Arlington Heights Daily Herald. June 22, 2024.
Editorial: Illinois Republicans need a more centrist message, unity to regain relevancy
In other circumstances, the resignation last week of state Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy would seem an opportunity to reset the GOP on a course toward relevancy in Illinois. But both the circumstances of Tracy’s departure and the reaction to it suggest cause for concern.
Downstate Sen. Darren Bailey, who mustered barely more than 40% of the vote in his 2022 bid to unseat Gov. J.B. Pritzker, called Tracy’s resignation a “cleansing” of the party, an unfortunate term that both resonates with chilling historical implications and suggests the very notion of a purity test that has been at the heart of Republicans’ struggles in Illinois.
Tracy implied those struggles in his prepared statement explaining the reasons for quitting his post.
“I have had to spend far too much time dealing with intraparty power struggles, and local intraparty animosities that continued after primaries and county chair elections,” Tracy wrote.
Republican state Sen. Dan McConchie of Hawthorn Woods lamented that “you have a circular firing squad that seems to be the Republican Party these days.”
That imagery suggests a range of factors is to blame for the GOP’s present weakness. Yet, it cannot be denied that a certain strain of the Illinois Republican Party rests the party’s hopes for the future on its own peculiar definition of grassroots “real Republicans” focused on sowing suspicions of government accountability and animosity toward anything but their own strict, personally defined social values.
It is a strain that has somehow failed to see what has happened to the Republican Party in the Chicago suburbs. A decade ago, the best that Democrats could muster as candidates for positions from county clerk to congressman in counties like DuPage, Kane and Lake and many pockets of Northwest Cook County were hopeless tokens offered up in the simple pretense of giving voters a “choice.“ Today, Democrats are not only competitive but hold key county government posts in all those counties, majorities on their county boards, most suburban state legislative positions and every one of the seven collar-county congressional seats.
Of 17 Illinois congressional districts, just three are represented by Republicans.
If the GOP message has indeed been what former state representative and gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives of Wheaton calls opposition to Democrats’ “policy prescriptions that have destroyed ... the working-class opportunities in this state,” the party’s candidates and leaders have done a feeble job of impressing it on Illinois voters.
The impending November elections offer a chance for GOP electoral redemption, but only the most irrepressible Pollyanna expects such an outcome. Even if Donald Trump mounts a formidable national campaign, recent Illinois experience does not put much stock in the likelihood that his coattails will sweep Republican candidates to victories here.
What could? Two things that are much needed in our state.
One is a resurgence of the centrist positions that led Republicans to their prior dominance in the suburbs and thus provided balance between Democratic control in Chicago and GOP influence downstate. The other is true unity that recognizes the Republican Party is capable of a broad range of nuance that doesn’t necessarily dispel its commitment to personal freedoms, economic fairness and limited government.
Without both of these elements, the party is doomed to a constant state of “opposition” to entrenched Democratic leadership and the state will be doomed to unchecked one-party control. Illinois needs two strong parties vying to balance the varied interests of our diverse population, and it’s not like the Republicans are void of options. Suburban lawmakers like Senators John Curran of Downers Grove and Don DeWitte of St. Charles and Representatives Seth Lewis of Bartlett and Brad Stephens of Rosemont, among others, have demonstrated clear interest in governance beyond mere obstruction.
But of late, the efforts of a cantankerous segment of Republicans to redefine the entire party has served only to cripple its influence.
Crowing about “cleansing” and “real Republicanism” in the wake of Tracy’s departure does not bode well for a change in that status. So, perhaps the greatest challenge facing his successor is to get members of the firing squad to put down their weapons and realize they are on the same team.
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Chicago Tribune. June 21, 2024.
Editorial: Exit Illinois Republican leader Don Tracy, pushed from stage right
The MAGA knives came out for Don Tracy, the chair of the Illinois Republican Party for more than three difficult years, and they stabbed more fiercely than in May. We’re sorry to see this decent man go. We always found him to be thoughtful, reasonable and an independent thinker.
Tracy’s so-long-suckers letter, heavy with the vibes of resignation to the seemingly inevitable, hit familiar themes as the Illinois GOP goes all MAGA, all the time in advance of the pending Milwaukee convention and Donald Trump’s campaign for president of the United States.
“When I took on this full-time volunteer job in February, 2021,” Tracy wrote Wednesday, “I thought I would be spending most of my time fighting Democrats, helping elect Republicans, raising money to pay for more Party infrastructure, and advocating for Party (sic) unity. Unfortunately, however, I have had to spend far too much time dealing with intra party power struggles, and local intra party animosities that continued after primaries and County Chair elections.”
Advocating for party unity? The outrage. Building infrastructure? Boring. Spending time convincing swing voters to actually vote Republican? How picayune. And that party unity? There is only one kind of unity Tracy’s intraparty opponents understand. And that comes with Tracy on the other side of the door.
The Tribune’s Rick Pearson and Jeremy Gorner predicted Tracy’s demise when they wrote about how Mark Shaw, the former chairman of the GOP in Lake County, was nixed Monday as state party vice chair by the Illinois Republican State Central Committee and also removed Monday from the party’s fundraising committee: “The decision by top Illinois Republican officials to dethrone the party’s vice chair could portend even bigger changes for the moribund organization,” they wrote, as if speaking of a coming June GOP version of the Ides of March on the Prairie.
The reporters proved right. Maybe more quickly than they expected.
Tracy’s letter even contained its own Shakespearean flourish as he said that the brutal, extra-procedural (or so he claimed) manner of Shaw’s removal “portends a direction of the State Party (sic) I am not comfortable with.”
Tracy’s list of “et tus” remained unarticulated, but we suspect it was as long as his arm.
