Pritzker Suckering GOP Voters Into Nominating His Preferred Opponent?

CHICAGO — It sure looks as if future U.S. presidential candidate Gov. J.B. Pritzker successfully goaded Illinois Republican Party voters into picking a fight they can't win.

We're in the middle of the FBI's massive political corruption investigation that includes the indictment of the governor's most important political ally, former House Speaker Michael Madigan.

And recent political polling suggests Illinois Republicans on Tuesday are poised to nominate a downstate farmer endorsed by former President Donald Trump for governor.

The guy leading the polls is Darren Bailey, an ultra conservative who once supported a plan to divide Illinois into two states — one for Chicago and another for downstate hayseeds who think Illinois would be better off if more Black and Latino people were locked up by the police and had their neighborhoods invaded by the National Guard — which, to be fair, is my interpretation of his talking points on crime.

Pritzker's prodding made Bailey a Republican front-runner. He spent millions to rile up Bailey's base. His campaign team nudged a friendly press corps to "expose" Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin as the imperfect moderate who plays nice with Democrats when he needs to and refused to say that he didn't vote for Donald Trump — a terrible sin where Bailey comes from.

Irvin's campaign strategy and performance in interviews and candidate forums was so terrible that his benefactor, billionaire Citadel owner Ken Griffin, announced plans to move his hedge and family from Chicago to Miami — a leisurely drive from Pritzker's Florida equestrian mansion — a week before Tuesday's primary election.

If the polls turn out to be right, Pritzker will have prodded Republican voters into a general election showdown fought on fringe issues that favor the incumbent Democratic governor and the legislative supermajority, brought to you by Madigan's "criminal enterprise."

A Bailey primary win turns the November election into an extension of a national culture war, rather than a verdict on the Pritzker administration's failure to give more than lip service and budget line items to distract from what's really wrong in Illinois.

Our billionaire governor's administration lets down the little guy.

Pritzker's administration failed to "identify and respond" to a COVID-19 outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans Home, where 36 residents who served in the military died.

Pritzker's head of the Department of Children and Family Services has been held in contempt of court 11 times for failing to keep children under the state's care safe.

Remember, it was Pritzker — and his $10 million in campaign donations to Madigan — that led to doubling the state gas tax to nearly 40 cents a gallon in 2019.

MORE ON PATCH: Not Enough Cash Back To Buy Pritzker's Election-Year Budget Gimmick

During Pritzker's coronavirus lockdowns, Illinois' broken unemployment system was raided by scammers and plagued by delays while working-class folks suffered without paychecks — such as Carlton Jones, who turned to me for help when state workers wouldn't return his calls. It worked.

The governor made big headlines with the promised immediate funding for violence prevention efforts, but his staff didn't spend the money even as shootings continued to spike.

The billionaire governor promised that legalizing marijuana would create new Black millionaires, but it still hasn't happened.

MORE ON PATCH: Gov's Promise To Include Minorities In Weed Industry Up In Smoke

And when gas prices skyrocketed, Pritzker's gasoline tax "relief" amounted to canceling a scheduled tax increase. And still, while working-class drivers struggle to afford to fill their tanks, our out-of-touch billionaire governor's campaign spends more than $40,000 a month on his private jet.

The state tollway authority appointed by Pritzker devolved into bureaucratic chaos.

In May, the Pritzker-appointed Prisoner Review Board didn't have enough members to operate.

At the dawn of the coronavirus crisis, Pritzker promised poor, minority communities — which had the highest death rates — increased access to testing that didn't come.

Pritzker turned pandemic school shutdowns as an opportunity to bolster a secretive, coronavirus testing business run by the University of Illinois. The governor earmarked $225 million in federal relief funds to exclusively roll out SHIELD COVID-19 saliva tests for "free" at Illinois schools with no-bid contracts that created a testing monopoly and effectively served as proof of concept for the university's for-profit spit-testing company.

If Bailey wins the Republican primary, the November election won't be about the ways Pritzker's failed bureaucracy has let down Illinoisans while he used his inherited wealth to prepare for a presidential campaign.

It'll be Trump's favorite Republican farmer vs. Pritzker's new, self-funded, Democratic Machine.

What a bunch of suckers.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots.

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