Illinois governor’s race will be a rematch in 2026

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Capitol News Illinois) – Republican voters in Illinois have once again chosen former state Sen. Darren Bailey as their candidate for governor, giving him a second chance to unseat incumbent Democrat JB Pritzker in November.

Bailey, a farmer from southern Illinois and the party’s 2022 nominee, claimed victory Tuesday night in a four-way primary for the GOP nomination, defeating Ted Dabrowski, former head of the conservative policy website Wirepoints.

According to unofficial returns compiled by the Associated Press, Bailey had carried about 50% of the vote as about 8:35 p.m. when the race was called. Dabrowski garnered about 32%.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters at a Springfield hotel Tuesday night as his lead grew, Bailey immediately began calling for party unity.

“This primary is over,” he said. “Regardless of who you voted for, regardless of our past differences, this election is bigger than all of that. We must join  together to stop another four years of billionaire leadership that doesn’t understand your life, your bills, or your struggle.”

DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick and businessman Rick Heidner, who spent more than $1 million of his own money on the campaign, each had under 10% when the race was called.

Four years ago, Bailey won the nomination with 57% of the vote in a crowded race that also featured Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin and venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan.

In that campaign, Bailey had the endorsement of then-former President Donald Trump. But many observers noted he also had backhanded help from the Pritzker campaign, which viewed him as a weaker candidate than the better-financed Irvin.

Pritzker funded ads that, on the surface, appeared to criticize Bailey but which subtly targeted the GOP’s conservative base by asserting that Bailey was “too conservative” for Illinois.

Bailey went on to lose the general election, 55% to 42%, after Pritzker swept Cook County and most of the collar counties

Two years later, he tried unsuccessfully to unseat fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost in the 12^th District, narrowly losing that primary by less than 3,000 votes.

Bailey announced his plan to run for governor again in September, vowing to run a different campaign that would focus more on Chicago and its suburbs. That started with choosing Cook County Republican Party Chairman Aaron Del Mar as his running mate.

“Aaron definitely brings a whole bunch of stuff to the table,” Crystal Bell, a Bailey supporter from Beardstown, said in an interview Tuesday night. “The dynamic duo, is what I call them.”

Barely a month after announcing his candidacy, however, Bailey suffered a family tragedy that could have ended his campaign when his son Zacharay, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren were all killed in a helicopter crash in Montana.

But Bailey chose to stay in the race, “not for politics, but for every family trying to make it in a state that’s lost its way, for every parent who dreams of a better future for their children and for every Illinoisan who knows that we can do better.”

Although Trump did not issue a formal endorsement this time around, Bailey made it clear that he would model his administration after the current president, vowing to set up a DOGE-like commission to root out waste and inefficiency in state government.

But speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Bailey also began to put some distance between himself from Trump.

“You’re going to hear JB Pritzker and his Democrat allies try to compare me to Donald Trump and use some pretty mean words while doing it,” he said. “Well, there are things that I agree with Donald Trump about, and there are things that I disagree with him about. I am my own man. But when Trump is right, we’re going to try to do those things in Illinois.”

Dabrowski, meanwhile, campaigned on the idea that he was the more electable candidate, arguing  that Bailey’s poor performance in the suburbs four years ago was an omen that he could never win a statewide general election.

“Victory runs through the suburbs,” Dabrowski said in his final TV ad of the primary campaign. “Darren Bailey is a disaster in the suburbs. It’s why Pritzker wanted to run against him four years ago and does again.”

But Sheldon Schulte, a Bailey supporter from Vandalia, said Tuesday that if more southern Illinois Republicans had turned out in 2022, Bailey would have won the race.

“People do not get out and turn out,” he said in an interview. “I mean, all we needed was 15% more people in southern Illinois to show up and we would have won. They just won’t get out and vote. They like to sit around a coffee shop and bitch. They don’t want to get out and vote. I don’t understand.

(Reporting by Peter Hancock, Capitol News Illinois)

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

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