Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy is pleading for candidates to not in-fight during the GOP’s primary elections.
“Several months ago, I wrote a column in this memo called ‘The Art of a Primary,’ which garnered a lot of positive feedback,” Tracy said in his weekly memo. “However, it appears to me, and to many of you, that the candidates are not listening and/or are totally disregarding the 11th Commandment. For this reason, I need to remind our great Republican primary candidates that: the negative campaigning — especially in the gubernatorial primary — has got to stop. We need to hear our candidates talk more about their respective virtues, and less about the alleged faults of their primary opponents.”
Tracy emphasizes immediately restraining these actions, and is asking every Republican agreeing with him — political activists, influencers and community leaders — to help “reinforce this critically important message.”
“I am working every day to foster unity amongst the party because anything less than a complete unity right after the primary could easily result in Democrat victories, including four more years of King Pritzker rule, and waste this great 2022 opportunity for an Illinois red wave,” he said. “Please help me discourage negative campaigning in this all-important Republican primary.”
This November’s election will be the first since a Democrat remap that favored the party’s incumbent over others. But first, candidates must proceed through a June 28 primary. In March, Tracy issued a similar warning to Republicans to not fight each other during the primary.
“This election cycle, thanks in part to the Democrats’ extremely one-sided remapping of congressional and state legislative districts, we have several primaries that could easily engender hard feelings and divisiveness,” Tracy said at the time.
Illinois has been noted as one of the more aggressively gerrymandered states. After the state’s remap, and that of deeply Democrat New York, the media congressional district throughout the country leaned Democrat by three points, Vox reports.
Minorities have criticized the strategies used to divide voters based on ethnic features. Teresa Haley, president of the Illinois State Conference NAACP, spoke out against such tactics as the remapping was taking place. Packing, stacking and cracking are all terms for reducing the voting power of minorities in favor of a political party.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents a group of Latino voters in the Chicago area, filed a lawsuit against the remapping alongside Senate Minority President Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) and House Minority Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs). The East St. Louis branch of the NAACP joined the lawsuit, alleging that a black-majority district was purposefully broken up and scattered among multiple House districts in order to keep two white incumbent Democrats in office.
