Illinois GOP, Shattered In Local Elections Last Week: “We’re Not Going To Give Up”

On Wednesday morning, I posted a sentence on Threads about John Laesch having ousted Aurora’s Republican mayor, Richard Irvin the day before. An average Threads post of mine would see less than a 100 interactions. This one took off like a rocket and as of now there are over 16,000 “likes” and 572 reposts. Although Aurora is the second biggest city in Illinois and was the setting for Wayne’s World, the population is just 180,000, a bit smaller than Glendale, California but a bit bigger than Ontario, California.

Laesch is a union carpenter and a full-on progressive. He’s probably best known for having run against then-Speaker Denny Hastert, setting off a series of events that ended Hastert’s speakership and wound up with Hastert in disgrace and, eventually, prison. But Laesch wasn’t the only Democrat to triumph last Tuesday— and Aurora wasn’t the only place in Illinois where the GOP was routed. Yesterday, Rick Pearson reported that the defeat of the state GOP in the suburbs was so wide-ranging that the party is “on the verge of irrelevance in Illinois politics,” reflecting voter angst over the early tumultuous months of Trump’s second term.

Gov. JB Pritzker put it like this: “There was a broad rejection of what Donald Trump and the Republican Party stands for, and Illinois Democrats had perhaps one of the best nights we’ve ever had.” Pearson reported that “the Illinois Democratic Party said it backed 280 candidates in Tuesday’s election and 222, or 79% of them, were victorious. The governor attributed the results in Illinois to both organization among state Democrats and broader national pushback against Trump administration policies and government cuts being spearheaded by Trump-aligned billionaire Elon Musk. ‘The anger is felt in Illinois, as it is across the entire country, and that did play a role, there’s no doubt, in turnout and in the actual results,’ he said of the government-cutting actions of Trump and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.”

This all happened before Trump collapsed the stock market, erasing trillions of dollars from people’s retirement accounts and their children’s college savings plans. The devastation for the Republican Party, he wrote, “came in dozens of township elections across the suburbs that saw Democrats flip power from Republicans, raising the question of whether the state GOP has fallen so low on the political depth chart that it will prevent any short-term rise to competitiveness in Illinois in a Trump 2.0 era.

Democratic victories in the eastern side of DuPage County tell much of the tale.

Addison Township— which includes suburbs such as Addison, Wood Dale, Bensenville and Itasca— once had one of the most powerful vote-getting operations in the region. Home to past U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde and former Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip, Addison Township was flipped from Republican to Democrat in Tuesday’s elections, including the ousting of GOP Supervisor Dennis Reboletti, a former state lawmaker, according to unofficial results. In neighboring York Township, home to former one-term Illinois House speaker and longtime GOP leader Lee Daniels of Elmhurst, the GOP lost the race for township supervisor and highway commissioner as well as trustees.

Further west in DuPage’s Milton Township, home to the county seat and the once-conservative bastion of Wheaton, voters swapped out the Republican leadership for Democrats.

“These results mark a seismic shift in local politics. Several townships in DuPage County that had never before elected a Democrat will now be represented by Democratic leadership— a testament to the party’s deepening connection with voters and its commitment to delivering for working families,” DuPage County Democrats said in a statement.

The county’s Democratic chair, Reid McCollum, called the voting “a profound statement,” adding that he expects Democrats will win all 49 contested township races across the county.

The GOP also faltered in local Naperville races, where five candidates for the City Council and park board backed by DuPage GOP Chairman Kevin Coyne’s political action committee, Safe Suburbs USA, were headed toward defeat in unofficial returns. Instead, the council and park board candidates heading to victory were backed by Democratic U.S. Reps. Bill Foster and Lauren Underwood, both of Naperville.

Two mayors also backed by Coyne’s PAC, Aurora’s Irvin and Lisle Mayor Christopher Pecak, also were defeated.

Coyne said “it was obviously a very disappointing night” and that Republicans faced “a perfect storm”— trying to navigate campaigns in the era of Trump, Pritzker’s spending on Democratic infrastructure and the Democrats’ longtime advantage in delivering mail-in voting, which Trump has criticized and Republicans have been slow to adopt.

“We’re not going to give up. We’re going to continue to look at how we are doing things and work toward rebuilding,” Coyne said. “I think nights like Tuesday night are going to be every election cycle until we narrow that gap” on mail-in voting and get more Republicans registered to permanently receive mail-in ballots.

The Democratic wins weren’t limited to DuPage County. In Elk Grove Township, for example, Republicans weren’t challenged for supervisor, clerk or assessor, but four Democrats defeated the incumbent Republicans on the township board of supervisors.

…Aaron Del Mar, who won reelection as Palatine Township highway commissioner, said attitudes toward Trump and Musk and their efforts to dismantle government in searching for waste, were primary factors for Tuesday’s Democratic victories.

“Republicans on a national level are very happy correctly or incorrectly about the state of affairs that are happening. But the Democrats are incredibly upset. The Democrats came out because they’re so upset and they all came out voting,” Del Mar said. “Republicans sat at home. They’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re good. We’re tearing the government down.’ And so they didn’t come out. There was no incentive.”

Del Mar, who is eyeing a potential 2026 GOP bid for governor, said he was criticized by some fellow Republicans for fielding a township slate that included a Democratic trustee. He said he views the results as a “kind of vindication” for his actions, which kept Palatine Township in Republican control.

Pat Brady, a former state GOP chairman and Republican National Committee member who has opposed Trump’s takeover of the party, said he still believed there was an opportunity for a Republican to win statewide in Illinois if they were in the socially moderate, fiscally conservative mode of the late Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka and former U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk.

“But the Trump nonsense does not work in Illinois, certainly not statewide,” Brady said.

“The guy at the top, he’s just out of control with tariffs, incorporating Greenland, everything. I think there’s a lot of insecurity and fear, quite honestly, about what this president’s going to do,” he said. “And that translates to how the Republican brand has been so diminished by him. I’m not sure if it can be fixed, but it can’t be by a Trumpian candidate based in Illinois.”

Illinois is so throughly gerrymandered that of the state's 17 congressional districts, just 3 are held by Republicans and all 3 were drawn by the Democrats in the state legislature to be GOP dumping grounds the purpose of which is to make surrounding districts safer for Democrats. Mike Bost’s 12th district (R+22), Mary Miller’s 15th (R+20) and Darin LaHood’s 16th (R+11) are all unassailable. Not even a full on Trump Depression could dislodge any of them. The state’s only swing districts are held by Democrats Sean Casten, Lauren Underwood and Eric Sorensen, all of whom were reelected last cycle, Casten by 8.4 points, Underwood by 10.2 and Sorensen by 8.8. The state of Illinois' democracy is turgid... something like Alabama's or Mississippi's. And like in one-party states like Alabama and Mississippi, primaries in Illinois have become more important than general elections.