JB Pritzker and Darren Bailey square off again in Illinois governor race

A gubernatorial rematch four years in the making comes to a head Tuesday night in Gov. JB Pritzker’s bid for a rare third term over Republican challenger Darren Bailey.

The Associated Press called their 2022 contest the minute the polls closed en route to Pritzker’s nearly 13-percentage-point reelection victory over the southern Illinois farmer and former state legislator, who needs to win over Chicago-area voters for any hope of becoming the first Republican to win a statewide office in 12 years.

Independent candidate Collin Corbett, a fiscal conservative who supports abortion rights, aims to play the role of spoiler by picking up moderate voters in a deeply polarized political environment.

Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, has used his astronomical financial advantage in the race to remind voters of the state’s 12 credit rating upgrades and a slew of progressive legislative victories he has shepherded through the General Assembly since unseating GOP former Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018.

Pritzker’s self-funded, $90 million-plus campaign has also blanketed the internet and airwaves with ads painting Bailey as a lackey of President Donald Trump, who campaigned alongside Bailey four years ago and has endorsed him once again.

Bailey — who raised his profile in the Illinois General Assembly early in the COVID-19 pandemic as a vociferous opponent of Pritzker’s mitigation measures — has generally distanced himself from Trump this time around. The president remains unpopular with voters in Cook County and the collar counties, which served as the foundation of the Illinois GOP until Trump’s rise to power.

A staunch opponent of abortion rights, Bailey has emphasized he still wouldn’t have any power to limit protections on the procedure that have been championed by Pritzker and a deep blue legislature.

Instead, Bailey has used his limited campaign resources — about $525,000 on hand in the final week of the race — to keep the focus on the rising cost of living, education and crime.

“People are ready for change,” Bailey told the Sun-Times. “We didn't really sense that so much four years ago here in the city, but the high cost of living, the high cost of doing business seems to be taking a toll now. People are paying more attention.”

Bailey moved into a Chicago apartment after running away with the GOP primary in order to interact more with city voters. But the strategy has also drawn an election board complaint from the Democratic Party of Illinois for not reporting rent on campaign finance reports.

And while Bailey said his campaign focus was gaining ground in the vote-rich Chicago area, he and running mate Aaron Del Mar set out on a mostly downstate bus tour during the final week of the race urging Republicans to turn out to vote.

A win for Pritzker would make him the first Illinois governor elected to a third term since Republican Jim Thompson in 1982, and the first-ever Democrat to do so in Illinois.

It would also immediately beg the question of how long Pritzker’s attention will be totally devoted to the state — and whether he’ll launch a campaign for president in 2028.

Republicans have long complained the incumbent has viewed the office as a stepping stone to the White House, and Pritzker himself has hardly quelled presidential speculation.

But he maintains he has unfinished business in Springfield after two terms spanning some of the most tumultuous years in state history, from a global pandemic to a chaotic federal deportation campaign and numerous run-ins with the Trump administration throughout it all.

“I’m somebody that still believes in getting big things done,” Pritzker said. “We're on our way to having truly universal preschool in the state of Illinois. That's taken a couple of years for us to ramp up the funding for… And here we are eight years later, I think I've learned a lot about how to protect people in this state from Donald Trump and from his policies, and I'm going to continue to do that.”

Corbett, the independent, says his mostly self-funded campaign’s research suggests he’d do well in a head-to-head matchup with Pritzker, and says he backs more measured spending cuts than those proposed by Bailey.

“[Democrats] have got all the money so they can run a bunch of TV ads that say, ‘Look how fiscally responsible we are and look how we're lowering your taxes,’ even though both things aren't true,” Corbett said. “And then they go down, they govern and they don't change a thing. So my hope is if I'm able to get an office and start this independent movement in Illinois, we can bring people more to that reasonable level of, ‘Yeah, I understand that we need funds to be able to help people.’”