Illinois Republican Party chairman sums up his party’s election night

Posted on November 10, 2022
Don Tracy, chairman, Illinois Republican Party. (Photo courtesy illinois.gop)

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – For Republicans in Illinois and nationally, the question about election night is: where did we go wrong?

Illinois GOP chairman Don Tracy is among those reviewing the game films. He says in the year and a half he has been on the job, he has learned change comes slowly.

“It takes time to turn around a situation like this, where you have entrenched incumbents who are funded by very powerful special interests,” said Tracy.

Looking for positives, Tracy added, “We made a little progress. We won that one (Illinois) Senate seat,” referring to the win by Erica Harriss (cq) of Glen Carbon over appointed State Sen. Kris Tharp (D-Bethalto). “Four years ago (Gov. JB) Pritzker beat (then-Gov. Bruce) Rauner by 17 percentage points; this year he beat (State Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia)) by twelve percentage points. Pritzker got 400,000 fewer votes this year than he got four years ago.”

Much of it, Tracy says, comes back to money. Two recent mega-funders, Rauner and investor Ken Griffin, lost interest and moved to Florida.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]

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