The tragic tale of Illinois GOP chair Don Tracy

“So, when he had occasion to be seen,

He was but as the cuckoo is in June,

Heard, not regarded.”

– William Shakespeare’s play Henry IV, Part I

Last week Don Tracy announced he’s resigning as chair of the Illinois Republican Party.

The week prior, wealthy businessman Vince Kolber resigned as chair of the Illinois Republican Party’s Finance Committee.

Clueless Left-wing media in Illinois (mostly Chicago) has lazily rehashed their go-to narrative to explain this latest little rearranging of the deckchairs. For them it’s just an excuse to parrot on cue the horribly outdated “conservatives vs. moderates” trope. It’s so cliché.

Slightly more savvy journos have tried to update the old narrative a bit by painting the dustup as a MAGA takeover of the Illinois GOP.

Oh, if only that was true! But in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

What’s going on now in the Illinois GOP is pretty simple. It’s just one small faction of do-nothings trying to replace another small faction of do-nothings.

It’s just more of the same pettiness and self-dealing we’ve witnessed numerous times over the years.

This all has nothing to do with ideology. For every useless “RINO” or so-called “moderate” in the Illinois GOP, I could name you at least one equally useless self-identified “conservative.” Some of my conservative friends won’t like hearing that, but it’s the absolute truth.

The point is selfish self-dealers really aren’t concerned with policy on any level. Their own interest is overriding.

What we’re witnessing now is just all about title chasing and whatever perceived ego boost goes along with having a party title.

Not one of the 17 currently on the Illinois GOP’s state central committee (SCC) deserves a promotion, but that’s likely what we’ll get for Don Tracy’s replacement. That’s how insular and out of touch our state party has become.

And of course, the 17 members of the SCC are the only ones with any say in picking the new state chair, and 99.999% of Republican voters have zero say in picking those 17 SCC members. So they’ll do what they want.

SCC member Aaron Del Mar is reportedly a frontrunner now for state chair. Is Del Mar a conservative or some big Trump supporter? If he is I’ve seen scarce evidence.

Aaron Del Mar is a self-promoter, not a leader. The big thing he seems to have going for him is the fact he’s one of only maybe a dozen or so persons of color who is active on any level in the Illinois GOP.

And that wouldn’t be a matter to mention but for the fact Del Mar had much to do with reducing the number of persons of color who are active in the Illinois GOP. And I sense Del Mar doesn’t mind being the beneficiary after pulling up the drawbridge from others.

Back in 2016 Del Mar was chair of the Cook County GOP. In that role he unlawfully attempted to purge 13 Chicago ward committeepersons from the party who had been duly elected that March by Republican Primary voters. At least 10 of those 13 lawfully elected ward committeepersons were Black. By my recollection, it was EVERY Black person lawfully elected to a ward committeeperson spot in Chicago that year.

The pretext for the illegal purge was that the 13 “weren’t Republican enough.” But there was no legal basis for doing what Del Mar attempted to do and the Illinois Appellate Court eventually said so. The issue was so clear-cut the Illinois Supreme Court never got involved.

But what’s truly astonishing is the fact that under the litmus test for being “sufficiently Republican” which Del Mar wanted to apply, he himself should have been disqualified from GOP office because he pulled a Democrat ballot in 2008 to vote for his gal Hillary Clinton!

The Daily Herald also covered the story back in 2016 HERE.

And of course Del Mar never said a peep when multiple persons he sits on the SCC with openly endorsed and assisted career Democrat Richard Irvin for governor in 2022 on the Republican ticket.

But I suppose if our current cockamamie system of picking SCC members is good for one thing, it’s providing a home for persons whose hypocrisy knows no bounds.

The unlawful act Del Mar attempted in 2016 should have been a career ender. But no, in the bizarro world that is today’s Illinois GOP he’s considered a serious candidate to run the state party.

This is exactly the kind of embarrassing disaster you get when a state party idiotically disenfranchises its own voters.

Unfortunately, Del Mar’s destructive legacy is still with us today. All 50 of the GOP ward committeeperson spots were up for election in this year’s March Republican Primary. No Republican even bothered to run in 13 of them. Most of those are majority Black wards.

But I don’t want to make this only about race, or to suggest that Aaron Del Mar is the only selfish player responsible for destroying the Illinois Republican Party, because he’s certainly not. Extremely far from it.

The fact is persons of all races and creeds are saying they want nothing to do with the Illinois Republican Party anymore. I know a lot of people who are excited about Donald Trump and they’re supporting him. But they’re done with the state party in Illinois. Can we blame them?

The point is, if anyone thinks things can’t get any worse, guess again. They definitely could.

This brings us back to Don Tracy. Based on his bitter resignation letter it’s clear he still doesn’t get it.

I don’t believe in kicking people when they are down, but we should be honest. Tracy was a weak and grossly incompetent chair. His resignation letter blames the “grassroots” which last time I checked, those would be the Republican voters he was supposed to be serving.

Putting aside all of the additional ground lost to the Democrats under Tracy’s failed tenure, Tracy made the Illinois Republican Party non-transparent and closed on an unprecedented scale. SCC meetings have basically been held in total secrecy since 2022.

And the Republican State Convention which Tracy oversaw last month in Collinsville was the most corrupt & rigged we’ve ever had, and we’ve had corrupt & rigged state conventions before. But not like this one.

It really does remind one of a Shakespearean tragedy. Here we had someone who was handed a golden opportunity to make not only the Republican Party, but also the State of Illinois better. But the guy went out of his way to squander the opportunity which, let’s face it, he really didn’t deserve in the first place and only got because he enjoys inherited wealth.

Tracy could have used the bully pulpit he was handed to be a champion for all of the Illinoisans who are hurting out there, like the seniors you see in the grocery store who are visibly scared as they compare prices, wondering if they will make ends meet with Biden inflation.

Similarly, Tracy could have been an advocate for all of the families who are afraid to let their children play outside because crime in their neighborhood is so out of control.

But no, rather than stand up for the working class — or for Donald Trump, the one unifying leader we have who WILL make a positive difference for the people of this state — Tracy preferred just to go through the motions so as not to offend people like the Orange Man Haters of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.

At least the Tribune gave him a little pat on the head last week for being a pushover. How nice.

Don Tracy had one last golden opportunity last month at the State Convention, but he squandered that too.

If Tracy had listened to me and many others who repeatedly urged him to embrace restoration of direct elections for all members of the SCC, he would not be resigning.

Had Tracy stood up for Republican voters and said we’re going to empower you again, we’re going to end all the bullsh*t and professionalize this organization once and for all, history would actually remember him for being a leader who made a real difference. But instead, Tracy will be quickly forgotten as just another placeholder state chair who put the Illinois GOP deeper in the ditch.

Granted, even if Tracy had embraced restoring our vote, the past due reform still might have failed in Collinsville, as the rigging and dishonesty were off the scale. But at least Tracy would have been on the right side of history. And more importantly, as far as Tracy is personally concerned, even someone like Aaron Del Mar probably wouldn’t have the audacity to push for Tracy’s ouster right now after he stood up for Republicans and their right to vote. Even Del Mar would surely recognize the optics would be exceedingly bad.

But of course Tracy didn’t take good advice. The man after all was chosen for his money, not his smarts.

Instead of siding with Republican voters, Tracy chose to trust people who can’t be trusted. And after they succeeded in making him the face of the Illinois GOP’s most rigged and shameful State Convention in history, they’re done with him.

A sad tragedy indeed.