Election report - Updated

Update July 2, 2022 9:10 AM CDT: David Brooks wrote a good column which touches on the gubernatorial race I describe below, and puts it into a national context. At the bottom of this post (below the break), I'll include a link to his column and some snippets.

_____________

 Illinois held its primary elections yesterday for both Democrats and Republicans (and other parties, for whatever that's worth; we did get one Libertarian voter in our precinct yesterday).  I worked again as an election judge.  In this post, I'll give a recap of the political outcomes from yesterday. Then in a follow-up post I'll make an observation.

These mid-term elections are when Illinois elects its governor.  Our incumbent, Democrat JB Pritzker, won in a romp against an opponent yesterday.  On the Republican side, one candidate, Aurora, IL Mayor Richard Irvin, who happens to be Black, was given $50 million(!) in campaign funding by Ken Griffin, the richest man in Illinois and founder of Citadel, a big financial firm.   But other billionaires also lined up behind a couple of other Republican candidates, and yesterday's winner, and likely sacrificial lamb in November against Pritzker, was Darren Bailey.  Illinois is a long state from north to south, with Chicago near the far northern end.  Bailey is from the southern third of the state; Louisville, IL is a good deal closer to Louisville, KY than it is to Chicago - and I don't just mean geographically.  Bailey sounds like someone from the American South when he talks.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with that, and Bailey seems like a decent fellow, but culturally, he'll have to build some bridges if he wants to appeal to voters in the Chicago suburbs - which once were a GOP bastion but that history recedes farther into the past each year.

One of our US senators, Tammy Duckworth, is up for reelection.  Many Republicans competed in a GOP primary to face her; it seems fair to say that the least obscure among them (but still too obscure to warrant mentioning her name) won the dubious honor of losing to Duckworth by 60 points or more in November.

Progressive Democrat Marie Newman has been mentioned at NewGathering a couple of times; two years ago, she ended the congressional career of Dan Lipinski, one of the very few remaining pro-life Democrats in the House (as I understand it, the Democratic Caucus is down to one pro-lifer now, Henry Cuellar from Texas).  Illinois' congressional districts were redistricted after the 2020 census, and most of the districts in the Chicago metropolitan area, including Newman's district, were changed substantially.  Rather than run for reelection in her own district, Newman chose to primary one of her Democratic colleagues, Sean Casten, whose own district now encompasses parts of Newman's old district.  Casten is not considered pro-life but he is usually thought to be more of a centrist than Newman.  Casten won big, by 40 or more points.  So for now, Newman appears to be a single-term politician.  I'd guess a federal appointment could be one possibility for her while she figures out what she wants to do next.

For good or ill (probably ill) the Trump-y candidates had a pretty good night up and down the GOP ballot.  Trump endorsed the GOP gubernatorial nominee, Bailey, albeit not until a few days before the primary vote, by which point Bailey already had a comfortable lead in the polls (Trump has been pulling that "trick" of endorsing the already-clear-cut-winner in other races in other states this primary season).  Still, Bailey routed the competition last night; whether the Trump endorsement turned a win into a cakewalk is not easy to discern.  In another incumbent-vs-incumbent election yesterday, this time on the GOP side, Trump-endorsed Mary Miller beat Rodney Davis.  This lead paragraph in The Hill tells you everything you'd need to know:

Conservative firebrand freshman Rep. Mary Miller, who began her House career apologizing for comments about Adolf Hitler, beat five-term Rep. Rodney Davis on Tuesday in the GOP primary in Illinois’ 15th District. 

Update July 2, 2022, 9:10 am CDT: New York Times columnist David Brooks has published a column with the somewhat misleading headline, "Why on Earth is Pelosi Supporting the Trumpists?".  The headline is misleading because the Democratic strategy which is the subject of Brooks' column hardly could be attributed to her alone; other Democratic politicians and funding groups have been pursuing it as well.

I don't know that the strategy in question has a catchy moniker, but one might call it, "Try to choose your opponent for the general election".  Here is how Brooks describes it:

So far, Democrats have spent tens of millions to help Trumpist candidates in Republican primaries.

In Illinois alone, the Democratic Governors Association and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker spent at least $30 million to attack a Trumpist’s moderate gubernatorial opponent. In Pennsylvania, a Democratic campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads intended to help a Trumpist candidate win the G.O.P. gubernatorial primary. A political action committee affiliated with Nancy Pelosi worked to boost far-right Republican House candidates in California and Colorado.

They are doing it because they think far-right Trumpist candidates will be easier to beat in the general elections than more moderate candidates.

In defense of Democrats, there is at least somewhat of a track record of this approach succeeding.  The case study usually turned to is Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, whose re-election campaign successfully manipulated the 2012 Republican primary in her state to choose the hapless Todd Akin as her opponent.  McCaskill went on to win re-election in a red state.  

Governor Pritzker in Illinois surely played from that playbook this cycle.  He inundated the local airwaves with television ads claiming that his desired opponent, Darren Bailey, was "too conservative for Illinois".  That could be clever messaging: it signals to Pritzker's votes in November that Bailey is indeed too conservative, while simultaneously signaling to Republican voters that Bailey is just the kind of conservative they like: pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Trump.  Pritzker's strategy may well have worked: as noted in the post above, Bailey steamrolled his opponents, some of whom had tens of millions of dollars in financial backing of their own.   

But this strategy brings with it what we might call the Donald Trump Risk: the hapless goof might actually win the general election in November.  (For the record: I don't have reason - yet - to think Bailey in Illinois is a hapless goof.  I thought Trump was a hapless goof until I figured out that he's oh-so-much worse than that.)

Brooks thinks Democrats are playing with fire in trying to pick their opponent.  He makes two good points:

1. This is not shaping up to be a propitious election for Democrats.  Inflation is very high, and now there are signs the economy could be tipping into a recession.  A red wave could materialize this fall.

2. Democrats have a patriotic duty to ensure the best candidates are on offer to American voters - especially if there is a risk of a red wave.  Keeping Donald Trump and his myriad of minions out of office is more important than holding onto a Congressional majority or keeping a statehouse in Democratic hands.