Notes & Quotes: Illinois GOP needs ‘a little mothering’ as new chair walks familiar Trump tightrope
Illinois House Republican Leader Tony McCombie toasts to the audience at Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair. She thanked a GOP donor “not only for the cup, but for what's in it.” (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)
Republicans rally at rain-soaked fairgrounds, dismiss Harris’ rise as ‘honeymoon period’
By JERRY NOWICKI
Capitol News Illinois
jnowicki@capitolnewsillinois.com
Despite a weather delay, Illinois Republicans gathered at the state fairgrounds Thursday to hear party leaders’ plans for whittling away at Democratic dominance.
For the third straight election season, the party is grappling with a presidential candidate that’s far more popular with the party’s base than the Illinois electorate at large. Former President Donald Trump has lost Illinois by roughly 17 percentage points each of the last two cycles – roughly level with Mitt Romney’s performance as the GOP nominee in 2012.
New ILGOP Chair Kathy Salvi speaks to attendees of Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair on Thursday. Salvi, a mother of six, told the party that “we need a little mothering.” (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)
Kathy Salvi, the GOP’s new chair, took over position last month after former chair Don Tracy resigned. The mother of six and unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022 once again referred to the ILGOP as her “165-year-old seventh child.”
“I think we need a little mothering in this party,” she told fairgoers. “Don't you agree? Well, yeah, a little or a lot, I heard someone say. Well, let's start with a little and work it on up.”
She takes over a GOP that holds no statewide elected offices and is relegated to superminorities in each chamber of the General Assembly. Her message has been one of healing from the party infighting cited in her predecessor’s resignation letter.
“I just want any one of you here to remember any recent conversation where there was a disagreement at your family, your own family's dinner table, okay?” Salvi said at a morning Republican State Central Committee meeting prior to the fair. “And sometimes you have to just rise above it all. What are we on mission for? We're on mission to elect Trump, Vance and everyone down ticket.”
Senate Republican Leader John Curran, of Downers Grove, focused on the GOP’s accomplishments that predate Trump – stretching from the 1860s through the early 2000s – in his breakfast speech.
Senate Republican Leader John Curran speaks to attendees at Republican Day at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)
“We got to remind people that this is the party that ended slavery,” Curran said. “This is the party that legislated and passed women's rights to vote. This is the party that passed civil rights. That this is the party that fought the war on terror.”
Curran briefly attended last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, but he didn’t address the Illinois delegation. He said Thursday that’s because he was balancing being a father of four, a working attorney and a legislative leader who is trying to help win elections in Illinois.
Asked about the Trump campaign’s rhetoric about Vice President Kamala Harris being a “diversity” hire and that she “became” Black, Curran said Democrats are name-callers too.
“We have a governor that has called myself and my caucus homophobes, racists, xenophobes, all sorts of names,” he said. “And in fact, he's called Republicans broadly in this state, who he represents as their elected chief executive officer, you know, all these names.”
He said he tries to make sure he and Senate GOP members “rise above it, and we stick to policy.”
At the fairgrounds, he criticized Democrats for policies that he said “prioritize violent criminals over law abiding citizens,” provide state benefits to noncitizens, and give tax incentives to a battery manufacturing plant in Manteno that he said has “ties to the Chinese Communist Party”
While Curran was speaking to reporters outside of the breakfast gathering, James Marter, the Republican candidate for Illinois’ 14th Congressional District was addressing the crowd inside. He’s vying to unseat U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, who is Black.
James Marter, a candidate in the 14th Congressional District, addresses the Republican State Central Committee at a morning breakfast prior to Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock)
“She's called me a white Christian nationalist. I'm not going to deal with the whatever the race component of that was, but that makes her an anti-Christian globalist, right?” he said. “So this is what we're dealing with in the 14th Congressional District. I'm an election denier. So she's an election fraud denier, right?”
He said Democrats “cheated” by drawing legislative maps heavily favoring their own party’s election odds. Every 10 years, Illinois’ legislature redraws congressional and state legislative boundaries, and in 2020 Democrats did so in a way to cement their power.
House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, of Savanna, said Democrat-drawn maps are a contributor to the fact that Democrats hold 78 of the 118 seats in the House. But she also said the GOP could overcome that disadvantage “because Republicans are not afraid to work.”
House Republican Leader Tony McCombie speaks at Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)
While House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch predicted at Democrat Day on Wednesday that his party would pick up seats, McCombie said she expects Republicans to “bite into that apple.”
“This is about the Republican turnout, because for us, it's about the next governor's race,” she said. “And if we can show that we have a great turnout, we are going to get a great Republican candidate. Because you're right, that map doesn't matter. We will turn the state around. I promise you that it might not happen next this year, but it is going to start happening.”
She said GOP odds are “no different” with Harris atop the ticket than when President Joe Biden was leading it, echoing Salvi and others who dismissed Harris’ polling surge as a “honeymoon period.”
Salvi said of Biden voluntarily dropping from the race amid party pressure and endorsing Harris: “in a lot of countries, that would be called a coup.”
As for the issues the GOP will run on, McCombie and Salvi cited migration at the southern U.S. border, inflation, taxes, crime and a “culture of corruption” within Illinois government.
The party’s two main responsibilities are “voter integrity” and “get-out-the-vote,” Salvi said.
“What are we doing?” She said. “We're encouraging everybody to vote in October. We have a long election period of time, not just day-of voting.”
The sentiment was echoed by Charles “Chuck” Maher, a candidate for Will County executive.
Charles “Chuck” Maher tells attendees at the Republican State Central Committee breakfast that the GOP should view October as “election month.” (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)
“The month of October is for all of us to get out and vote, that it's not something that we're going to do one day, one time,” he said at the breakfast. “…This is not early voting. This is a month of election.”
While Salvi noted she experienced a “blue funk” when returning to Illinois after last month’s RNC in Milwaukee, the guest speaker at the fairgrounds gave words of encouragement.
Matthew Whitaker, a former acting attorney general under former President Donald Trump, is the guest speaker at Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)
Matthew Whitaker, a former acting attorney general under Trump, said for periods of time during former President Barack Obama’s administration, Iowa had a Democratically controlled House, Senate and governor’s office. Now the state is solidly red.
“So this can be turned around quickly,” he said.
Jerry Nowicki is editor-in-chief of Capitol News Illinois, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government that is distributed to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Jerry Nowicki
Jerry has more than five years of experience in and around state government and nearly 10 years of experience in news. He grew up in south suburban Evergreen Park and received a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State University and a master’s degree online from Purdue University.
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