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Mike Frerichs has had some very bad weeks as a candidate, usually self-inflicted by the gaffe-prone career politician. But this week’s trifecta of blunders represents a new level of incompetence. Here is the rundown:

1. Illinois taxpayers were reminded of Frerichs’ support of Governor Pritzker’s tax-hike amendment and advocacy of a tax on retirement income. 
2. Frerichs’ falsely claimed State Rep. Tom Demmer, Republican candidate for State Treasurer, opposed a bill that Demmer had actually supported – a 2016 law requiring life insurance companies to pay death benefits. After conceding that Demmer had in fact supported the final bill, Frerichs tried to save face by claiming the negotiated legislation was weak. Too bad he touted the final bill – supported by Demmer – as a win that closed loopholes and “helps our families.” (HB 4633, Passed 118-0, 5/31/16, Demmer Voted Yea)
3. Frerichs was forced to cancel a fundraiser this week because it violated the state’s ethics law. 

“To recap Frerichs’ week:  ethics challenges, false accusations about his opponent’s record, and his own record of tax hikes. Frerichs is so desperate to distract from his failures as Treasurer that he ran the entire playbook of the corrupt Springfield machine—in just one week,” said ILGOP Spokesman Joe Hackler.

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This week the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) – a political arm of the Democratic party – voted to refuse to show up for in-person work until their “conditions”are met, leaving Chicago students locked out of school to fend for themselves. 

Despite Chicago Public Schools receiving (and spending) more than $100 million in federal aid specifically for school re-opening, the CTU has once again put their agenda ahead of students. ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy has released the following statement calling on Governor JB Pritzker to stand up to his political friends:

“When it comes to standing up to political allies, the Governor conveniently forgets that he is the leader of this state with influence and power. Previously, the Governor actively funded the Madigan machine and then later stood by silently while the former Speaker was under investigation. Now those being directly harmed by the Governor’s silence are the children of Chicago Public Schools who desperately need in-person instruction so they don’t continue falling further and further behind. It’s time for Pritzker to finally be a leader and stop favoring teacher union bosses over school children.”

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Ignores disastrous crime bill, push for massive tax hike, a federal bailout all while carrying on Madigan corruption in Springfield

As crime and COVID-19 surge across Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker’s focus is on politics, launching a new political ad that laughably tries to convince Illinois families “we’re on the right track.” 

The new ad conveniently ignores three years of Pritzker/Madigan corruption and policies that are driving people out of Illinois in droves including: 

• Claiming credit for paying bills while ignoring the massive federal bailout that rescued the state from years of Democratic mismanagement.      
• Signing a disastrous crime bill that puts criminals onto the streets while tying the hands of law enforcement.
• Attempting to pass the largest tax hike in Illinois history, while committing to do it again.
• Breaking promises and partnering with Mike Madigan to keep insiders in control of Springfield.  

 “Not even a week into 2022, and JB Pritzker is already attempting to rewrite history hoping voters forget he signed a disastrous crime bill that lets criminals onto our streets, pushed for the largest tax hike in Illinois history and partnered with Mike Madigan to keep Springfield insiders in power,” said ILGOP Spokesperson Joe Hackler. 

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It looks like Governor JB Pritzker isn’t just content with badly leading a failing state, he’s also interested in President Joe Biden’s job should the struggling leader decide not to run for re-election in 2024. In a splashy New York Times article – where no detail is included by accident – JB’s team made sure he was among a short list of potential suitors for the presidency. The NYT reported, “[Pritzker] talked privately about his interest in seeking the White House at some point should the opportunity arise.”

At a news conference today, reporters asked the Governor about the NYT mention. Prodded to divulge any plans to run in 2024, Pritzker simply said, “I think I’ve been pretty clear about this. I want to be governor of Illinois. I want to continue to be governor of Illinois. I’m doing the job that I love.”

To be clear, Pritzker never committed to serving his full term as Governor of Illinois should he be reelected in 2022. In fact, after saying he had never talked to anyone publicly or privately about the topic, he contradicted himself by revealing that, “of course, people have mentioned [running for president] to me on occasion…” 

“Governor Pritzker and his team should focus more on fixing the problems that ail our struggling state instead of dreaming of the White House. JB has surrounded himself with a bunch of depressed Clinton 2016 alums who still believe the right to lead the country is theirs. Now they’ve found a billionaire benefactor to make another go of it and Pritzker, it seems, is happy to indulge in the fantasy.

Newsflash to team Pritzker, our economy lags behind all our neighbors, violent crime is destroying communities, rampant inflation is busting the budgets of already overtaxed Illinoisans, and public corruption still defines our political system. Get to work, Governor, and stop dreaming.” – ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy

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Last Friday, the Daily Herald published an opinion editorial penned by Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy that exposed the hypocrisy of Democrats who often say they are fighting for middle class tax relief, yet voted for Joe Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) plan that raises taxes for up to 30% of middle class families.

