Prairie State Wire

Former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Curran argues Gov. J.B. Pritzker should have seen the rebellion he now faces over his COVID-19 pandemic handling coming.

“This is really about survival for small business owners that have lost as much as 90% of their business,” Curran told the Prairie State Wire. “First off, the PPP money from the government hasn’t been enough to sustain them and never will be, and it doesn’t end there. The impact on our economy from these restrictions runs deep. As these businesses close and struggle, what’s going to happen to the commercial real estate industry that rents out the buildings to them? What happens to all the other restaurants now that people have gotten accustomed to not going out to them?”

With the stakes being so high, Curran isn’t surprised to now see more residents taking a stance against the governor, among them McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally, who is now vowing not to enforce the ban on indoor dining the governor recently enacted across the region.

“I just think the governor is playing a little too heavy given how much this is impacting people,” added Curran, who finished with nearly 40% of the vote in his run against U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) in a seven-candidate field. “He may be well-meaning, but people are really losing everything based on what we’re seeing”

Curran sees the governor’s growing threats about stripping businesses that violate his orders of state licenses as just a desperate reaction to a situation that seems to be getting worse by the day.  

“I think everyone agrees that Illinois was already in a bad place before COVID even arrived,” he said. “As well as anyone, Pritzker knows the state’s economic future is really in a dark place, which explains why he went so hard with his progressive tax proposal. Right now, Illinois is really a bad investment in just about any way you can think of.”