Darren Bailey, Republican candidate for Illinois governor
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Name: Darren Bailey
Political party (if applicable): Republican
Age as of June 28, 2022: 56
Campaign website or social media page: BaileyforIllinois.com Facebook: @BaileyforIllinois
Office seeking: Governor
Are you an incumbent?: No
Have you run for elected office before? (Please list previous offices sought): School board, State Representative (one term) and State Senate (finishing first term in 2022). Note: won every race
Occupation: Farmer, small business owner, State Senator
Education: Associate’s degree in agriculture production from Lakeland College
Please list highlights of your civic involvement. I have served on the North Clay School Board. I was also elected to the State House, and I currently serve as a State Senator. Since being an elected official, I have taken a portion of my salary and donated it to various local charities throughout my district. In addition, I am a member of the Louisville Rotary Club, A.B.A.T.E., Rolling Thunder, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and a lifetime member of the Illinois Farm Bureau and numerous other agriculture-related groups. My wife and I founded a Christian School in Clay County, and I have been active in helping local crisis pregnancy centers.
Who are your top three campaign contributors? Contributions come in many forms. Our movement is fueled by the everyday working people volunteering to donate thousands of hours every week to fuel our grassroots movement. This campaign wouldn’t be possible without them.
Why are you running? I am running to restore our great state. Our finances are a mess, and confidence in our state leadership is low. The current policies have failed working families in Illinois, and it is time for a change. Unfortunately, the only solution J.B. Pritzker has is to raise more taxes. Illinois already has some of the country’s highest state and local taxes. There is no appetite in Illinois for more tax increases.
As governor, I will focus on passing a zero-based budget to help eliminate wasteful spending and prioritize budgets to make government work for the people of Illinois. I will work to root out corruption in Springfield and identity fraud within departments such as the Department of Employment Security. I will make sure state agencies are responsive to requests promptly, and my administration will work with the legislative branch to tackle the problems Illinois residents care about. My focus and priority will be serving the people of this great state.
What is the top issue in your race, and how would you address it? The economy. I’m running to stand up and fight for working families and taxpayers. One area where the governor of the state of Illinois has tremendous power is the budget. The governor can do line-item vetoes on budget bills. Suppose the Legislature refuses to act on my budget proposals and instead sends a budget of their own. In that case, I will use the power of the line-item veto to protect the interests of Illinois’ working families and taxpayers. My commitment to fiscal responsibility is not a talking point. We have to get Illinois on the right track, which means being serious about spending reforms. This will happen on day one of my administration as I begin to demand transparency and a zero-based budgeting process.
Why should people vote for you over another candidate? I have a proven track record of standing up for working families, taxpayers, and limited government. I stood up to Pritzker’s unilateral mandates when no one else would. I won my first election for state representative by opposing the tax hikes my opponent at the time supported. I have never supported a tax increase throughout my tenure in the Illinois Legislature, and I have consistently stood up to reform Springfield and promote conservative principles.
I have advocated for spending reform, lower taxes, and tough anti-corruption measures. Political insiders of both political parties often mock these positions, but the people of Illinois are ready for change. So the question I have is, what have decades of far-left policies done for Illinois? We are here because of the failed policies pushed by far-left politicians like J.B. Pritzker.
Illinois has the worst credit rating of all 50 states. We have some of the highest combined state and local taxes and billions and billions of dollars in pension debt. Illinois is ranked the third-worst state for doing business, while states with competent leaders, such as Florida, are leading the way as the top destination states for jobs and opportunities.
The legacy of the status quo is debt, high taxes, and out-of-control spending. I am the only candidate in this race in both political parties who has been willing to talk about our state’s real problems and advocate for workable solutions.
What specific policies would you pursue to help Illinoisans recover economically from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and deal with inflation? The pathetic temporary tax breaks in the F.Y. 2023 budget are a joke. We need permanent, impactful tax relief, which can only happen if we reduce spending.
So, my first priority would be to reduce spending. Then I would look at ways to lower taxes, such as ending the sales tax on motor fuel and repealing the 2019 law that doubled the gas tax.