The Tax Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank, recently released a report that concluded, “Taking into account all major tax provisions, roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of middle-income households would pay more in taxes in 2022,” under the BBB bill passed out of the House. The legislation awaits action in the Senate.

And yet, Democrat U.S. Reps. Lauren Underwood, Sean Casten, and Bill Foster voted for the plan despite their incessant campaign promises to fight for the middle class and make the wealthy “pay their fair share.”

And what’s worse, the BBB plan doesn’t just negatively affect middle class wallets. Biden’s massive spending plan doubles down on inflationary pressures that hurt everyone, pumping $200 billion into the U.S. economy in the first year alone. Low-income working families don’t have room in their budgets for a continued steep rise in the cost of daily necessities like food and gas.

So as Chairman Tracy notes at the end of his editorial, “As the American people struggle to recover from a global pandemic, why would Illinois’ suburban Democrats support and vote for a plan that increases taxes for a third of middle class families and exacerbates the detrimental effects of inflation?”

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As establishment Democrats close ranks around Nikki Budzinkzi as the chosen Democrat candidate in the newly gerrymandered 13th congressional district, her campaign has gotten off to a rough start. First up: does she even live in the district Illinois Democrats drew for her?

It was revealed just this week what political observers on the ground already knew. Budzinski, who announced her congressional bid before the new map was even drawn, lived and voted in Chicago and Washington DC before choosing to run for congress downstate. The Springfield address found on her filing paperwork was found to be unoccupied. 

WCIA reports…

According to Sangamon County election records, Budzinksi, who voted in Chicago for each of the last five elections, attempted to register to vote at an apartment in Springfield a few days before she announced her campaign to run for Congress back in August. However, when the clerk’s office sent a voter identification notice to her listed a  HH partment address, it came back “undeliverable.”

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Cook County property tax records show that Budzinski owned a home in Chicago while she worked as a senior advisor to Governor Pritzker. She left that role in February of last year and later moved to Washington, D.C., to work as the chief of staff in President Biden’s Office of Management and Budget, though she continued casting ballots in Cook County.

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Her recent arrival in town has already drawn criticism from her Democratic primary opponent, David Palmer, a former Iowa Hawkeyes basketball player who now works as a financial advisor in Champaign.

Budzinski’s residency issue comes on the heels of another story that broke recently in which she tapped a disgraced former Teamster to help raise funds for her campaign. Nicole Brener-Schmitz was forced to resign as a political director for the Teamsters Union after an independent investigation uncovered that she had stolen over $11,000 from the union in the form of fraudulent expense reports. Brener-Schmitz was also later dismissed from her political role with abortion-rights group NARAL for an “HR issue” and went on to work for embattled former Congresswoman Katie Hill.

Nikki Budzinski is a classic carpetbagger and political insider looking for more power and notoriety. Fed up working behind the scenes on Capitol Hill and with no open districts to run in near her home in Chicago, Budzinkzi decided to go district shopping in downstate Illinois. Luckily for her, Illinois Democrats gerrymandered her a district from East St. Louis stretching almost to the Indiana border. 

“The voices of the folks who live in the Metro-East and central Illinois are too important to be handed over to a Chicago and DC political insider who simply wants her time to shine. Illinoisans have had enough of machine politicians rigging the system to benefit themselves.” – ILGOP Spokesman Joe Hackler

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Today, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy announced the formation of the new ILGOP Election Integrity Committee dedicated to giving voters confidence in their elections by making it easy to vote and hard to cheat in Illinois.

“The integrity of our elections is one of the most important issues we face in Illinois. Using the pandemic as cover during the last election, Democrats in Illinois permanently changed election laws to remove important election safeguards, opening up the election process to more opportunities for fraud. At the same time, they opposed common sense and widely supported election security measures such as a voter ID requirement. 

The 2020 election is over. This is about ensuring the 2022 election is secure and free of uncertainty. As Republicans, we believe legal voting should be easy, and illegal voting should be hard. Democrats seem only to want voting to be easy regardless of the potential for fraud.”  – ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy

While the ILGOP deploys an election protection team every cycle, this committee represents a renewed focus on making sure the upcoming election is free, fair, and transparent leading up to November 2022. The committee will work closely with stakeholders across the state in formulating strategies to implement best practices and recommendations for voter integrity at the grassroots level.

Special focus will be paid to the recruitment, training, and placement of election judges and poll watchers, with the goal of ensuring a bonafide Republican is in place in every polling place across the state. In addition, the committee plans to look at the integrity of voter rolls and to verify Vote-By-Mail (VBM) and election day ballot handling is done appropriately, including adhering to ballot chain of custody standards such as those established by the independent and bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The Election Integrity Committee is chaired by 7th District ILGOP State Central Committeeman Mark Hosty. Others on the committee are ILGOP General Counsel John Fogarty, Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman, Attorney David Shestokas, and LaSalle County Republican Chairman Larry Smith.

