Monday, November 14, 2022

Politics: 2022 Illinois Gubernatorial Election Results

I have maybe two easy posts to do this month and still don’t know when I’m getting the big one done that really needs to be done and should have been done a long time ago. I can promise that the one on the gubernatorial election results are coming before March since it will tie in with the posts in my Survivor blog about March Madness. But there is a lot to keep track of and a lot going on in my life right now that I can only hope that this blog can be one of the few things that I can get done at some point in time.

 

Anyways, when I updated you about the election for governor of Illinois in 2022, it was still in the primary stage. The governor, J.B. Pritzker, had barely any real opposition in his primary for reelection. It then came down to the Republican side for governor.

 

The only candidate in the race that I could really stomach or even wanted to win over Pritzker (and I really would have voted for him over Pritzker) was Paul Schmipf. He must not have cared about winning since he never ran a single ad on TV. And while there are plenty of other ways to win elections, it seems dumb to me to not go after the most obvious ways to try to win votes.

 

When it came to the Republican primary, it largely seemed to be a showdown between Richard Irving and Darren Bailey. It actually became rather comical with each of them accusing the other of being too liberal while promoting themselves as the only true conservative in the race. They both had their flaws which I didn’t like. Pritzker aired ads which Irving said was trying to interfere in the Republican primary as if that isn’t allowed for some reason or another. While I may not like the idea of Democrats wanting to fight against candidates they feel are weak, it is fine if they do that just like Republicans could do that to Democrats.

 

Ultimately, it was Bailey who won the Republican nomination. He liked to say how he sued Pritzker over the governor’s pandemic response and won. But what Bailey negates to mention is how only he benefitted from that lawsuit. Bailey seemed like a social justice warrior. While that term is associated with the left, it seems to accurately define some on the right as well.

 

Pritzker wasn’t the best candidate. While my local newspaper clearly has a conservative bias, it does talk a lot about some of the laws that have been passed during his administration and what is wrong with them. Minors can now get abortions without their parents knowing. There are issues with him closing prisons. Sex education is focused upon too much with people who opt out not getting to learn anything. Cash bail being gone has the potential to cause a whole lot of problems as well.

 

One wonders if Bailey wanted to win. While there are plenty of problems with the Pritzker administration, Bailey mentioned not a single one of them in his ads. Well, he barely talked about the cash bail problem, but not while mentioning it from a news source. He simply showed what a talk radio show host was saying about it. No talk show radio host is a journalist. And anything from a shock jock isn’t going to seem legit to those on the left as a real source.

 

It was Pritzker who won the election. I don’t think that Bailey had much of a chance. Prizkter was polling above 50% against pretty much any candidate. There wasn’t enough voter apathy to help someone in a blue state beat a Democrat who lead well during the pandemic. There was nothing to help Bailey win, especially when he was barely helping himself, so Pritzker gets to stay as governor of Illinois for another four years.

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