SPRINGFIELD — Wednesday morning in the state's capital city opened with dense fog, perhaps an appropriate weather condition for Republicans, who have long struggled to find their way in Illinois, as they celebrated the GOP's day at the State Fair.
Shut out of statewide offices since Bruce Rauner lost the governorship to Democrat JB Pritzker in 2018, and now a minority party bordering on dormancy in Illinois, the GOP used Republican Day to kick off campaigns for its little-known slate in the Nov. 3 election.
That included Secretary of State candidate Diane Harris, who vowed she would require all motorists to be proficient enough in English to read road signs, state comptroller candidate Bryan Drew, who wrongly said state audits are politically limited in scope and did not know the state auditor general was a constitutional officer, and attorney general contender and frequently unsuccessful candidate Bob Fioretti, who erroneously contended that Chicago-area immigration raids by federal agents resulted in arrests of only immigrants with criminal backgrounds.
All of that came alongside Springfield businessman and former state GOP chair Don Tracy, who is seeking the open U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, reciting a variation of a line from U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana: "We Republicans are far from perfect, but the other side is flat-out crazy."
"And I have to add this," Tracy said. "They're getting crazier."
Then there was former state Sen. Darren Bailey, in a rematch after losing by nearly 13 percentage points to Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, suggesting he didn't believe in the widely accepted theory of evolution.
Bailey defended curricula used at the Full Armor Christian Academy, which he founded, that teaches children that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. According to scientists, it wasn't until more than 65 million years after the dinosaurs' extinction that the earliest humans walked the earth. Bailey was asked about evolution in response to a campaign stunt in which Pritzker's campaign had inflatable dinosaurs holding "dinosaurs against Darren Bailey" signs.
Appearing on WGN-TV's "The Point," Bailey was asked by the show's host, Tahman Bradley, if he believed humans and dinosaurs coexisted. He never directly answered.
"Were you there?" Bailey responded.
"I wasn't there," Bradley said.
"I wasn't either. I don't know," Bailey said.
The GOP gubernatorial candidate also said, "I think every day we're learning wonderful things about history and the past."
Though the weather-related fog cleared by the noontime hour when Republicans began arriving at the state fairgrounds, the sunny skies belied a party that is a superminority in the General Assembly, its messaging shrouded by the unpopularity of Republican President Donald Trump and a political organization long beset by internal strife.
Bailey acknowledged the turmoil within the GOP, urging the party to focus on "affordability, safety and education" while he sought to dodge questions from reporters about his previous support of Trump and restrictions on abortion rights.
"We stay focused on that message. We get rid of internal fights within our party. We must work together," Bailey said. "The most important thing is that we are stronger together. And we must put these small, petty differences aside. That will make us stronger — and that, and that alone, will defeat JB Pritzker."
While Democrats, a day earlier at their turn at the fair, featured a keynote speech from U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to rev up the faithful, Republicans — who in the past enticed big names to appear — had no featured speaker. Also telling was the absence of the only three Republicans in the state's 17-member congressional delegation — U.S. Reps. Darin LaHood, Mike Bost and Mary Miller.
Republicans also enter the general election campaign season lacking the big-money donors that they had in the past. That has left the ticket without resources to promote the little-known contenders challenging incumbent Democrats Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, and competing for the open comptroller's seat against Democratic state Rep. Margaret Croke of Chicago, who is looking to succeed Susana Mendoza. Mendoza, like Giannoulias, is pursuing a 2027 bid for Chicago mayor.
Indeed, Democrats rarely mentioned their opponents by name at the fair, and instead focused on energizing opposition to Trump and Republicans, though Pritzker acknowledged his contest in a press release Thursday, agreeing to a scheduled debate against Bailey on Oct. 13 on WTTW-Ch. 11. But when asked later Thursday during a media gaggle at the fairgrounds, Bailey said he hadn't agreed to that debate.
Democrats have handed Republicans some opportunities in recent weeks, notably House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch's controversial handling of sexual harassment issues regarding former state Rep. Harry Benton of Plainfield. Welch's office knew of harassment allegations raised by a former Benton staffer in 2023, termed it a "he said, she said" issue and went on to give Benton's reelection campaign in 2024 $1.4 million.
Welch didn't move to discipline Benton until this year, after two additional women had been sexually harassed. Benton quit the legislature and dropped his reelection bid in July after the legislative inspector general found he had violated state law for his actions against the women.
Welch has vowed reforms, including a closed-door working group made up solely of House Democrats, to improve the workplace culture. But three members have dropped out, and Republicans have criticized the working group process.
House Republican leader Tony McCombie of Savanna said Welch has become the new Mike Madigan, Welch's imprisoned predecessor who long was the principal target of GOP attacks on Democrats' control in Springfield.
"Remember, when Speaker Welch was first elected as the speaker (in 2021), he said, 'This is a new day.' And we're seeing now that it isn't a new day. He's not holding his own members accountable. He's not behaving appropriately, and nobody's holding him accountable," McCombie said. "The Democrats can't have it both ways. They can't support Speaker Welch and then stand behind integrity, and I think you just can't do both. They have to make a choice here."
McCombie called the working group model "fake" and said she believed a third party should be brought in to improve ethics and harassment reporting rules.
"You're going to have us policing ourselves, writing the rules?" she asked rhetorically. Welch, she said, "is choosing not to handle this situation because he's right in the middle of it."
Senate GOP leader John Curran of Downers Grove said "ethics needs to be tackled bipartisan, bicameral. Every voice needs to be involved. Every caucus needs to be involved in setting the standards in place."
"What happens internally within a caucus, once those standards are set, how they enforce them, how they go about carrying out their policies and procedures? I mean, that's on them. And that's something they've got to fix," Curran said. "But we in the legislature have to set the bar high. And we need to set it higher. But that is going to be incumbent upon the House Democrats to actually meet that standard."
State Sen. Terri Bryant, a Murphysboro Republican who sits on the Legislative Ethics Commission that reviewed and released the complaint on Benton, said Welch's controversies involving women, including those that predated his time as speaker, disqualify him from sitting in the General Assembly. She also said any reforms need to be more inclusive than just the House.
"When you really want to do things to effect change or to bring rules to the entire body, it has to include both chambers. It has to include both parties," Bryant said.