By Robert Cruz, Guest Contributor
I often hear in my neck of the woods, that “Illinois is a Republican state, except the Democrats work harder.”
I used to think that this was nonsense, but is there any truth to this?
I don’t want to discredit any of the work that people put into the last election (I know I did), but could I have worked smarter as well? Could we have used more resources to collect votes instead of asking for them?
Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey told me in January that while he was walking around asking people for their vote, Gov. JB Pritzker and his team were out there collecting votes. And It prompted me to ask, “what is the return on investment on investing in grassroots for the GOP donor base?”
I started on what would be the impact on a wide net grassroots approach to voter engagement and what I found was very convincing.
For starters, let’s look to our neighbor to the southeast – the bluegrass state of Kentucky. John Couvillon reported on twitter that Kentucky has flipped to more Republican registered voters than Democratic.
Did new voters decide to just register Republican or did civic engagement take the lead?
Kentucky Republican Party chairman Mac Brown credits new voter registration and the grassroots effect as cementing “its place as the majority party in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”
Brown goes on to say that,
“This did not happen overnight, and we didn’t do it alone. This day has been decades in the making and is only made possible by the hard work and effort put in by so many. We stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us. Kentuckians know the Republican Party is their party.”
Civic engagement takes time, effort and resources. In August of 2021, the Illinois General Assembly approved into law SB 825, which makes mail in voting permanent along with extending curbside pick up rules and regulations.
And just recently, Gov. Pritzker donated $500,000 to targeted races at the school, library and trustee levels. This isn’t for TV commercials, it’s for civic engagement activities; mail ballot harvesting and voter registration.
GOP donors tend to invest in “think tank” organizations, but this ROI can only be measured in social media or website engagement – and so far, hasn’t translated into votes.
Republicans in other states like New York and California have started to see this trend and with the right investments, they saved the US House of Representatives from a more progressive, extremist agenda.
Our donor base must align with our grassroots organizations to achieve the same results here in Illinois – and it can happen.
In addition to more investment, our grassroots organizations need to find a way to get on the same message. When I scroll through social media, or watch ads on TV, the progressives are in lockstep on all of their content and messaging.
And at times, the Republicans seem more against each other than for each other – while the Democrats and the progressive, far-left, are in total unison.
Maybe this is why high ranking donors feel the need to overlook grassroots investments.
We can all do better.
I can do better.
But we can’t do it alone.
Guest columnist Rob Cruz’s op-ed omitted a few facts, beginning with full disclosure. Cruz is a member of the Board of Directors of the Awake IL PAC, is a former congressional candidate (2022) from the 6th Congressional District and a former school board member of a suburban Cook County high school board who was kicked off the board for exceeding his authority as a member of the school board.
Cruz talks like a long-serving grassroots volunteer, but his knowledge of history in Illinois politics in general, and Republican politics in particular is limited, as with many relative newcomers from the 2022 election cycle, leaves much to be desired.
Fortunately, many like me have been involved in Illinois politics for decades, and have seen the repeating cycle of grassroots activism being dismissed by establishment leaders, and especially the donors.
Let’s pick up on what Cruz said:
“Republicans in other states like New York and California have started to see this trend and with the right investments, they saved the US House of Representatives from a more progressive, extremist agenda.
“Our donor base must align with our grassroots organizations to achieve the same results here in Illinois – and it can happen.
“In addition to more investment, our grassroots organizations need to find a way to get on the same message. When I scroll through social media, or watch ads on TV, the progressives are in lockstep on all of their content and messaging.
“And at times, the Republicans seem more against each other than for each other – while the Democrats and the progressive, far-left, are in total unison.
“Maybe this is why high ranking donors feel the need to overlook grassroots investments.”
Just which grassroots organizations is Cruz referring to? Awake Illinois? We the Parents of Oswego? McHenry County Citizens for Lower Taxes? We the People of McHenry County? There are many, and most are not aligned directly with an established political party.
And do not forget, there are left-leaning groups, too.
Cruz refers to what happened in New York and California without elaborating specifics, in the previous, and possibly including the 2020 election cycles.
