Prairie State Wire

Former Rep. Jeanne Ives, a Republican from Wheaton, hardly sees former Gov. Bruce Rauner, whose last day in office was today, as the man most qualified to offer advice about the party’s direction.

“Gov. Rauner lost the support of both [former Gov.] Jim Edgar and me during his tenure as governor,” Ives told the State Journal-Register. “In what direction should the ILGOP [Illinois Republican Party] head? Opposite Bruce Rauner.”

Ives’s remarks came after Rauner, in his final news conference as Illinois governor, said he thinks it is only somewhat true that the party needs to be as moderate as Edgar has indicated he feels it needs to be and as conservative as Ives has pushed for in order to have the best chance of returning to power.

Jeanne Ives

Even then, Rauner hinted, it might all be in vain if party leaders aren’t willing to bring about all the changes that he feels are needed.

“If you’re gonna be a moderate to win elections, but you’re not going to be a reformer and fix the problems, what’s the point of winning?” he said. “And in Illinois, Republicans have won in the ’80s and ’90s, but then they did the same bad stuff that the Democrats did. ... In a lot of ways, the Republican Party for decades was sort of a weak subsidiary of the Democratic Party: raise taxes, kick the can on pensions, overregulate, give unaffordable deals to the government unions.”

Ives, who left Springfield earlier this month after serving as state representative of the 42nd District for six years, narrowly lost out to Rauner in the Republican primary. She has consistently dogged him for what she insists amounts to having turned his back on the voters that worked to elect him, based on much of the policy he put in place.   

She recently called for a party summit at which Republican leaders would work to foster ideas she hopes will return the ILGOP to its conservative roots.

Edgar, who was governor from 1991 to 1999, recently signed on as co-chair of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s transition committee.