Illinois Still Looks Settled

I wanted to get into these videos on the Illinois governor’s race. JB Pritzker is seeking a third term. His Republican opponent is the same man from 2022, Darren Bailey, running this time with Cook County Republican Aaron Del Mar. Given that Illinois is a solid blue state, the Republicans have a very steep climb in 2026.

The first clip is Del Mar. FOX 32 got a recording of comments he made about George Floyd. He sat down with political reporter Brandon Pope to answer them.

Watch it here [VIDEO]

Pope had audio from a public town hall in McHenry County on Monday. Del Mar was talking about Pritzker’s COVID rules. Stores closed. His business on its knees. Churches shut. Protests open.

“The rest of us—your store’s closed. My business, my business got brought to its knees. I mean, we struggled, right? Nothing was working. Nothing was open. But J.B. Pritzker said it’s okay to be locked arm in arm when George Floyd, one of the grossest human beings ever, got killed. And they’re arm in arm walking down Chicago—10,000 of them—when the rest of us can’t go to church. That’s the guy we’re talking about.”

Two people in the room told FOX the tape is real. Del Mar did not deny it. He did not apologize. He called the wording rhetoric and hyperbole. He said two things can be true at once: the way Floyd died was abhorrent, and the criminal history should not be washed out. Asked what he would say to Black Illinoisans who heard that sentence, he moved the answer to safer streets. He said it was not about race. He also said he has problems with how Operation Midway Blitz was run, that they were picking up people who look like him.

I am not retrying Minneapolis here. Chauvin was convicted. The tape is what Del Mar said about a lockdown he still thinks was a double standard. He left the sentence on the table.

Bailey sat with Tahman Bradley on The Point the same week.

Watch that one here: [VIDEO]

WGN billed the segment as Trump’s endorsement and an independent siphoning votes. The independent is Collin Corbett. Palatine. Former Republican strategist. Running mate Carolyn Schofield. Fiscal conservative. Supports abortion rights. Opposes much of the Trump agenda. He says he is building a middle between Pritzker and Bailey.

Bailey named him as a siphon. On The Point he said the candidacy could take votes from both tickets, not only his. That is wider than what his campaign has said in writing. Del Mar helped file the petition challenge that tried to keep Corbett off the ballot. The Board of Elections still found more than 25,000 valid signatures. The objection was withdrawn. A Bailey spokesperson then called Corbett “a JB Pritzker clone masquerading as an independent” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Later they said a vote for Corbett is a vote for Pritzker.

The written line from the Bailey campaign is that Corbett peels anti-Pritzker voters who will not mark Bailey, and the incumbent keeps the win. Corbett’s line is that he can take from both, and that he is hunting the people who stay home. The one September survey that printed his name put him at 4.1 percent against Pritzker 51.3 and Bailey 30.8. Four points is not a majority. Four points in a 20-point race is also not nothing. I am not assigning them. Bailey named the siphon. He left room that Pritzker feels it too.

Trump endorsed Bailey again on Sunday, coming back from Ireland. “I’ve already endorsed him. I’m all for Bailey.” He called Pritzker a disaster and pointed at crime. He also named the helicopter crash that killed Bailey’s son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren last fall.

Bailey told Bradley he heard the compassion first.

“I heard compassion. I heard from a President who said twice in a 30 second clip about the tragedy that my family went through. That’s what I heard.”

He said he did not ask for the endorsement and will take it. No plan to meet Trump at the Presidents Cup at Medinah next week unless someone invites him. Asked what separates him from Trump, he first said “there’s nothing,” then reached for unity. Illinois is divided. Chicago is divided.

The Pritzker campaign is still running an ad about the curriculum at a school Bailey founded downstate — the charge that students are taught dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. Bailey would not answer it. “It’s ridiculous.” He said the oldest move in the game is to talk about Trump or about him and skip eight years in Springfield.

Pritzker was on The Point two days before Bailey.

Watch that one here: [VIDEO]

The interview is mostly last year’s immigration operation. One year after Midway Blitz, he says the neighborhoods are not back. The economy in those communities has not been restored. A University of Illinois analysis put the Cook County loss at more than a billion dollars in buying and about $107 million in sales tax. He added what the report does not measure: children who watched people get taken and still carry the fear.

Bradley asked about the endorsement. Pritzker used it the way he uses Trump.

“Darren Bailey wants to deny that he’s associated with Donald Trump because he knows Donald Trump’s policies and Donald Trump himself are terribly unpopular in the State of Illinois.”

He would not endorse in next year’s mayor’s race. He wants to work with whoever wins. On running for one office while another is in the air, he left the 2028 door where he always leaves it: do the job you have, then decide. He thinks Illinois law puts the Chicago mayor’s race too close to a state general election. He is not promising to change it.

He did not spend the segment on the McHenry tape. He did not spend it on the school ad. He spent it on Trump.

The numbers have not made this close. In 2022 Pritzker beat Bailey about 54.5 to 42.8. This cycle the public polls sit wider. Victory Research last November: 54–34, with 12 percent undecided. FOX used that poll in the Del Mar piece. G-Ratings, late August into September 1, 850 registered voters who said they meant to vote: Pritzker 51.3, Bailey 30.8, 13.8 undecided or elsewhere. A September survey that included Corbett put him at 4.1 percent against those same two numbers. Another recent survey in the stack: 52.7–33.8. The averages still print something like 54–34. Cook, Sabato, Inside Elections: Solid or Safe Democratic.

Del Mar says they close it in Chicago and the suburbs. Bailey named the siphon. Early voting starts Thursday, September 24. Election Day is November 3.

The debate that exists is a WTTW forum on October 13. Pritzker and Bailey are on it. Corbett held a press conference outside the studio this week and asked to be added. The station left him off. In August, WGN, FOX Chicago, and WTTW invited the two major candidates. Bailey took WGN and FOX. Pritzker took only WTTW and declined the other two. Bailey’s campaign said it would “probably” take the public-television date and then did not confirm it that week. A League of Women Voters / WEEK-TV debate in Peoria was cancelled after neither major candidate locked in. Corbett had said he would show. I have not seen WGN or FOX post a date. The one stage Pritzker accepted is still the one on the books, and it is still two chairs.

I will watch that forum if they share it. Until then the ticket has a tape and an endorsement, the independent has a ballot line, Pritzker has a lead, and the polls have not blinked.