CHICAGO — Illinois’ Republican candidates for governor are seeing their efforts to focus on local issues clouded by the overwhelming shadow of former President Donald Trump and his control over the national GOP.
As the five potential challengers to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker have all sought to use crime as an issue to make inroads with suburban voters where the GOP once held sway, the Republican National Committee last week declared the deadly Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection was just “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
It’s the latest example of how Trump and Republicans aligned with him have stepped on a message the party’s local candidates believe can move them into the future and away from the former president’s obsession with re-litigating the 2020 election that he lost.
