August 24, 2022
BAILEY REPLICATING 2010'S "BRADY HIBERNATION" FIASCO

There is little difference between being hapless and being a loser, although in politics they are usually synonymous. Hapless means being afflicted with bad fortune, bad luck and general helplessness. That fatal diagnosis invariably means loser.

This year’s “Exhibit One” is Republican Darren Bailey, the Downstate farmer and state senator who had the good fortune, good luck and plenty of unexpected help to win the June 28 Republican governor primary with a blowout 57.5 percent (see chart).

He was the beneficiary of nearly $25 million in spending by billionaire Richard Uihlein’s king-making apparatus, with TV ads besmirching Aurora mayor Richard Irvin’s conservative credentials, AND by the Democratic Governors Association and the state Democratic Party, who ran ads attacking Bailey as “too conservative for Illinois.” That, quite understandably, galvanized Republicans to vote FOR him while simultaneously poisoning the proverbial well to insure Democrats vote against him on Nov. 8. And they say Democrats can’t play dirty.

Former governor Jim Edgar (R) recently said that Republicans can never win in Illinois if they nominate somebody who half the state hates. With Bailey, who is pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro-Trump and anti-COVID mandates, they did just that. And the consequences were swift and predictable: Bailey’s money dried up, his campaign went into hibernation, Pritzker dominated the media in July and August, unloading a ton of negative media ads on Bailey, and the Republican is on track to get buried by 700,000-plus votes, losing worse than governor Bruce Rauner did in 2018, when he got 38.8 percent.

2010 ELECTION: It’s déjà vu all over. Bailey is 2022’s Bill Brady, the victor in the 2010 Republican primary who went into hibernation for 6 months (the primary was then in March) and thereby squandered his once-promising prospects against Pat Quinn (D), who had succeeded the impeached Rod Blagojevich and was viewed as a Mike Madigan pawn.

The difference between then and now is that Brady, an obscure Downstate state representative from Bloomington, never defined himself, never established a presence in the key Chicago media market and never contrasted himself with Quinn nor gave voters a reason to vote AGAINST Quinn. Brady won the primary with 20.3 percent, 155,527-155,334 over DuPage County state Senator Kirk Dillard, with conservative businessman Andy McKenna getting 148,054 and 2002 governor loser and ex-state attorney general Jim Ryan, who shared Dillard’s DuPage base, getting 130,785. The determining factor was geography rather than ideology.

McKenna was the hard-Right candidate and got 19.3 percent. Dillard and Ryan were more moderate, better-known, had access to funding, would have likely beaten Quinn, and polled a combined 37.3 percent. Brady ran fourth in Cook County and the collar counties but scraped up enough votes Downstate, especially south of I-80, to win. And then did nothing until after Labor Day. Quinn beat him 1,745,219-1,713,385, a margin of just 19,413, coming out of Cook County up by 500,000 votes; in the same election Mark Kirk (R) won the senate race by 59,220 votes, and Dan Rutherford (R) was elected treasurer.

A cardinal rule in politics is to define yourself before your opponent does or, if an incumbent, use your money to negatively define your opponent before they define themselves and begin to attack. In other words, don’t let the opponent make the election a REFERENDUM on you but instead a CHOICE between you and them – and then pile-on the negatives.

That didn’t happen with Brady, as he never really was negatively defined because he remained totally undefined and unknown, and Quinn was no Pritzker. The Democratic base vote was sufficient to elect him with 46.8 percent. That’s not the case with Bailey. He’s been clearly defined, as the primary was all about who was/was not the most conservative. And the Democratic base vote is in the mid-50s range. Pritzker won with 54.5 percent in 2018, and his 2,479,746 votes were 758,144 more than Quinn’s 1,721,612 in 2014 (when Quinn got 46.6 percent).

And turnout exploded by 919,967, up from 3,627,690 in 2014 to 4,547,657 in 2018. Since Rauner’s vote actually declined by 57,876, from 1,823,627 in 2014 to 1,765,751 in 2018, that meant the state Democratic base vote grew by 977,843 in 4 years. The state’s Democratic presidential vote also grew from 3,090,729 in 2016 to 3,471,015 in 2020, an uptick of 380,286. To be sure, anti-Trump fervor energized Democrats in 2018 and 2020, but 2022 was supposed to be an anti-Biden pushback year. It’s not, at least not in Illinois.

It should be noted that 2022’s Republican primary turnout was 797,029, up only slightly from 2014’s 744,248 and 2010’s 767,485, and only slightly less than 2014’s 819,624. That means the Republican base vote is flat, but not diminishing. Trump got 2,416,015 votes in 2016 and upped that to 2,446,891in 2020, or 30,876 more. Bailey’s 458,102 votes were 57.5 of the Republican turnout but just 27.2- percent of the total two-party turnout. That’s a lot of non-Bailey votes. The Republican base may be MAGA-energized but is still a mega-minority in Illinois.

Meanwhile the Democratic turnout for Pritzker (who was unopposed) was 882,593 in June. It was 1,324,548 in 2018, a contest where Pritzker got 597,156 votes, or 45.1 percent, but still a dip of 441,955. Democratic turnout was 915,726 in the 2010 Quinn-Hynes (D) primary, which Quinn won by 8,372 votes, but dropped to 497,318 in 2014. That does not mean the party base is now de-energized. The SCOTUS overturn of Roe v. Wade and gun violence like the Highland Park mass shootings has got the Left energized to “do something.”

Pritzker, who spent $125 million through June 30 and has been up with pro-choice and anti-assault weapons ads, with one highlighting Bailey’s years-ago comment comparing the number of abortions of unborn babies to be far greater than the Holocaust’s genocide of 6 million Jews. Pritzker’s strategy is to make Bailey Illinois’ Donald Trump, to make him creepy and scary, to make the election a referendum on Bailey’s unfitness, to make people want to vote against him -- and it’s working like a charm.

So what, if any, is Bailey’s strategy? Get $100 million, like ASAP. Media buys for Sept.-Oct. need to be booked by Labor Day. Pritzker self-funded $125 million and spent $61 million by June 30. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who is moving his Citidel Company from Chicago to Miami, bankrolled Richard Irvin with about $50 million, the premise being that the Aurora mayor could cut into the Democratic base. Irvin finished third with 15 percent.

No Team Griffin money is going to Bailey who had $364,000 on-hand as of June 30, and raised a paltry $137,000 in July. That wouldn’t even buy one week’s worth of 6 GRPs (gross rating points) on Chicago TV, a GRP meaning the number of times an ad is viewed. Uihlein, the Schlitz brewing heir and product shipping magnate, did give on $20 million on July 22 to Dan Proft’s “Play By The Rules” SuperPAC, which is now running anti-Pritzker ads complaining about Illinois’ “unfriendly” business environment.

A SuperPAC can only advocate for issues, not for candidates, and it’s way too late to try to unsell ol’ J.B. “Mike Madigan is gone” shtick. The state budget of $46 billion is awash with federal funds. Pritzker’s fair tax scheme got beat in 2020, but any state tax hikes will come in 2025 or beyond. His handling of COVID was typical for a Blue State governor. “Mediocre” best describes his first-term performance. He was undeniably competent and satisfied his base.

But when the voters’ choice is him or Bailey/Trump, mediocrity doesn’t matter. Pritzker in 2018 beat Rauner by 713,995 votes in a turnout of 4,547,657.

He will crush Bailey by at least 700,000 this time, proving that being hapless means not being in a happy place.

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