THE ILLINOIZE: Where have the moderate downstate Democrats gone?...Bailey on Chicago TV...Irvin speaks (sort of)

May 17, 2022

Good morning, Illinois.

If you’re up early, I’ll be on WLS-AM with the great Steve Cochran around 6:05 this morning discussing Darren Bailey’s foray into Chicago TV and the rest of the Governor’s race as well as the damning Auditor General’s DCFS report. You can listen online here.

I also had a little fun on my old station, WDWS in Champaign, talking with my friend Brian Barnhart yesterday. You can listen to the podcast here.

It is 42 days (6 weeks exactly) to the June 28 primary and 175 days to the November election. Either Governor Pritzker or a Republican will take the oath of office for Governor in 237 days. It has been 475 days since the Governor’s official office responded to an inquiry from The Illinoize. The Irvin campaign is doing their best impression, having not responded to our questions for 92 days.

The House and Senate are OUT today (which is so weird for mid-May), and the Governor has a campaign stop at the WINGS safe house on the south side at 1:50 P.M.

Lots to get to this morning, so I won’t waste your time with any not-so-clever diatribes, except to say thank you for your continued support.

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Let’s get to it.

WHERE HAVE THE DOWNSTATE MODERATE DEMOCRATS GONE?

This time ten years ago, rural Democrats were well represented in Springfield. Dan Beiser, John Bradley, Dan Reitz, Gary Forby, Mike Frerichs, and John Sullivan all represented wide swaths of rural constituents from Champaign and Quincy to the Ohio River.

With the exception of Frerichs, who is now State Treasurer, today, they’re all gone from Springfield. A couple of their districts still remain in Democratic hands, but many have flipped to Republicans in recent years and even the latest Democrat remap gives their party few avenues for growth in southern and central Illinois.

One of the most visible downstate moderates is Sen. Scott Bennett (D-Champaign), he, along with Sen. Rachelle Crowe (D-Glen Carbon) are two of the downstate members most likely to break with their Chicago-centric counterparts. Bennett will likely lose Crowe at some point this year as she has been nominated to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois.

I sat down with Sen. Bennett yesterday when I was in Champaign and we talked for close to an hour about this predicament for Democrats. They’ve become virtually irrelevant in rural areas and, in turn, no Democratic representation in those areas has left many struggling areas on the outside looking in when they need help from the state or federal government.

Bennett, who represents much of Democrat-trending Champaign-Urbana isn’t your stereotypical college town liberal. He grew up on a farm in Ford County and was a prosecutor before being appointed to replace Frerichs in the Senate.

“I think what we’ve seen in the last ten years or so is that there are certainly fewer moderates,” Bennett said. “I think that is being show in the legislation that has come from the caucuses, quite frankly.”

He said moderates were able to bring legislation more toward the center. That is more difficult today.

“What we’d see is a lot more of the tweaking, a lot more of the [rewriting of a bill],” Bennett said. “So the sponsor would still get a bill passed, perhaps, but it wouldn’t have some of the components of the bill that opponents would find so objectionable.”

Obviously, as both parties have abandoned their traditional centrist candidates [think Mark Kirk and Dan Lipinski], it has opened the door for more partisan lawmakers to take their places.

“The national landscape plays a big role in this,” a longtime Democratic operative, who asked not to be identified, said. “Many former moderate Democrat voters were pushed out by Obama and Pelosi and the Trump people took them. I don’t know how we get them back, or if we can ever get them back.”

“The Democratic Party has done a terrible job of outreach to rural communities nationally,” Bennett said. “They often don’t see the benefit of the Democratic Party. To the extent they don’t see a party helping and they see positions out of D.C. or elsewhere that are farther than what they can agree with, it’s easy for voters to throw everyone into one basket.”

Bennett defended Democratic redistricting that strengthened existing “blue” districts while numerous rural districts have gotten larger, and more conservative, due to population loss.

Bennett says he attempts to personally call every constituent who wants to talk about a bill or issue, whether they agree or not.

“They at least want an explanation about a bill that’s either coming up, or they want to tell me how I should vote on it,” Bennett said. “A lot of my role in this district, which is absolutely divided close to down the middle, is give people a chance to explain why they want me to vote one way or another. And I take a lot of time in the summer to do town halls and go where constituents are. I think what drives people crazy is the idea that their legislator thinks they don’t have to listen to people or they know best all the time.”

I’ll have more comments from Sen. Bennett on the website a little later today.

BAILEY PLAYING CATCH UP IN CHICAGO REGION

Thanks to an additional $2.5 million from billionaire conservative Richard Uihlein, Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) launches his first TV ads of the primary cycle in the Chicago market today, with just six weeks to go before Election Day.

The spot doesn’t yet appear on his YouTube site, but I think it will be this straight forward biographical spot that began running downstate yesterday. Bailey is still being vastly outspent in the Chicago media market (which covers 11 counties: Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, LaSalle, McHenry, Will).

Here’s why that’s a problem for Bailey: we know he’s going to do well downstate. But in the 2018 GOP primary, those Chicago area 11 counties accounted for roughly 52% of the votes cast. I’ve received between 5-10 Irvin mail pieces at my house in suburban Cook County and haven’t had a peep from the Bailey campaign. While this cash influx will get him on TV in Chicago, it just isn’t enough to build his positives faster than the Irvin campaign is driving up his negatives. The outliers here are Dan Proft’s Uihlein-funded PAC which is hitting Irvin and the Democratic Governor’s Association ads that look like Bailey attacks, but are actually not-so-subtle endorsements.

Maybe the Bailey people think they can catch lightning in a bottle and can get their message, the Proft PAC message, and the DGA message hitting on all cylinders or if they’ll blow a gasket and never really contest for the win.

IRVIN BASICALLY ADMITS TO VOTING FOR TRUMP

Richard Irvin actually popped up to do a radio interview yesterday on WJPF in the Marion-Carbondale market, which doesn’t even appear in Nielsen’s top 253 radio markets in the country and conservative host Tom Miller pinned him down on a couple of things

Irvin admitted to “voting for the Republican ticket” for President, which was an implicit admission of his support of Donald Trump, which will surely be used in the fall. Go listen to the whole thing. He’s very engaging, but when you knock him off of his talking points, it gets rough.

Please keep an eye on the website and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest throughout the day. And let us know what you’re hearing. I only have two (admittedly large) ears, so I can’t hear everything.

Have a great day.