WASHINGTON DC – Illinois' Governor Bruce Rauner's refusal to be anywhere near Donald Trump is raising Republican eyebrows downstate, where Trump handily won once-Democrat strongholds.
The Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet reported Illinois' Republican governor's confusing behavior while in D.C. over the weekend. He went to D.C., dissed the bi-partisan National Governor's Association conference, only to attend the Republican Governors Association meetings and dinner keynoted by Vice President Mike Pence.
But Governor Rauner evidently didn't find it necessary or beneficial for his 2018 re-election efforts to attend President Trump's governor's ball at the White House Sunday night – another public diss of the president.
Rauner never endorsed Donald Trump for president and has publicly disagreed with the President's travel ban and his offer to bring federal troops to violence-ridden Chicago.
Governor Rauner's actions were noticed by former Macoupin County's GOP Chairman Terri Koyne, who said Rauner not attending the White House event was disrespectful, but not surprising.
"Trump won Illinois in the Primary election – the Republican voters spoke," she told Illinois Review. "If Rauner chooses to disrespect the voters, that is his choice."
In Koyne's Macoupin County, more votes were cast for Trump in the General Election than any other presidential candidate – Republican or Democrat – in decades.
"It seems by his actions that counties like mine don't matter to the governor in his re-election strategy," Koyne said. "It will be interesting to see if Rauner can help the lower offices in their races in Central/Southern Illinois in the next election as much as Trump did in this past election."
To be noted, those statewide races in November where GOP candidates were more closely aligned with Rauner than Trump didn't turn out so well.
Chicago Tribune map of Illinois counties in 2016 election:
