Illinois Republicans crash and burn in the burbs

You may recall that after the March primary I took a look at the results and made the obvious conclusion that the Chicago suburbs were trending ever harder toward the Democrats.

“Legislative Republicans are right to be afraid of another suburban wipeout,” I concluded at the time.

Turns out, I underestimated the breadth of the wipeout.

I didn’t bother to look at McHenry County’s primary results back then. That was a mistake. JB Pritzker became the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate to win McHenry County since 1852. Yes, 174 years ago.

Indeed, the entire statewide Democratic ticket carried McHenry this month. Pritzker and U.S. Senate candidate Juliana Stratton won by 11 points, and the rest of the ticket won by anywhere from 9 to 18 points (Alexi Giannoulias, who lost the county four years ago, won by 3 points).xf

Two years ago, Rep. Marty McLaughlin, R-Lake Barrington, defeated Maria Peterson by 4 points in McHenry, and then lost to Peterson this month in the county by more than 10 points. Four years ago, Democrat Allena Barbato lost the 32nd Senate District McHenry precincts to Sen. Craig Wilcox, R-McHenry, by 12 points. This year, she defeated the Republican incumbent in the same precincts by 6 points. Both Democrats went on to win their races.

This was all pretty predictable had I looked at the primary totals. Democratic primary votes for governor were up by about 60% this year in McHenry County compared to four years ago, while Republican gubernatorial primary totals dropped by 48% or so.

And unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that formula roughly predicted the rest of the suburban vote this month.

In DuPage County, the number of Republicans casting primary ballots for governor fell about 33% compared to four years ago. Pritzker is winning that former Republican bastion by almost two-to-one (63-33). He won DuPage four years ago by 15 points (56-41).

As recently as 2018, DuPage was still a swing county. No more.

In Lake County this November, not a single statewide Democrat took fewer than 66% of the vote. Earlier this year, Republican primary gubernatorial turnout collapsed by more than 48% compared to four years ago, while Democratic turnout rose by more than 27%. Back in 2014, the county voted for as many statewide Republicans as Democrats.

Throughout the suburbs, Democratic primary election gubernatorial votes rose by whopping amounts, and that predicted a corresponding but smaller increase in the Democratic general election vote.

President Donald Trump decided awhile ago to deliberately nationalize the politics of this off-year election and forcefully turn the attention on himself and his proclaimed accomplishments. He even said multiple times that people should vote as if he were on the ballot himself.

Trump had hoped to do all this to motivate his base and attempt to stir up its turnout to near-presidential election levels and overcome the usual lean toward nonpresidential party candidates in off-years.

That obviously backfired.

All Democratic legislative candidates involved in hard-fought campaigns lashed together Trump and their Republican opponents, with an occasional dash of Jeffrey Epstein thrown in for good measure. It didn’t matter if Republicans had no direct ties to Trump or Epstein, they’re Republicans, and that’s more than enough for their purposes. And it worked. Both chambers have picked up several seats.

Off-year elections have regularly been nationalized over the years. I covered my first such election in 1994, when Republicans won races in downstate and Southern Illinois that nobody thought they’d ever win.

The truth is there’s very little that the party under fire can do in elections like that. So, all the hindsight now of raising more money, and changing some Republican rhetoric here and there, and recruiting better candidates and strengthening the state party really wouldn’t have worked. Several strong Republican incumbents lost this year and raised enough money to compete. It was the voters what done it.

It may sting to hear this for some, but what hurts the Republican Party the most is Republicans themselves. They nominated Darren Bailey, who was wiped out by 22 points, and they supported Trump (or refused to criticize him), who dragged everyone else down with his historically awful approval ratings.

I do not see how the Republicans stand a snowball’s chance in Hades of winning consistently in this state until Republicans themselves decide to move on from this era. Illinois Democrats could get away with losing the South as long as they firmed up the suburbs. Republicans are stuck now as mainly a regional party.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.