ABC News remarks on Illinois’s 2018 primary elections:
With over $160 million spent by candidates on both sides, the Illinois gubernatorial race has the potential to be the most expensive in American history, and with two ultra-wealthy businessmen expected to capture nominations Tuesday night, the heavy spending seems poised to continue.
There is no more vulnerable incumbent Republican governor in the country than Bruce Rauner. While he was able to buck Illinois’ consistent blue tint and unseat a sitting governor in 2014, Rauner faces an uphill race for re-election in 2018 in what could be the most expensive gubernatorial race in U.S. history.
Buoyed by the eye-popping $57.2 million of his own money that he gave his re-election campaign, Rauner is hoping to stave off a pack of eager Democrats eyeing the governor’s mansion in the nation’s sixth most populous state.
State Rep. Jeanne Ives is mounting a primary challenge to Rauner from the right, and just last week national Democrats tried to put their thumb on the scales. The Democratic Governors Association rolled out two television ads, one focusing on Rauner’s record on jobs and the budget and the other painting Ives as “too conservative†for Illinois in an attempt to boost Ives and energize the state’s more conservative voters against Rauner.
Just last week Rauner vetoed a gun control bill that passed the state legislature, a sign that he may be worried Ives could outflank him from the right on Tuesday.
On the Democratic side, J.B. Pritzker, the heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, is leading the pack for the nomination but is tangled in an expensive primary against State Sen. Daniel Biss and Chris Kennedy, the son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. According to campaign finance records, Pritzker has spent close to $70 million so far in his bid to unseat Rauner but has been dogged by his connections to former Democratic Governor and convicted felon Rod Blagojevich. Rauner has run an ad featuring a recording of Pritzker speaking to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2008 about who would replace then Illinois Senate and future President Barack Obama.
Much of the article is devoted to the race to determine who will be the Democratic candidate for the House seat for the Illinois 3rd District, a race I’ve commented on here. Today’s election will determine whether incumbent Dan Lipinski is out of touch with the district or national Democrats are. The winner of the Democratic primary will in all likelihood win the general election. At least I hope he or she will. The sole Republican candidate is by all accounts a neo-Nazi crank, an illustration of just how foolish and supine the Illinois Republican Party is.
