Prairie State Wire

Former ABC7 reporter Charles Thomas is supporting a Republican for the first time in his life.

Thomas has decided to support GOP gubernatorial candidate Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Louisville).

"I think that I probably did my job better than I even I thought I was doing it because a lot of people say they were stunned by my decision to support Republican Darren Bailey in the Illinois governor’s race," Thomas said. "And a lot of people. Well, I’m not that too upset. People think that I’ve never pulled a Republican ballot in my life. I always regarded myself as an independent who always voted Democrat. And I always wondered about why we did that. Even when I was a reporter, I just didn’t report about it. But we did. We always support Democrats." 

Thomas recalled how he appreciated meeting Bailey months ago and had the opportunity to talk to him.

"I met Darren Bailey and I found out he’s a God-fearing, prayerful man who’s trying to be the best Christian he can be. I am trying to be the best Christian I can be. So I vibed with him. I connected with him on that level," Thomas said. "He made his bones in southern Illinois as a school board president. He and his wife, after a while opened a Christian school. It is now 400 students large. And when I said on television in that commercial that I trust him. I trust him. I do trust him because I know that his belief system is more akin to mine, certainly, than J.B. Pritzker. He is not a wealthy man. He owns a lot of land because he’s a farmer. Yeah, and farmers own a lot of land. But he’s not wealthy. J.B. Pritzker is extremely wealthy. If you want to talk about extremists. But I don’t have anything in common with them. And I’ve decided that I would like to take a chance with Darren Bailey, because I believe in my heart of hearts that Darren Bailey is a good person and he’s going to make the right decisions.”

Thomas touched on what he sees as the Black community having "problems that we can’t seem to overcome."

"We have more Black elected officials than any state in the country in Illinois, and we still have the highest unemployment rate of anyone," he said. "Our business community is virtually nonexistent, really. And we keep doing the same thing over again, over and over again. We’re not even looking at results anymore. We are just going out there and saying Republicans are bad, Democrats are who we should be voting for, even though they give us nothing." 

Thomas cited Pritzker as a "classic example, graphic example" of a Democrat who has not provided anything good.

"J.B. Pritzker, the current governor, when he – out of whole cloth – created a brand new industry, this cannabis industry, and he said there would be equity," Thomas said. "Those are his words, equity. In other words, we were going to get 15 to 20% of all this business, which is a multibillion-dollar business, now. We got nothing. Now they have to do something called social equity licenses, which are coming a day late and a dollar short. Black people do not get in the loop. They don’t get the North Side. They don’t get Skokie and Northbrook and all those great places that are going to make a lot of money. They’re going to give us the hood. I mean, we’re like being resegregated and they’re in the hood. You know, Black entrepreneurs are going to have to compete with the local weed man, putting him out of business, dislocating him. So I’m saying, well, how does J.B. Pritzker get away with this? He made the promise. He didn’t live up to it. And we’re going to go out there and vote for him again because he’s a Democrat?" 

Thomas, who was an ABC 7 political reporter for 25 years in Chicago, has made a commercial for the People Who Play By the Rules PAC in which he endorses Bailey. In the ad, Thomas says he met Bailey, and he understands what it's like to go to work every day because he is a family farmer. Thomas then says he can trust Bailey because he is fair-minded. The ad ends with Thomas saying, "I can trust this guy."

Brian Mullins is a founder of the Black Voter Project. Its goal is to encourage Black voters to choose candidates based on issues instead of automatically voting Democratic. Mullins told South Cooks News: "The goal is to organize the Black voter block in the state of Illinois. So it's a specific media-targeted door-to-door survey and data-driven effort to engage the Black electorate in issues relating to the Black community. Not Democratic, not Republican, not Independent, specifically not libertarian, but start with the issues so that we can then push people to the right candidate, not a party." 

Mullins said that his group decided to undertake this project after witnessing destruction in communities, most of it caused by specific policies. He noted that most conversations that take place in the Black community happen between the Black elite and the Democrats, which leaves out 90% of the community. Mullins said that the Black vote controls who is elected in Illinois, and he hopes his project will inform Black voters on the best candidate on the issues they care about.

Thomas retired in 2017 after more than 25 years at the station. He had a distinguished career in which he met the Pope, covered the rise of Barack Obama, and covered notable national news stories like the O.J. Simpson trial. Later in his career, he turned his attention to Chicago politics. He covered six governors, including the ones the went to jail, and everything political in Chicago. His plans for retirement are "changing the narrative for the African American community in the Chicago area." On the day of his retirement, he was surprised by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner with a special Charles Thomas day proclamation in the newsroom.