Biden visits Illinois as Democrats fret over GOP surge

Politicians fanned out across the state on the final weekend of the 2022 general election campaign, led by President Joe Biden who spoke in Joliet on Saturday amid concerns that a Republican surge on Election Day could cost Democrats control of both Illinois’ political agenda and Congress.

Biden’s decision to visit what has been a reliably blue state, along with a scheduled trip to Chicago by Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday, underscored the belief that races across the ballot have tightened ahead of Tuesday’s election.

On Saturday, Biden campaigned for two-term Rep. Lauren Underwood of Naperville in Joliet, Gov. J.B. Pritzker stumped for fellow Democrats in Arlington Heights and Gurnee, and Republican governor candidate Darren Bailey made stops in Bloomington and Rock Island, all of them urging supporters to show up at the polls after campaigns high on invective and emotion.

Democrats are battling headwinds of an inflationary economy, but Biden sought to project optimism at a Friday night fundraiser in Rosemont for Underwood and Rep. Sean Casten of Downers Grove, who is being challenged by Republican Keith Pekau, the mayor of Orland Park.

“Folks, I’m not buying the notion that we’re in trouble,” Biden said. “I think we’re going to win. I really do.”

But he quickly added: “If we lose the House and Senate it’s going to be a horrible two years. The good news is that I’ll have the veto pen.”

Biden’s last minute pitch used a theme repeated during stops in California, New York and Pennsylvania, warning that Republicans would try to cut Social Security and Medicare if they take over the House and Senate.

“These programs do something so basic, and yet so important,” he told about 300 people in the gymnasium of Jones Elementary School in Joliet on Saturday. “After working hard for decades, people deserve to retire … with some dignity.”

Citing statements by Republican Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Biden said the GOP wants Social Security and Medicare to face reauthorization votes every five years, making the long-standing senior benefit programs perpetually vulnerable to elimination.

“It’s a rock solid guarantee and an ironclad commitment,” Biden said of Social Security. “Generations of Americans have counted on it for decades, and it works.”

The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, who is poised to become House speaker if the GOP takes control, said during a campaign stop in Oak Brook on Friday that his party would seek only to “save and strengthen” Social Security, and that Democratic claims the GOP is going after the benefits programs were lies.

In Joliet, Biden touted Underwood’s support for pandemic and inflation relief programs. He also noted some of the signs waved by protesters and supporters of former President Donald Trump who greeted the presidential entourage outside the school.

“I love those signs when I came in — ‘socialism.’ Give me a break. What idiots,” the president said.

Underwood’s Republican challenger, Scott Gryder of Oswego, who was at a rally at a nearby home, criticized the president’s comment as “name calling” and labeled it “offensive.”

During his suburban swing on Saturday, Pritzker also projected optimism as he rallied with Democratic door-knockers at the campaign office of state Sen. Ann Gillespie and Rep. Mark Walker in Arlington Heights.

“I think that our Democrats up and down the ballot here in Illinois are going to do very well. As you know, that’s very important to me,” Pritzker told a reporter. “I think Tuesday night’s going to be a good night for Democrats here in Illinois, and I’m hopeful about the nation.”

Pritzker’s campaign on Thursday reported transferring $1 million to the Democratic Party of Illinois, bringing his total contributions to the state party this year to $11.5 million. That’s more than four times the nearly $3.2 million he donated in 2018.

At the same time, the party has reported spending more than $10 million on Pritzker’s campaign this year, mostly for mailings.

In addressing the crowd, Pritzker ticked off his administration’s accomplishments in increasing education funding. Spotting volunteers from the anti-gun violence group Moms Demand Action in the room, he reiterated his vow to ban assault weapons in the state.

Pritzker ended with a question for the audience: “Everybody ready for the fight?” — a line that drew loud cheers, as it often has during speeches throughout his two campaigns for governor.

After shaking hands and posing for photos, Pritzker said his words are a call to political action, not to violence. Both Pritzker and his challenger, Bailey, have had threats made against them.

