Rock bottom.
Ask many of today’s Republican leaders in Illinois, and that’s how they’ll describe the GOP in this state.
Some say the party is finding its way. Others say it’s rebuilding.
But there’s little argument that, in the Land of Lincoln, the party of Lincoln is coming from a deep, dark place.
“Every election cycle, I think, I believe, that our candidate’s going to win,” says William J. Kelly, a first-time candidate for Illinois comptroller. “Every time, it’s a disappointment. Every year, we hit rock bottom.”
Kelly is not your average conservative candidate.
He prides himself on his appetite for beer and partying, and he intemperately bashes the Illinois GOP’s establishment figures. His recent attempt at a press conference fell flat after security stopped him from campaigning at Chicago’s Thompson Center.
But Kelly’s novice, radical campaign represents, at once, the party’s leadership vacuum in the state and its dissatisfaction with the status quo.
The Republican Party, he says, has done too much posturing about what is right, in both the moral and political senses, only to find itself immersed in scandal, hypocritical and out of touch with voters.
Call it a case of the Ryans.
There was George Ryan, the conservative governor convicted of selling government contracts and licenses.
Then there was Jack Ryan, forced to drop his U.S. Senate bid against Barack Obama after revelations of a sex scandal involving his ex-wife.
And there’s Jim Ryan, who lost the 2002 governor’s race against Democrat Rod Blagojevich. Ryan also wrongly prosecuted a man who was sent to prison for life — and he’s the GOP’s biggest name in the 2010 governor’s race.
Ryan nor Judy Baar Topinka, Kelly’s most prominent GOP rival in the comptroller race, responded to requests for comment left with their campaign spokespeople. Topinka, a former state GOP leader, also ran against Blagojevich, after his popularity further declined in 2006, and lost.
Now, as corruption scandals have plagued Blagojevich and Democratic U.S. Senator Roland Burris, Republicans are trying to find opportunities in their rival party’s woes.
Yet while they say they are hopeful, talk of their party’s past brings a tone of dismay from leaders across the GOP spectrum.
“We have hit rock bottom,” echoes Jeremy Rose, president of the Chicago Young Republicans.
“We lost our way,” says Demetra DeMonte, the Republican National Committee’s committeewoman from Illinois.
“Our party is broken,” says Pat Hughes, candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Angel Garcia, chairman of the Hispanic Republican Assembly of Cook County and candidate for county clerk, says the party is still recovering from the George Ryan scandal in particular.
Since 2002, Republicans haven’t won a single statewide executive office in Illinois.
“There’s no doubt: It devastated the party,” Garcia says. “Everything associated with that becomes radioactive.”
With their names mired in controversy, government leaders from the Ryan administration flocked to the private sector. In Garcia’s view, those who remained in politics are the true believers, forced to rebuild the party as its leaders “were wandering in the desert.”
“We now have people who have been Republicans during the hard times,” he says. “We were left with a vacuum, and now the vacuum is being filled with new leadership.”
DeMonte, charged with representing Illinois Republicans at the national level, flatly declined to discuss the Ryan scandal.
“I am not focused on the past,” she says. “I am focused on the future.”
And for DeMonte, an anti-abortion conservative, the future of the GOP in Illinois has little do with the social issues, like abortion, that have alienated some women and the party’s moderate wing.
Instead, she says, the future of the party in Illinois depends on how well it can convince voters that it can handle the state’s economy, while returning to fiscal conservatism.
“We’re focused on the bread-and-butter issues,” DeMonte says. “People are scared. Right now, they are concerned about whether or not they’re going to have a job.”
That may present an opportunity, in that Illinois unemployment numbers worse than in other states. That gives candidates room to challenge Democrats on job creation and economic policy.
Many Republicans were buoyed by the recent victory of GOP gubernatorial candidates in the Virginia and New Jersey midterm elections.
The momentum has led some in Illinois to cautiously hope for revival in 2010.
“2010 is the best chance that we’ll have in our lifetime to win statewide office in Illinois,” Kelly says, “but we shouldn’t be taking anything for granted because 2010 could very easily turn out to be a whole new definition of rock bottom.”