Illinois Republicans enter convention with a new leader — and old divisions
Illinois Republican Party chair Don Tracy told fellow Republicans last summer that the party was working to become “competitive” again.
“With better teamwork and less in-fighting, Republicans can win and be the voice of fiscal sanity and common sense and reason in opposition of the Democrats,” Tracy said at the Illinois Republican Party State Central Committee & County Chairmen’s Association breakfast in Springfield.
Eleven months of intra-party squabbles later, Tracy is on his way out and Kathy Salvi is on her way in to try to start mending a fractured Illinois GOP heading into this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Salvi, a personal injury attorney, ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Tammy Duckworth in 2022.
While former President Donald Trump has next to no shot of winning Illinois, the convention will mark a coming-out party for Salvi, who faces the challenge of rebuilding a party that has been incrementally decimated by failed statewide campaigns, division within its ranks — and Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s vast fortune bolstering Democratic supermajorities.
Salvi's Senate run focused on the economy, strengthening law enforcement and rooting out corruption from the "Pritzker/Madigan Machine," as her campaign called it. During an October 2022 debate, Salvi said she felt the reversal of Roe v. Wade was "good," because it put abortion "out of the hands of an activist court and put it into the hands of the state's duly elected representatives."
The key question for the party’s new leader is the same one that has stymied Illinois Republicans for most of the past decade: how can the party gain ground with voters amid a loud movement that is moving farther to the right and another that's clinging to the center.
Tracy proved unable to thread that needle, saying in his resignation letter last month that he was fed up with “Republicans who would rather fight other Republicans than engage in the harder work of defeating incumbent Democrats.”
The bickering between the party’s far-right wing and its moderate members grew louder after hardline conservative gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey lost mightily to Pritzker in 2022. While moderate Republicans have concerns about another Trump presidency dragging down the Illinois ticket, Bailey has framed the division as a battle of “Real Republicans” vs. “Fake Republicans.”
The convention is an opportunity for a party reset, according to Jeanne Ives, a former far right Illinois House member who almost unseated former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in the 2018 gubernatorial primary.
‘Reboot, rebrand and re-establish’
“I think to a lot of people going into the Republican convention, our Republican party looks in disarray due to the actions that have happened in the last month,” Ives said, adding that with the new chairman, “We will have an opportunity to reboot, rebrand and re-establish ourselves and our priorities.
“I think that’s going to be very powerful, and that’s the most important thing that we can do in Illinois is, let people know who we are, once and for all,” Ives said.
“I think actually our state central committee, with Don Tracy, without Don Tracy, on the policy front, we’re united,” Ives said. An anti-abortion party resolution approved in May vowed that “the restoration of the culture of life in Illinois will not occur until the Democratic Party and the radical organizations that support them are removed from power.”
But that type of platform plank isn’t doing the party any favors in the suburbs, according to state Rep. Brad Stephens, R-Rosemont, the only Republican state legislator whose district touches Chicago, and who said he “tries to be that moderate voice that tries to bring people together behind the scenes.”
While Stephens supports abortion rights, he said Republicans should be rallying together against other Democratic priorities to capitalize with voters.
“It’s kinda wild, being in the Legislature and just shaking our heads at some of the crazy things that are getting passed,” Stephens said, pointing to tax increases in Pritzker’s latest budget, increased spending to care for migrant arrivals and other Democratic measures. “How are we not gaining any seats when some of this stuff is pretty far out there?”
“It’s a daunting task, to instill in Darren Bailey and Jeanne Ives and people like that who tend to lean farther right than most of us — to come to terms and say, ‘OK, we don’t agree on that issue. Let’s not hate on one another.’”
Stephens said a potential Republican rebound comes down to “bringing more people back to the party,” especially suburban women who have rejected Trump. He said he hasn’t decided who’s getting his vote for president.
Could a Trump win help Republicans in blue Illinois?
But Ives predicted a Trump reelection would still be helpful to the party cause in deep blue Illinois.
“I think Trump can absolutely help us in Illinois, by having policies that align with where the majority of Americans are, and then bringing that rhetoric and bringing those policies to fruition in Illinois and shutting down some of the crap that you see here.”
Not all Republicans are on board with that rosy view, among them former Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, who left his leadership post in 2023 and has been a vocal Trump critic. Durkin continues to blame the far right contingency — and Trump — for legislative losses.
“Remember the legislature played to the tune of the masses, at least in the Republican Party. That was, I think, a signal that the GOP is longer tolerant of moderate, independent or moderate voices, fiscal conservatives and social moderates,” Durkin said. “And it’s moved many of those people to be independent voters…it’s really moved in the wrong direction because of these far right fanatics. The fanatics who do a great job talking tough at rallies and hiding behind computers but when it comes to appealing to more than their kind, they lose. We lose.”
"You can't win in Illinois as a right wing Republican on a statewide basis, bottom line," Durkin added. "Never have and never will."
Aaron Del Mar, former Cook County party chair and at-large delegate to the RNC, acknowledged Trump’s deep unpopularity with women voters in Chicago’s suburbs would pose a continuing problem for Illinois Republicans if Trump wins a second term.
“But what people are looking at now is high gas prices, inflation, more kitchen-table issues that have swung more people over the last three years,” he said. “Those can overcome personality issues.”
Either way “the opportunity for us to pick up more seats has never been higher” in Illinois, Del Mar said, pointing to the 17th Congressional District race between Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Illinois, and Republican Joe McGraw, as well as a handful of statehouse contests.
Illinois Republican leaders in the past “haven’t understood that the value of the grassroots can’t be underestimated,” Del Mar said. “The donor class has turned a deaf ear to that group, and that created frustration.”
Following the departure of former state GOP finance chair Vince Kolber — who complained in his resignation that the party is “excessively focused” on newly engaged voters “raising high the banner of the grassroots” — Del Mar said he’s not fazed by the prospect of alienating wealthy leaders who have bankrolled efforts in recent years.
“When we start winning more races, the donor class will follow. Right now, there’s a feeling of, ‘Why donate when we don’t win?’ We need to engage the grassroots on issues that matter and build from the bottom up,” he said.
U.S. Reps. Mary Miller and Mike Bost, staunch Trump supporters both serving as delegates, plan to attend the convention, as will Rep. Darin LaHood. So is Bailey, whom Bost defeated in this year’s primary.
Some of the Illinois General Assembly’s GOP members are either not attending, or are going in a limited capacity.
A spokeswoman for Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said Curran, who is also an attorney, has a scheduling conflict: a trial. Illinois House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, plans to attend the convention briefly for a Republican State Leadership Committee event on July 17.