MAGA Voters Send a $50 Million GOP Plan Off the Rails in Illinois
Reid J. Epstein
Sun, June 26, 2022 at 8:28 AM·8 min read

LINCOLN, Ill. — Darren Bailey, the front-runner in the Republican primary for governor of Illinois, was finishing his stump speech last week at a senior center in this Central Illinois town when a voice called out: “Can we pray for you?”

Bailey readily agreed. The speaker, a youth mentor from Lincoln named Kathy Schmidt, placed her right hand on his left shoulder while he closed his eyes and held out his hands, palms open.

“More than anything,” she prayed, “I ask for that, in this election, you raise up the righteous and strike down the wicked.”

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The wicked, in this case, are the Chicago-based moderates aiming to maintain control over the Illinois Republican Party. And the righteous is Bailey, a far-right state senator who is unlike any nominee the party has put forward for governor in living memory.

A 56-year-old farmer whose Southern Illinois home is closer to Nashville, Tennessee, than to Chicago, he wears his hair in a crew cut, speaks with a thick drawl and does not sand down his conservative credentials, as so many past leading GOP candidates have done to try to appeal to suburbanites in this overwhelmingly Democratic state. On Saturday, former President Donald Trump endorsed Mr. Bailey at a rally near Quincy, Illinois.

Bailey rose to prominence in Illinois politics by introducing legislation to kick Chicago out of the state. When the coronavirus pandemic began, he was removed from a state legislative session for refusing to wear a mask, and he sued Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, over statewide virus-mitigation efforts. Painted on the door of his campaign bus is the Bible verse Ephesians 6:10-19, which calls for followers to wear God’s armor in a battle against “evil rulers.”