“There’s a big difference, though, between the rhetoric of a campaign talking about, ‘Are you ready to go fight for what you believe in and stand up for a woman’s right to choose and ban assault weapons?’ and literally inciting people to go do things that could end up with a violent outcome,” Pritzker said.

The governor said “the rise of this kind of hyperpolarized, negative rhetoric, infused with a call to people to maybe take physical action,” began when Trump declared his candidacy for president in 2015.

“And it’s been on the rise ever since. It’s a terrible development in American politics,” Pritzker said.

“Campaigns have always been about revving up crowds and about making sure that people know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, right? But we’re all talking about balloting,” he said. “But overall, we should be bringing the rhetoric down.”

In Bloomington, Bailey, a state senator and farmer from Xenia whose campaign has leaned heavily on his evangelical, charismatic Christian faith, mingled with several dozen supporters and patrons at Denny’s Doughnuts and Bakery.

As the event was winding down, a campaign aide asked the crowd to say a prayer for Bailey over unspecified actions on the campaign trail in the last few weeks. “Obviously, it’s spiritual warfare,” the aide, David Paul Blumenshine, said.

“There are those that are going to come against us. Obviously, we know that. So I’d like to lift Darren up in prayer real quick,” Blumenshine said.

Blumenshine led a “Stop the Steal” bus tour that was at Trump’s Jan. 6 speech in Washington, and marched to the U.S. Capitol, where Trump supporters tried to prevent the Electoral College count declaring Biden’s victory. Blumenshine has said he did not enter the Capitol grounds.

Speaking to the crowd at the bakery, Bailey blamed Pritzker for a death threat against him from a 21-year-old Chicago man who was arrested last week. Prosecutors said the man had become enraged after seeing a political ad on a barroom TV, but did not specify the ad.

Bailey said the suspect had “watched some of J.B.’s lying, misleading, divisive ads.”

Bailey decried inflation, high taxes, unsafe streets and poorly-performing schools, all of which he blamed on Pritzker. While his farming and trucking operation is worth millions of dollars, he repeatedly tried to cast himself as a simple downstate farmer fighting against the Chicago elite “billionaire” class, of which the governor is a member.

“The billionaire political class has been selling out the working class for the last eight years,” said Bailey, referring to both Pritzker and his predecessor, one-term GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Bailey talked to the crowd about how his “movement” distances itself from the “fat cats and the billionaires” and is more about “the people forced to do everything they can just to survive here in Illinois.”

“It’s about you and every forgotten community in this state,” Bailey said. “It’s about the police officers working the graveyard shift, keeping our communities safe while you and I sleep. It’s about teachers staying after class to help their students achieve their goals. It’s about the construction workers building the skyscrapers where billionaires like Pritzker … look down on the rest of us.”

Bailey has lived in downtown Chicago in recent weeks after having referred to the city as a “hellhole.”

“City folks expect you to fit in at cocktail parties and have billions of dollars in offshore accounts so that you can run for governor. Well, if you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s not me,” Bailey said.

“The only relationship that some people have with farmers is the childhood song about ‘Old McDonald.’ And J.B. Pritzker is certainly trying to paint me out to be a scary farmer,” he said.

Afterward, Bailey was asked about a complaint filed Friday by the Illinois Democratic Party to the State Board of Elections alleging his campaign had illegally colluded with a conservative radio show host who runs a political action committee that backs Bailey’s campaign.

The People Who Play By The Rules PAC, headed by Dan Proft of Naples, Florida, is an independent expenditure PAC that is prohibited by law from coordinating spending activities with the Bailey campaign.

“They’re not true,” Bailey said of the collusion allegations. “You know we can’t, we haven’t talked to any of those people since before the primary. So absolutely not.”

Bailey has been a guest on Proft’s morning radio show as recently as September, when Proft spoke to the candidate about his PAC’s multimillion dollars of support.

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