Former Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin backs JB Pritzker for governor

Illinois' former House Republican leader of 10 years isn't switching affiliations, though he announced Monday he's backing the Democrat in the race for governor.

It's no secret in Springfield that former House Minority Leader Jim Durkin and Darren Bailey, one of his former members who's now the Republican standard-bearer for governor for the second straight election, have not gotten along.

But Durkin took their rivalry a step further on Monday, endorsing Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker for reelection.

In a video released by Pritzker's campaign, Durkin said Bailey "stands for exclusion over inclusion, subtraction over addition" and that he's "not cut out for the job" and "cannot be trusted to lead our state."

Durkin told Capitol News Insider that he decided to endorse Pritzker because he still has a presence in the Chicago suburbs and he's "speaking for hundreds of thousands of Republicans who've lost faith in the party because of the extreme positions of MAGA and also Darren Bailey as our nominee for the second time."

"I'm a Republican. I will continue to vote Republican this November and also after that," Durkin said. "But I cannot in good conscience allow for the keys of the governor's mansion to be given to Darren Bailey. So, if this is a bottoming out of the Republican Party, so be it."

An uphill battle in the suburbs

Durkin's endorsement comes as Bailey seeks to make inroads with moderate voters in the Chicago suburbs, once the bedrock of the state GOP, who have since shifted towards Democrats amid the rise of President Donald Trump and the GOP's increasingly rigid social conservatism.

A fiscal conservative and social moderate, Durkin represented the western suburbs in the Illinois House during two stints across a quarter-century. He was the party's nominee for U.S. Senate in 2002 and played leadership roles in Sen. John McCain's 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns in Illinois. He was House GOP leader for a decade.

"I've received awards from the American Conservative Union," Durkin said. "I am not a liberal at all. I'm a person that believes in the two-party system, but I also believe in the big tent, which is completely gone because of Darren Bailey."

Pritzker said he was happy to have Durkin offer his endorsement.

"Look, we've disagreed on a whole lot of things, and I think you've seen that in public," Pritzker told reporters following an event in Wood River. "We continue to disagree about a lot of things, but I think that he respects the work that I did, and I respect the kind of person that he is."

Bailey's response

Bailey's running mate Aaron Del Mar dismissed Durkin's endorsement as "internal politics," chalking it up to the conflicts the former leader had with Bailey. He also suggested Durkin, now a Statehouse lobbyist, was trying to curry favor with potential clients.

"I think Jim is more concerned about his new position as a lobbyist in Springfield and representing a lot more Democratic organizations than he is about building a two-party system here in Illinois and about helping Illinois with affordability, public safety, and education," Del Mar said.

Del Mar said the lack of a big tent was an argument that could have been made in 2022, but he suggested that Bailey's had an "evolution on policy and positions" and been "incredibly disciplined" in focusing on so-called "80-20" issues.

But if Bailey is a changed man, Durkin doesn't believe it.

"I don't buy any of it," Durkin said. "This is the guy that put his name on a resolution that wanted to make Chicago the 51st state. How serious can you take him at his word that he's a changed person? I don't buy it one bit."

'Game of subtraction'

Durkin said Illinois Republicans have been playing "the game of subtraction for the last 10 years" with its positions on abortion, gun rights and LGBTQ rights.

"We lose so many, so many voters because we take such an extreme position on matters that relate to them," he said.

This, Durkin said, has eroded the state party's position with moderate voters. As a result, they don't participate in GOP primaries, leaving a more downstate, conservative electorate to nominate like-minded candidates who struggle to appeal to the moderates.

"We're taking the most conservative out of the bunch and playing to the attitudes of Republican voters who are left in the Republican primary, and that's the problem," Durkin said.

Durkin's distaste for Bailey is hardly a surprise, though an endorsement of Pritzker, whom he once sued over the gerrymandered legislative maps the governor signed into law in 2021, was unexpected. Especially considering there's a third candidate on the ballot, Republican-turned-independent Collin Corbett who's seeking to occupy the very lane Durkin wants Republicans to go back down.

But Durkin dismissed Corbett's candidacy.

"I don't take him as a serious candidate," Durkin said. "But I look at Bailey as more of a threat to the long-term health of the Republican Party. That's why I'm making the statement and supporting JB Pritzker."

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.