What exactly did happen? In New York state, Republicans had a solid and credible nominee for governor in Congressman Lee Zeldin who had a message that resonated across the entire state. While he came up short in his race against Governor Kathy Hochul, Zeldin’s coattails carried several key congressional districts, including the flipping of NY-03 on Long Island by George Santos. It’s doubtful Santos will be able to hold on to his seat in 2024 if he’s not forced to resign first given he cannot tell the truth.
California? Governor Gavin Newsom cruised to reelection and cruised in 2021 in the recall election against him. Most of the results of grassroots efforts in California were shown in 2020, when Republicans for the first time since 1998 flipped a congressional seat from the Democrats in southern California with Mike Garcia in May of 2020 special election, plus 3 more congressional seats from the Democrats that fall.
Downballot, Republicans made inroads in the California state legislature in both the state senate and the state assembly.
Mike Garcia, who won the special election in 2020, successfully defended the seat in November of 2020 (by just over 300 votes), and again in 2022, and in all three races, Garcia faced the same Democratic opponent, former Assemblywoman Christy Smith, who was tainted for not only being a bad candidate, but she had violated the trust of voters by supporting California’s controversial AB5, the worker classification law with a very stringent test most 1099 independent contractors could not attain.
All of that said, many dismiss California’s Republican gains in 2020 and 2022 to correcting Democratic overperformance in 2018. One significant grassroots advance was Republicans adapting some of the Democratic tactics in Ballot Harvesting, which is completely legal in California. In the Garcia special election, his supporters set up Ballot Harvesting collection in churches, which sent a real shiver among California Democrats.
Illinois must begin to adapt, to the extent Illinois law will allow, Ballot Harvesting, and Republican grassroots activist Scott Presler has published all of the states’ respective vote-by-mail collection of ballots laws, and to what extent ballots can be harvested under the law of each state. Presler has more information in his Early Vote Action grassroots organization he’s piloting in Wisconsin to ensure a conservative win to maintain a conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the April 4 election just north of Illinois.
But Cruz really showed his lack of wisdom with the quote about donors “must” be aligned with grassroots organizations. Again, which specific grassroots organizations is Cruz talking, and here is the history in Illinois politics when grassroots conservatives recruit enough precinct committeepersons (outside of Cook County) to elect a grassroots county Republican chairman.
The donors will stop donating to the county’s Republican Central Committee at the level where the leadership they supported received their donations. Instead, these Republican donors will form their own PAC(s) with a title like “X County Republican Advisory Committee”, and they’ll channel the funding activities at their choosing, not the local party’s elected leadership.
We saw a sample of this in last year’s gubernatorial election, when shortly after Darren Bailey won the primary, the donors urged/demanded Bailey change his campaign team, including the hiring of more seasoned and proven campaign team members for the general election. Bailey refused having unswerving loyalty to his primary-winning campaign name, which explains why the bulk of Bailey’s gubernatorial campaigning funded by donors was through the Dan Proft People Who Play by the Rules PAC, through independent expenditures (the equivalent of a federal super PAC).
“He (& she) who control the gold makes the rules” and Bailey did not receive a lot of support directly from big dollar donors.
Therefore, if somehow, in 2026, grassroots activists gain control of the Illinois Republican Party’s state central committee and elect their own chair, you’ll definitely see the donors do something similar at the statewide level, or they’ll completely abandon Illinois (think Bruce Rauner and Ken Griffin).
Grassroots activists, whether working through a variety of grassroots organizations or working on their own, would best to focus their energies, immediately after April 4, to recruit precinct committeeperson candidates well in advance of the petition filing deadline this fall. Petition circulation begins in September for the March 19, 2024, primary, and given Illinois will go to the Democrats for POTUS come November 5, 2024, just beefing up the Republican precinct committeeperson ranks, while capturing some county Republican central committee chairmanships, is the best grassroots conservatives can achieve in the 2024 election cycle outside of a few winnable county races or Illinois General Assembly elections.
Start planning, and after April 4, get into recruiting mode, and just because some have large followings on social media or a large “parents group” they claim to lead, that will not translate to votes, or even translate to real influence in both local and statewide politics.