Darren Bailey is running it back against Gov. JB Pritzker — this time, with a more moderate running mate.
Four years after the hardline conservative farmer lost to Pritzker by nearly 13 percentage points in the general election, Bailey will officially join the Republican gubernatorial primary race later this month with Cook County GOP Chair Aaron Del Mar as candidate for lieutenant governor, according to sources close to their campaign.
They’ll immediately become the most recognizable ticket in the GOP primary field vying to take on Pritzker, who announced his bid for a third term earlier this summer.
Bailey and Del Mar have regularly found themselves in opposing corners of a fractured Illinois Republican Party that hasn’t won a statewide election in more than a decade. Earlier this year, Bailey endorsed another candidate against Del Mar for the Cook County GOP post.
But they’re setting aside differences to combine their regional name recognition and voter bases — Bailey’s downstate, and Del Mar’s in Chicago’s suburbs — to unite their party for any chance against the billionaire Democratic incumbent whose focus, they say, is on seeking higher office.
Bailey and Del Mar’s campaign is expected to focus on business, public safety and education, sources said — and less so on the Second Amendment and anti-abortion rights messages that turned off many suburban voters from Bailey’s 2022 campaign.
Bailey and Del Mar were set to start circulating petitions Tuesday to get on the March 17 ballot.
“JB has been a disaster for Illinois. Families are struggling, businesses are leaving, and crime is rising, yet he’s chasing his dream of the White House,” Bailey said in a social media post Monday. “In 2026, we have the chance to stop him. But it will take ALL of us. Every Illinoisan who knows we deserve better. Together, we can end JB’s presidential ambitions before they even begin and finally turn Illinois around.”
Bailey won the 2022 Republican primary with a backhanded boost from Pritzker, who aired TV ads branding the former southern Illinois state senator as “too conservative,” a gambit to elevate a weaker general election opponent, by Pritzker’s’ estimation.
Bailey, who labeled Chicago a “hellhole” and rented a Streeterville apartment to “immerse” himself “in the culture” of Chicago violence, trounced the 2022 GOP field that included former Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, whose campaign was bankrolled by megadonor Ken Griffin.
Del Mar was the running mate that year of gubernatorial candidate Gary Rabine, who finished fourth.
Bailey, who ran with suburban talk show host Stephanie Trussell, lost by more than half a million votes to Pritzker. Last year, he lost a closer congressional primary race against southern Illinois U.S. Rep. Mike Bost.
Sources with the Darren-Aaron campaign said they commissioned a poll that had them leading other announced Illinois GOP governor candidates by double digits.
DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick had about $100,000 in his campaign fund at the end of July, according to state records.
Ted Dabrowski, president of the conservative research website Wirepoints, has raised about $1 million for his gubernatorial campaign.
Bailey, whose campaign received about $10 million in direct support from conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein in 2022, raised some $640,000 for last year’s congressional race.
Pritzker spent well over $100 million on his first reelection campaign.