Republicans running for governor are using the increase in violent crime in an effort to reach suburban voters critical in deciding a statewide election and recapture a region of the state the GOP controlled for decades.
With Cook County reporting on Tuesday its 1,000th homicide of the year, a level not seen since 1994, the GOP candidates’ rhetoric has shifted from criticism of Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, a subject on which the governor was ready to engage his opponents.
“The real pandemic in Illinois … is the violence that we’re facing here on the streets of Chicago and now spreading all throughout the state,” state Sen. Darren Bailey, a farmer from downstate Xenia and one of four announced GOP candidates for governor, said during a recent stop in Woodlawn on Chicago’s South Side.
Confronting Democrats on crime is a strategy Republicans have employed for decades, notably when George H.W. Bush used the early release of Willie Horton, a Massachusetts murderer who went on to commit other crimes, to paint Michael Dukakis as soft on crime in the 1988 presidential campaign.
But rather than inciting fear to motivate voters as was the case then, Republicans say they are addressing real concerns over rising crime in the city and in the suburbs.
“Fear is always a very powerful weapon,” said Christopher Mooney, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The messaging also carries racial overtones to appeal to white suburban voters because “crime has been racialized in this country,” Mooney said.
While Pritzker has made his pandemic response central to his campaign, he acknowledged the seriousness of the crime issue last month when he signed an executive order declaring gun violence a public health crisis. The order directs $250 million over the next three years to implement a new data-driven plan to “reimagine public safety” as part of a holistic community-based violence prevention initiative.
Pritzker earlier signed a sweeping criminal justice packaged pushed by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus that was aimed at creating a more equitable system. While many of those changes, including an end to cash bail, have yet to take effect, the four GOP contenders have been quick to attack Pritzker on the issue — though they have yet to present any comprehensive answers or alternatives.
Three of the four Republicans — Bailey, businessmen Gary Rabine of Bull Valley and Jesse Sullivan of Petersburg — recently had an overnight stay in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood as guests of Corey Brooks of New Beginnings Church, the “rooftop pastor” known for stunts such as camping out on top of his church to bring attention to the crime issue.
Brooks, who for years has been seeking money to build a community center aimed at helping at-risk youths, has backed several Republicans in the past and was given a seat on the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board by one-term GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner.
The candidate visits were portrayed as an attempt to point to longtime crime problems in impoverished Chicago neighborhoods. But the larger criminal messaging of the candidates, a field that also includes former state Sen. Paul Schimpf of Waterloo, points to a warning that violence from the Democratic dominated city of Chicago is spreading to the suburbs and downstate.
“We must realize this isn’t just a Chicago problem. This is becoming an every-urban-area problem. It’s taking place in Champaign and Decatur, all over this state,” Bailey said before handing Brooks a $5,000 check for his community center.
A key target of the Republican messaging on crime is suburban women, a demographic of social moderates and fiscal conservatives that has shifted increasingly to the Democratic Party. That shift has happened in part, according to Mooney, in response to Trump and his continued leadership role in the GOP.
“You know all the things that they didn’t like about Trump, like the insurrection, like his treatment of women, you’ve certainly got COVID — all these things that alienated the suburban women from the Trump party,” Mooney said. “Now, maybe they can get over all those things because they’re afraid of the smash-and-grab at the local mall. That’s the GOP strategy. That’s what they’re trying to do.”
At times the Republican rhetoric has resembled that of Trump, who as president often compared Chicago to Afghanistan. In his unsuccessful 2020 campaign, Trump touted efforts to roll back a suburban affordable housing initiative aimed at increasing diversity, tweeting, “Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down.”
Sullivan, in a recent Fox News interview, likened Chicago to a “corrupt war zone.”
Sullivan was a civilian adviser to a U.S. Army field team in Afghanistan and has been criticized for attempting to portray himself as an enlisted military serviceman.
“Yeah, I’ve served over in Afghanistan. And you know what, I know what it takes to serve the people of Illinois and protect them, make the city streets safe again,” he said on Fox, failing to mention he had a civilian role in the country.
Sullivan said the state’s Democratic leadership needs to “quit prioritizing criminals and putting them before victims and police” and stop using “Democrat talking points and blaming guns and throwing money at the problem through social programs, not actually backing and supporting our police.”
The theme of “backing the blue” is one constant among the Republican contenders, along with calls to repeal the criminal justice package that was a top agenda item of the Legislative Black Caucus and signed into law by Pritzker.
Schimpf, a former military prosecutor, accused Pritzker in campaign materials of being “MIA” on the crime issue and someone who has “demonized our police and jeopardized public safety.”
“I will support our law enforcement community, because they represent what’s best about America when they put their lives on the line to keep us safe. And I will work with local leaders across the political spectrum to implement common sense solutions to crime in our neighborhoods,” Schimpf says on his campaign website.
Rabine has also said Pritzker should withhold state funding to Chicago in an effort to get Mayor Lori Lightfoot to address crime in the city. He also called for the state to deploy the National Guard, though it has no specific law enforcement training. Trump earlier in the week called for the National Guard to be brought up to combat smash-and-grab looting in the nation’s cities.
Bailey, after his overnight stay in Woodlawn, said, “Government is not the answer. Money is not the answer.”
But he also said that “the budget to the governor is actually like a pot of money” and that more of that money should be directed toward nonprofit violence interruption groups.
Bailey also was critical of the religious community, saying, “If the churches across Illinois would wake up and get their act together and work within their communities, friends, we can change this.”
Encouraging the rhetoric is the stance taken by Ken Griffin, the state’s wealthiest person and a Pritzker foe, who has talked of moving his Citadel financial investment business from Chicago due to rising crime.
Griffin, worth $21 billion according to Forbes, committed to go “all in” with a Republican candidate to defeat Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune who is worth $3.6 billion according to Forbes. But he has not singled out any of the current candidates for backing.
None of the announced Republican candidates have the personal wealth to take on Pritzker without sizable outside financial help.
Pritzker’s office said the governor has significantly increased funding for violence interruption and prevention programs since taking office — money approved “without votes from Republicans who talk about challenges but fail to vote on concrete solutions. If Republicans truly cared about making our communities safer, they would back up their rhetoric with their votes.”
“The governor also believes that we must focus not only on the end of the cycle, when someone is shot. We must also attack the root causes of violence — poverty and disinvestment — by investing in education, employment, human services and mental health to neighborhoods that have been left out and left behind,” his office said in a statement.
In addition to the money for the violence interruption program that was in Pritzker’s executive order, lawmakers approved and Pritzker signed legislation creating an office of violence prevention. Additionally, the Illinois State Police has launched a gun violence task force and has offered to make state police resources available to communities.
Mooney noted that dealing with crime is an all-encompassing subject ranging from law enforcement to employment and economic development, while political campaigns tend to resort to shorthand and “simple things, like ‘soft on crime.’”
“These are tough problems and they don’t have easy solutions, but it’s easy to say when you’re running for office: ‘Violent crime, I can fix it,’ without offering details,” he said.
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