Darren Bailey has to decide what candidate he will be

Darren Bailey doesn’t look like a governor. He doesn’t sound like a governor. How did he win the GOP nomination to become governor so easily?

Bailey was elected to the state House in 2018 then to the state Senate in 2020 before launching his campaign for governor in early 2021. He skyrocketed in popularity among Trump-obsessed Republican primary voters for his folksy, southern Illinois demeanor and constant digs at Gov. JB Pritzker in daily Facebook videos.

Add his lawsuit against Pritzker’s COVID-19 mitigations in 2020 and boasting he did not take the COVID-19 vaccine, he has become a sort of folk hero among people who seemed to think COVID-19 either didn’t exist or wasn’t serious enough to kill 1 million people in the U.S.

Downstate Republican voters tend to like a more conservative candidate than independent or center-right Republican suburban voters tend to prefer. While not espousing many actual policy positions in the primary, Bailey spoke the language of the conservative, evangelical, Trump-adoring Republican. After the campaign of $50 million candidate Richard Irvin imploded, Bailey zoomed up the polls and never looked back.

Now Republicans have an inexperienced, polarizing candidate for governor who has doubled down on his comment that the city of Chicago is a “hellhole.” And he was a backers of the latest plan to break the state into two because some downstaters don’t like Chicago and refuse to believe the facts that show Chicago brings in more state tax revenue than it takes. I grew up downstate. This us vs. them attitude doesn’t help anyone.

We’re a long way from Jim Edgar, kids.

Yes, Bailey is a compelling speaker who built up support downstate throughout the primary campaign. While the Trump endorsement he received the weekend before election day helped him with Republicans and likely pushed him through to victory in Cook and the collar counties, he has not shown the ability yet to appeal to moderate, independent and Democrat suburban and city voters.

To win a statewide election, a Republican must win 20% in the city of Chicago. Bruce Rauner received 21% in the city in 2014 and only 15% when he ran for re-election in 2018. You know what happened. Rauner was a political abnormality in many instances, but Bill Brady for governor in 2010, Jim Ryan for governor in 2002, Jim Oberweis for Senate in 2014 and others were simply too conservative to appeal to moderate voters in the suburbs.

If you’re looking to be the CEO of an $46-billion business, you need to look the part. Bailey’s ill-fitting shirts, cheap looking sportscoats, and dime store haircut will make him look like an amateur hayseed next to the polished persona JB Pritzker puts on.

Can Bailey make himself appealing to voters and give himself a chance to win in November? Yes. Thankfully for guys like Bailey, the primary-to-general transition is an opportunity to shake a giant political Etch A Sketch to clean off all the writing from the primary and give yourself a clean slate to start writing the story for the fall campaign.

Bailey, though, isn’t sounding like a General Election candidate yet.

“Here’s a tip and some advice for JB Pritzker: start packin’, friend,” Bailey said in his trademark drawl during his acceptance speech in Effingham. “Because on Nov. 8, you’re fired.”

Am I saying Darren Bailey can’t win in November? No. In a typical year in a typical environment against a typical Democrat, Bailey wouldn’t be able to compete in November. Pritzker’s approval rating is perilously close to being underwater, the economic situation in the state teetering on catastrophe, and Pritzker is talking more like a Bernie Sanders-style candidate for president in 2024 than someone who wants to appeal to moderates and downstate voters to win reelection.

$6 gas, ballooning energy bills, potential brownouts and electricity shortages, and crime all make Pritzker’s position more foreboding moving forward, no matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars he’s willing to spend in the fall.

Bailey has a choice. Does he want to be a candidate for governor that is working to win and effectively govern, or is he setting himself up to be another right-wing fringe candidate that can’t win statewide and drags a slate of statewide, congressional and legislative candidates down with him?

The choice is his.

• Patrick Pfingsten is a former journalist and Republican strategist who writes The Illinoize statewide political newsletter. Read more at www.theillinoize.com or contact him at patrick@theillinoize.com.