We also have to get our economy back on track. One of the first things we can do to bring jobs back is not to force local businesses to close. Many of the problems businesses are experiencing are a direct result of the Pritzker lockdowns. A Bailey administration will prioritize the unemployment insurance fund, regulatory reforms to make it easier to start and grow a business, enact workers’ compensation reform, and lower taxes. We need to make Illinois a destination state for businesses, which can only happen when we improve the business climate in our state.
The best way we can help families better afford housing and health care is to make Illinois a destination for new jobs and new opportunities. The best way to do this is to end the bad business policies stifling job growth.
Republican candidates typically support reducing spending in Illinois. If you support reduced spending, how would you achieve it? Please be specific. If you would cut services, what services would you cut? Governors of both political parties have long touted government spending as a measure of success. To be clear, I am not opposed to spending money to help the people of Illinois, but we should not be spending money for the sake of spending money. Instead, I think it is time we asked basic questions such as “What are we getting for the taxpayer money we are spending? Are the programs we are funding working? Is there a less expensive way to achieve the same results?” What I will bring to the budget process is accountability. We see politicians send out press releases all of the time touting government spending, but then we never hear about the spending results. I will bring accountability and transparency to the budget process, and I will not sign a budget crafted in secret in the dead of night. It is time to bring sunshine and transparency to the budget process.
Since the beginning of this campaign, I have stated I would demand a zero-based budget process where every penny is accounted for so we can prioritize spending. In addition, I would eliminate state funding for abortion, reduce the administrative salary increases J.B. Pritzker put into place, look at ways to save money with state office leases, and look at long-term fixes such as pension reform to reduce state budget costs.
How would you achieve your policy goals if Democrats have a majority in the General Assembly? Would you work across the aisle? If so, how? If not, why not? The Governor’s office and the Legislature are two separate branches of government, but for our government to function, these two branches must work together for the good of the people of this state. Despite the one-party rule, there is currently a lot of dysfunction in Springfield. One of the first things I would do to work with the Legislature would be to bring all four legislative leaders into my office on Day One and ask them for their budget priorities. Our state is not made of money. Therefore, the budgeting process must be based on funding priorities. The Legislature and the Governor’s office must work together to identify those priorities and how we best work together for the people of Illinois.
If you support doing so, what topics would you ban or limit in public education curricula and at what ages? How would you specifically go about doing that? I oppose critical race theory. We must get back to the basics in our curriculum. We need to teach students how to read, write, spell, do math, understand basic science, and appreciate the arts and the beauty we see around us. We need to reimagine how we educate our kids and stop putting personal preferences into the required curriculum. Our focus must be on helping kids develop a framework to continue learning beyond the formal setting of a classroom. We have every piece of information and every bit of human knowledge at our fingertips. Instead of forcing kids to think of learning education as only something that can happen in a classroom, we should focus on instilling a love of learning in kids. The job of schools should be to give kids the tools to learn how to think and how to learn. Too much education is focused on teaching kids what to think. We need to reimagine the education experience and give kids the building blocks for self-education and independent study.
Who did you vote for in the 2020 presidential election and why? I voted for Donald Trump because I liked his tax policies, energy policies, commitment to law and order and securing our borders, love for our country, and putting Americans and working families first.
If you could set an abortion policy for Illinois, what would it prohibit or allow? Please be specific about instances where abortion would be allowed, i.e., in case the mother’s health is in jeopardy; rape/incest; etc. I am 100 percent pro-life. My personal exception is the life of the mother. In this race, I have the endorsement of Illinois Family Action, Illinois Right to Life, Lake County Right to Life, and Kane County Right to life. I understand under the current Democrat-led legislature changing laws will not happen. However, my two priorities on this issue will be ending state funding for abortion and restoring the parental notification law in Illinois.
What policies would you pursue to provide resources, if any, to parents who would struggle to care for a child? As governor, helping mothers and children will be one of my highest priorities. One of the reasons I want to reform state spending is to free up money to help the people in Illinois who need it. Because of our state’s financial mess, there are precious few resources to help low-income families. As governor, I will push to redirect public assistance money to help mothers in need and use the power of the line-item veto if necessary. The budget process is about identifying priorities, and assisting families in need should be one of our highest priorities. In addition to state funding, I will look at forming public-private partnerships to put Illinois families first.
This story was originally published May 31, 2022 at 6:00 AM.