as not conservative enough despite Bost’s ultraconservative voting record and the fact the incumbent was endorsed by Trump. Bost won the race by about 2,700 votes and on Friday he said he would work “shoulder to shoulder” with Bailey on behalf of Trump.

“I believe in accountability and I expressed that when I ran, you know, challenged him in the primary,” Bailey told Capitol News Illinois. “I reached out to him last week and said, ‘Mike, I'm here to help and we have got to work together to get President Trump elected.’”

State Sen. Andrew Chesney, R-Freeport, meanwhile, told fellow delegates at the breakfast that the only way to “lower the temperature” in politics today is to address the issues that are top-of-mind for Republicans.

“If you want to bring down the temperature in this country, you have to secure the border,” he told the cheering audience. “If you want to bring down the temperature in this country, you have to get men out of the women's restrooms. If you want to bring down the temperature in this country, you have to get pornography out of children's schools.”

Despite the appearance of unity and enthusiasm Monday, the Illinois Republican Party has struggled recently with its own internal divisions.

Last month, state party chairman Don Tracy, who had held that post more than three years, announced he would step down after the convention. In a resignation letter at the time, Tracy criticized “Republicans who would rather fight other Republicans than engage in the harder work of defeating incumbent Democrats.”

On Friday, party officials elected Kathy Salvi, the party’s unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022, to take the helm.

U.S. Rep Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, speaks to reporters at the Republican National Convention on Monday. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock)

Salvi will address the party at Wednesday’s breakfast but was absent Monday while the two other candidates for the job were present: Aaron Del Mar, the Palatine Township Republican Party chair who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2022, and state Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park.

Cabello told Capitol News Illinois that he’d wanted to serve as an interim chair after hearing from “lots of folks that were complaining how rushed the process (of replacing Tracy) was.” Though he didn’t win, Cabello had advice for those within the party who are more focused on ideological purity than the practicalities of winning elections: don’t forget the suburbs are distinct from rural parts of Illinois.

“If we want to grow our numbers, we have to run races and we have to find candidates that are going to win,” he said. “If you say, ‘You have to meet this litmus test for everywhere in the state,’ we're going to lose seats instead of gain seats. So it's up to you. Do you want to continue to live in the superminority? Or do you want to live in a world where we actually make some decisions?”

Cabello, who served in the 68th District from 2012 until 2021 and has served in the 90th District since 2023, has spent his entire legislative career in the Republican minority in the Illinois House. But recent election cycles have shrunk GOP caucuses to superminority status. Democrats currently outnumber Republicans with a near-two-to-one ratio in both chambers of the General Assembly.

Though Democratic control of the electoral mapmaking process has made it more difficult for Republicans to win seats in both the General Assembly and Congress, suburban voters becoming more Democratic has been a trend nationwide. Chicago’s once-reliably Republican suburbs are now overwhelmingly represented by Democrats.

Tracy said winning back suburban voters would be key to the party’s rebuilding efforts but acknowledged “it’s a tough assignment.” However, he said eventually suburban voters would “get tired of the crime” from nearby big cities, in addition to “excess taxation” and “inflation,” and would “start to focus more on the issues instead of on personalities.”

But when asked twice why he felt suburban voters hadn’t yet started seeing politics his way, Tracy demurred.

“I can't answer that,” he said.

But Tracy was more confident about the party’s fundraising trajectory as he departs from his post. He boasted that during his 3 ½ years as ILGOP chair, the party has doubled both its financing and its donor list, even as “a lot of great donors have moved out of state.” Though he didn’t name anyone in particular, GOP megadonor Ken Griffin moved to Florida in the middle of the 2022 campaign cycle after his chosen gubernatorial candidate, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, was trounced by Bailey.

Tracy also hearkened back to the power vacuum created when one-term GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner lost his re-election bid in 2018 and moved to Florida. The former governor, a multi-millionaire, propped up the struggling party as he rose to power but left it as a shell when he departed, which Tracy said resulted in “less donor engagement.”

“People became reliant on Rauner funding, not just the state party, not just his own campaign, not just other statewide (candidates), but also local parties,” Tracy said. “And so our donor list atrophied. So when I came in as a state chairman, I had a very weak donor list that I've been working hard to rebuild.”

Tracy said he wondered if Illinois Democrats might face the same issue once Gov. JB Pritzker – a multi-billionaire who is halfway through his second term – leaves politics.

“Turning around a blue state like Illinois is like turning around an aircraft carrier, you know, it doesn't happen overnight,” Tracy said.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.