Three Republicans seeking the right to face Gov. JB Pritzker in the fall met for the first time in a televised debate on Tuesday as they try to muster momentum ahead of the March 17 primary.
The debate gave DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, businessman Rick Heidner and researcher Ted Dabrowski an opportunity to introduce themselves to voters outside the shadow of the party’s 2022 nominee, Darren Bailey, who declined to participate in the debate hosted by FOX-32 in Chicago.
“I’ve participated in four forums across the state, and my running mate Aaron Del Mar has taken part in three,” Bailey said in a statement to Capitol News Illinois. “Voters have had plenty of chances to hear from us — who we are, what we believe, and the direction we want to take Illinois.”
“At this point, my focus is simple: getting out across Illinois, meeting people where they are, listening to their concerns, and sharing our plan to move this state forward,” Bailey said.
A WGN/Emerson College poll in early January found Bailey had support from 34% of likely Republican primary voters while the three candidates at Tuesday’s debate all polled under 10%.
The candidates largely declined to take any free shots at Bailey, though Dabrowski’s closing thought of the night was that Bailey should have participated, especially because the debate was held on a Chicago TV station in a market he struggled in four years ago.
Problematic campaign contributions
Instead, Dabrowski and Heidner focused their attacks on each other.
Heidner, a Barrington Hills real estate developer and video gambling mogul, has faced criticism since entering the race for ties to indicted politicians, people allegedly part of the mob, and campaign contributions to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx — both Democrats.
“I’ve always worked on both sides,” Heidner said. “I’ll always be able to work with both sides. I’m very well respected by the Democrats, am very well respected by the Republicans. And I think it’s a huge asset.”
But Dabrowski saw those contributions differently as Heidner described how he hoped the contributions to Johnson would help in conversations about expanding gambling in the city.
“That’s what I would call, in a way, pay-to-play politics, which is you benefit from doing deals with Democrats, with Republicans,” Dabrowski said.
Heidner further bashed Dabrowski, telling the former Wirepoints researcher “you sit in front of a computer and hit Google, OK? Click, click, click.”
Dabrowski also faced heat about the conservative purity of contributions to his campaign. He has received contributions from several people who have also donated to Democrats in recent years. He defended the individuals as “Chicago executives or Chicago reformers,” rather than Democrats.
“Let’s pretend they are Democrats,” Dabrowski said. “Man, if Democrats want to come over to me, everyone knows my conservative position … if they want to donate to me and come to my side, heck yeah. And if they’re sick of Pritzker and if they’re sick of Brandon Johnson, which they are, they’re going to come to my side, which proves why I’m the campaign that can beat Pritzker.”
Mendrick had to defend his donors, but in a different way — the lack of them and what it means for his campaign’s viability. The sheriff said he has to turn down certain donations because he’s a police officer.
“When you’re beholden to money, money controls you,” Mendrick said. “And I am an honorable sheriff.”
Alignment with Trump
One theme of the race has been each candidate’s attempt to pitch themselves as the most closely aligned to President Donald Trump. All three candidates at Tuesday’s debate said they would welcome Trump’s endorsement, though the president endorsed Bailey in 2022.
“I get a president who loves the police, who supports the police, he supports the military — of course I’m going to support that,” Mendrick said, who was the only one of the three who did not identify something he disagrees with the president on.
Heidner, who said he recently courted the president’s son, Eric Trump, at his home, said he wishes Trump would support “a path to citizenship without deporting them and then having them come back.”
Dabrowski, a former international executive at Citibank, said he does not support the Trump administration investing in private companies, saying the government should say out of private businesses.
Bears stadium
On what Illinois lawmakers should, or shouldn’t, do to keep the Chicago Bears stadium in Illinois, Dabrowski was the only candidate in the debate who said he does not support lawmakers giving the Bears power to negotiate property tax rates with local governments in Arlington Heights.
“We should do all the public infrastructure that’s fair and necessary that the public benefits from to support a stadium, but we shouldn’t give the Bears anything and we certainly should not give them breaks,” Dabrowski said.
Mendrick and Heidner said they support the legislation for the Bears.
“This is not giving tax dollars away, these are giving tax dollars that they’re going to create as a partnership,” Heidner said.
Bringing down costs
Affordability was also a key topic of the debate.
Dabrowski said property taxes should be capped at 1% of a property’s value. He added reducing the number of units of government in the state would help bring them down. Heidner said he would freeze all tax rates, including property taxes, if elected. However, property taxes are levied by local governments.
Addressing rising utility prices is also part of Republicans’ affordability agenda. Mendrick said he’s glad Pritzker is embracing nuclear energy but said it’s not enough to bring prices down quickly.
“That’s 2033 and they’re saying our crisis is going to hit in 2029,” he said. “Well guess what? We could use our own coal right now, create jobs, create energy reductions by using our own materials that we have a plethora of in our state and export at a profit.”
Dabrowski said high energy prices aren’t just a problem for residents.
“Now we’re starting to turn away data centers, we’re starting to turn away business,” he said.
Republicans will next debate on Feb. 26 on AM-560 radio in Chicago ahead of the March 17 primary.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.