He also notes in the letter the current MAGA-land synonym for extremist power seekers: grass-roots leaders, which in this instance is not so much about growing anything as burning down what little still exists. Republicans are quick to accuse Democrats of employing big-lie terminology (the ’Inflation Reduction Act” and so on) with Orwellian implications, but they hardly are above the same tactics. Grass sometimes needs someone willing to wield a mower lest it choke the rest of the garden.
Nobody can or should fault Tracy for following his conscience, and he noted in his letter his willingness to continue to support his party, at least as he once understood it to exist. But when moderate conservatives, or maybe Tracy is best described as a conservative who believes in actually serving the roughly 40% of Illinoisans who call themselves Republicans and would like an actual say in some Illinois matters of import, exit from the stage, the state is not the better for it.
It hardly needs stating that where goes the national Republican Party, so goes Illinois’ GOP. While Trump sits atop the GOP, it is hard to imagine many of Tracy’s aims coming to fruition or his party gaining either power or relevance in this state.
But we surely respect that the man tried.
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Chicago Sun-Times. June 22, 2024.
Editorial: State Sen. Harris has a clear conflict of interest that should be outlawed
State Sen. Napoleon Harris III chairs the Illinois Senate’s Insurance Committee and has partnered with two men who run an insurance brokerage.
Walk into any neighborhood bar, and someone is likely to be complaining that all politicians are corrupt.
We have known many hardworking and ethical public servants. But why do other officeholders seem eager to give the public a reason to think there aren’t any?
The latest to spark criticism is state Sen. Napoleon Harris III, D-Flossmoor. As the Sun-Times’ Robert Herguth reported last week, Harris has partnered with two men who run an insurance brokerage, even though Harris is chair of the Illinois Senate’s Insurance Committee. The committee oversees legislation affecting the multibillion-dollar insurance industry in the state.
Really? If Harris wanted another side hustle — he already gets money from a company that runs a Beggars Pizza franchise in Harvey — he couldn’t find something that had nothing to do with insurance companies? He couldn’t do everything possible to ensure that Illinoisans are confident they are getting a fair shake from the committee he heads? Insurance companies affect virtually everyone in Illinois.
Doesn’t Harris realize that the link between politicians and insurance businesses has had a long, ethics-challenged history ever since former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley steered work to his son John’s insurance business and then told everyone who didn’t like it they “could kiss my a--.”? Does Harris not realize many Cook County residents still wonder why so many government agencies flocked to buy insurance from former County Board President George W. Dunne’s Near North Insurance Agency? Wasn’t Harris pondering how it looked as then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s son Andrew built up an insurance career in some Chicago suburbs that surely would have welcomed help from the speaker?
Harris says his “new business venture” in insurance is not a conflict of interest. Try explaining that to the guy at the end of the bar who already has a sour view of politicians.
Harris has partnered with two men in a business called the Maxx Group. Maxx helps clients procure business, personal and life insurance and advertises various types of insurance coverage for public agencies. Many of those agencies have a reason to stay on the good side of state government, which provides grants and other revenue.
The required economic interest form Harris filed in May mentioned for the first time Maxx Group Plus, which shares the same executives and address with the Maxx Group.
Making voters into cynics
The filing comes at a painful time when Illinois residents have been watching corruption investigations play out involving Madigan and onetime dean of the Chicago City Council, former 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke. Both men long had dual roles as lawmakers and in private tax attorney firms. That didn’t exactly boost citizens’ confidence in government. Madigan, who has pleaded not guilty, faces a trial in October on bribery and racketeering charges. Burke is scheduled to be sentenced Monday for racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion.
It’s possible for lawmakers to earn extra income from occupations that don’t intersect with their official duties. We suspect the reason so many of them turn to revenue streams related to their elected jobs — which often is legal — is because that’s the easier way to fatten a bank account or a campaign war chest. Politicians should ask themselves why it is easier. And why they don’t care if they turn voters into cynics.
Besides his new insurance venture, Harris also accepts campaign donations from the industry he helps to regulate, as happens all too often in government.
In 2022 and 2023, Harris’ campaign fund accepted contributions from the Maxx Group totaling $2,500, according to Illinois State Board of Elections records. He also has accepted at least $60,000 overall from the insurance industry since the beginning of last year, state elections board records show. Among the donations: $10,000 from the Allstate Insurance Co., $7,500 from State Farm Insurance, $6,000 from Cigna and $1,500 from the political arm of the Illinois Life & Health Insurance Council.
As the law now stands, legislators are entitled to earn money from side jobs. But they should steer clear of anything that even hints at a conflict of interest.
In fact, lawmakers can make it easy for themselves: Outlaw clear-cut conflicts of interest. Find a way to earn side money that doesn’t stoke cynicism and distrust among voters.
It won’t stop all the complaints about corrupt politicians, but it’s a start.
In 2022 and 2023, Harris’ campaign fund accepted contributions from the Maxx Group totaling $2,500, according to Illinois State Board of Elections records. He also has accepted at least $60,000 overall from the insurance industry since the beginning of last year, state elections board records show. Among the donations: $10,000 from the Allstate Insurance Co., $7,500 from State Farm Insurance, $6,000 from Cigna and $1,500 from the political arm of the Illinois Life & Health Insurance Council.
As the law now stands, legislators are entitled to earn money from side jobs. But they should steer clear of anything that even hints at a conflict of interest.
In fact, lawmakers can make it easy for themselves: Outlaw clear-cut conflicts of interest. Find a way to earn side money that doesn’t stoke cynicism and distrust among voters.
It won’t stop all the complaints about corrupt politicians, but it’s a start.
END