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Jenny Thornley is a family friend of JB and MK Pritzker. Jenny Thornley worked on Pritzker’s gubernatorial campaign and then was given a plum job as CFO of a state agency. Unfortunately for Jenny Thornley, she was also indicted last month by a Sangamon County grand jury for defrauding taxpayers and stealing up to $100,000 dollars during her time at said state agency.

What is curious is that a small provision inserted into the recent omnibus criminal justice legislative package, signed into law by Governor Pritzker, was specifically designed to oust the individual who began investigating Thornley for her corruption. That individual was former state trooper and executive director of the State Police Merit Board, Jack Garcia.

From the Chicago Tribune…

“The Illinois legislature’s top two Republicans are asking if Gov. J.B. Pritzker and top Democrats placed a little-noticed provision in the massive criminal justice reform package passed in January specifically to oust the head of a state agency who was investigating a Pritzker supporter accused of filing phony overtime reports.”

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“But GOP leaders want to know why a line was stuck into the sweeping crime package passed by legislators in January that prohibited anyone who has worked for the State Police — as Garcia had — from holding the merit board’s top job as of January 2022.”

That’s right, after a family friend of the Pritzkers was caught by a former state police officer stealing taxpayer money, Democrats covertly inserted a seemingly random provision into a larger bill that specifically barred this former state trooper from continuing in his role in state government because he was…a former state trooper. 

“Pritzker and his Democrat allies utilized the Madigan playbook once again. If someone crosses them – even in the interest of protecting taxpayers – they will go after that person’s livelihood. This corrupt way of governing has gone on for decades, and not only is JB Pritzker never going to fix it, he has become a master practitioner of it.” – ILGOP Spokesman Joe Hackler

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Moments ago, Illinois Democrats in the House and Senate passed their do-over redistricting map after relying on faulty population estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS) back in May. Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy released the following statement in response:

“Democrats are back at it again disenfranchising voters and putting politicians before the people of Illinois. Back in May, Democrats employed a sham redistricting process devoid of transparency that was lambasted by good government and community advocacy groups relentlessly. They doubled down on that process in their cleanup efforts this week and the result is a map drawn by and for politicians behind closed doors – again.”

House and Senate Democrats repeatedly said that population data from the American Community Survey would be accurate enough to warrant going forward with redistricting before official census data was released by the federal government in August. Republicans and a multitude of good government and community groups said otherwise and asked Democrats to wait for the census data and to follow through on their past support for an independent mapmaking commission.

Democrats refused, went back on their word supporting an independent commission, ignored advice on not using ACS data, and rammed through their initial redistricting map on a party-line vote. Unsurprisingly, official census data showed their first map was wildly flawed with a 30% variance between the House district populations.

The ILGOP has joined the House and Senate Republicans in their pending lawsuit asking the courts to step in and strike down this unconstitutional map and move to a bi-partisan mapmaking commission as outlined by the state constitution.

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Today, Politico did a great job outlining the team of Madigan loyalists and lawyers generally unknown to the public that are representing Democrat leaders – House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon – in their fight to preserve their politician-drawn redistricting map.

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Shia Kapos at Politico…

“The legal team representing the Democratic-led General Assembly on the remap includes attorneys who have for years worked for the former House speaker.”

“Michael Kasper, the noted election lawyer and former general counsel to Madigan when he was speaker, is heading up the legal team.

“Other attorneys are Heather Wier Vaught, who was chief counsel to Madigan and represented him when his team was accused of ignoring sexual harassment claims. Adam Vaught, her husband, is also on the General Assembly’s legal team and has represented Madigan, too, including when the former speaker was sued for allegedly orchestrating sham political candidates. And Devon Bruce is with the well-connected Power Rogers law firm, which has donated to Madigan’s campaign fund.”

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Madigan’s team has a long history of using the legal system to keep their leader’s iron-grip on power. Kasper was lead counsel and argued before the Illinois Supreme Court to strike down the 2016 Fair Maps citizen referendum. The 4-3 majority decision was written by Madigan’s Favorite Judge, Tom Kilbride, who Madigan spent millions to put on the Supreme Court, and the plaintiff in the case was John Hooker, former ComEd lobbyist who was indicted last November in the ongoing federal corruption probe.

The Madigan Machine is not dead – it’s leader is simply within the shadows. Why else would Mike Madigan’s top lawyers and longtime friends be the lead litigators for the House and Senate remap team? They’re protecting their investment as they’ve done for years.

ILGOP Spokesman Joe Hackler: “There could be  a world where Mike Madigan and his remaining lieutenants do not infect every part of state government with their corrupt tentacles. But Illinois Democrats don’t want that world. Democrats are still loyal to the man who brought them into power and the people of Illinois suffer the consequences every day.”

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