Illinois Republican debate: Candidates address Texas school shooting

The six Republican candidates for Illinois governor faced off Tuesday night in Chicago — albeit on two separate debate stages — hours after a shooting at a Texas elementary school that dominated a large portion of the debates.

A scheduling conflict between two TV networks — WGN and NBC 5 — had the candidates split into groups of three, with the NBC debate beginning at 6 p.m. and the WGN debate starting immediately after it at 7 p.m.

NBC’s debate included Aurora Mayor Ricard Irvin, the polling and money frontrunner, along with former Waterloo state Sen. Paul Schimpf and suburban attorney Max Solomon. The WGN debate that followed included Sen. Darren Bailey, of Xenia, Petersburg venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan and suburban paving magnate Gary Rabine.

The debates saw Irvin stick mostly to the talking points he’s deployed throughout the campaign, while Bailey, who was closely trailing Irvin in recent polls, referred to Chicago as a “crime-ridden, corrupt, dysfunctional hellhole.”

Much of the discussion revolved around a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom and killed at least 21 individuals, including 19 children.

While all candidates expressed horror at the tragedy, responses from a policy standpoint ranged from saying more needs to be done to support police and treat mental health to candidates saying more guns are needed in schools. Below is a summary of responses on shooting and crime.

On Texas school shooting

Irvin noted he was mayor of Aurora in 2019 when a shooter killed six, including himself, at the Henry Pratt Company in that city. Irvin said a governor would have to “make sure that not only we heal after this, these events that seem to be happening so much throughout our country day in and day out where we’re comparing one violent act to another.”

“We need to make sure that we support our police, and we support our neighbors, and our families, and our friends, and these school children that we don’t allow weapons to get into the hands of criminals and those with mental illnesses,” Irvin added. “And as governor, I will take a strong stance to ensure that we do what’s necessary to protect ourselves.”

Irvin’s response followed Schimpf, who cited law enforcement support as well.

“You have to try to keep our students safe by helping law enforcement to do their job. We also have to be exploring mental illness and the challenge that mental illness faces, poses for our country,” Schimpf said, without giving specifics.

Solomon said all schools should have armed security guards.

The candidates at the WGN debate were asked about the shooting, as well as their positions on the state’s Firearm Owners Identification law that requires Illinoisans to apply for a photo ID to be able to legally own a gun.

Bailey said he would look to repeal the law — a move that would require action from lawmakers — and pointed to the state of New York, where shootings occur despite “some of the most egregious gun laws that there are.”

“So, I’ve been striving for the last four years as an elected official to try to partner with community groups and church groups as well to empower them to be able to deal with mental health because much of these issues that we’re dealing with actually have to do more with mental health than anything else,” Bailey said.

Root causes, God

Sullivan said “some of the root causes are getting back to fatherhood, and promoting the family in our society again.”

“I really do feel like when you remove God from our society, these are the types of things that happen,” he said. “You know, and the Democrats always want to talk immediately about gun control and limiting our Second Amendment rights.

“But that is not the, I mean, we have the strictest gun laws in the nation here in Chicago and what is that doing for us? I am pro Second Amendment but I also feel like we need to look at mental health services, you know, and we also have to look at faith and fatherhood.”

Rabine responded “bad people are going to get guns” regardless of policy.

“So we’ve got, we’ve got to really be better, in my opinion, raise our kids better than we are and do better things,” he said.

Schimpf also said he would look to get rid of the FOID law.

“We need to enforce the gun laws that we have. We need to enforce the background checks, but we need to get rid of the FOID,” he said.

Irvin said the FOID process — which saw an overhaul passed by state lawmakers in 2021 that strengthened Illinois State Police’s FOID enforcement abilities and directed the agency to create a searchable database with serial numbers of stolen gun — is “broken.”

“The system is broken and definitely needs to be fixed,” he said. “But we need background checks to ensure that guns don’t get in the hands of criminals and folks with mental illnesses.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government that is distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This story was originally published May 25, 2022 at 2:00 PM.

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