The wheels are officially off the Illinois Republican Party

“When people nobody voted for run everything, you are not living in a free country.”

– Tucker Carlson

What would happen if you turned a state GOP over to the nasty high school clique portrayed in the 2004 film Mean Girls?

Good news, you need not wonder.

Look no further than the Illinois Republican Party.

The one really good thing that came out of the Illinois Republican State Convention last month over Memorial Day Weekend in Collinsville is that it further proved just how ABSOLUTELY RIGHT all of us are who have been pushing for restoring direct elections for the members of our state party’s governing board.

That State Convention last month was a rigged disgrace, but on the positive side it further separated the wheat from the chaff. More on that subject in future pieces, but for now consider the dustup currently going on between state central committee (SCC) member Mark Shaw and some of his fellow state central committee members.

One of the perks doled out at last month’s State Convention was who would become the new Republican National Committeeman from Illinois. Every state picks a man and a woman to sit on the Republican National Committee (RNC). Each state’s GOP state chair is also automatically a member. So it’s 3 members on the RNC from each state.

Mark Shaw wanted the National Committeeman spot because he’s term limited on the SCC with only 2 years left. In other words, he wanted a new title so he could still feel important.

Unfortunately for Shaw, an overwhelming majority of the delegates in attendance took advantage of one of the very few opportunities they had to actually express their voice at that convention. While most decisions were pre-rigged and decided before the full delegation even arrived in Collinsville, on this one narrow question the delegates could make themselves heard. And they did. A huge majority rejected Shaw for the new job, despite the fact Shaw was recommended for the post by a majority of the 17 members of the incestuous subcommittee responsible for issuing a recommendation for National Committeeman & National Committeewoman.

But the controversy continues. Shaw now stands accused of making himself a delegate to the State Convention so he could vote for himself, even though his county GOP chair (Lake County) says Shaw was never appointed as a delegate. And according to state party rules, the county GOP chair has sole authority over picking the persons from her or his county who may attend as delegates at the State Convention.

Shaw is not taking this lying down. Over the weekend he fired off a scathing 10-page letter not only in defense of himself, but also exposing the sins of his biggest critics, some of them fellow SCC members.

Shaw’s strategy is either to say: “If I go, I’m bringing others down with me,” or, and more likely, he’s sending a message that everyone on the SCC better shut up about him, because others on the SCC have hands that are at least as dirty.

The latter is certainly true. And Shaw has been hanging around long enough to know just how weak and ineffectual he and most of his fellow SCC members are. If ousting Shaw requires any leadership whatsoever, he’s likely to survive. But we’ll soon see.

Shaw is also lucky that some of his most outspoken detractors arguably make him look like Mother Teresa in comparison. And that’s saying a lot because in my humble opinion Shaw lacks integrity. And he’s definitely not a leader.

SCC member (and former Hillary Clinton supporter) Aaron Del Mar for instance was Cook County GOP chair in 2016, and along with the Chicago GOP chair at the time, unlawfully tried to purge essentially every duly elected Black person from the office of Republican ward committeeperson in Chicago on the made-up grounds that they “weren’t Republican enough.” They also tried to purge one white guy on the same grounds, and he was the one who brought the successful lawsuit which proved the attempted purge was unlawful.

And as I explained back then, at least some of those purged Black committeepersons were already active volunteers for Donald Trump.

Two years later, in 2018, before that litigation was over, current SCC member and Del Mar’s replacement as Cook County GOP chair, Sean Morrison, brought goons from his security firm to keep those same duly elected Black committeepersons out of the county convention. Everyone was actually banned from that 2018 county convention except for the committeepersons Morrison approved. But I was there and the reason for the closed convention was obvious.

Fast forward to 2024 and of the 50 Chicago wards, no Republican even bothered to run this year for GOP ward committeeperson in 13 of them. Most of those wards are majority Black. And at the State Convention last month, there were MAYBE 10 Black attendees out of 500 people. It might have been closer to 8. And I could definitely not swear that the number of Hispanic attendees was any greater. The number might well have been lower.

This has been typical of our State Conventions for years, but no one seems to be troubled.

But this is all just a small taste of the dysfunction and corruption, the tip of the iceberg.

The Illinois Republican Party’s organizational problem is systemic and incapacitating. Whether Mark Shaw stays or goes, or whether useless state chair Don Tracy stays or goes, is mostly immaterial. Rearranging the deck chairs a bit after the ship has already sunk and substituting a few players won’t make much difference.

We’ve been down this same road many times over the years trying to weed out bad players here and there. We end up back at square one with bad people acting irresponsibly and against their duty to the Republican constituents they are supposed to serve. That’s what happens when you eliminate a responsible system and substitute it with a harebrained one that provides absolutely no accountability.

The reality is bad players are going to keep sprouting up. Our current system is a magnet for them.

And this is definitely not a problem that can be fixed with some tweaks to the party by-laws.

Republican voters must have their vote back for the members of the SCC. It’s the only way to restore accountability and trust. I’m talking about the vote that was stolen from us back in 1986 via another rigged State Convention. Absolutely no real thought went into that steal. A few arrogant party bosses on a whim just decided they weren’t going to allow grassroots candidates to beat their boss-backed candidates for SCC anymore.

I would challenge Don Tracy and the entire SCC to name even 5 gullible rubes who will volunteer for them at this point.

It’s delicious of course watching bad people scratch each other’s eyes out as is happening now. But of course that is never going to fix the problem.

The responsible thing to do would be to shut down all state party fundraising until our vote is restored. In my view it is wrong to ask good people to flush their money away on an organization that is doing more harm than good for the GOP cause.

Let’s all give directly to the Trump campaign instead. And yes, if you have a candidate in Illinois you like and want to help, absolutely do so.

That’s exactly what Vince Kolber said he’ll be doing when he resigned as chair of the state party’s Finance Committee last week. People can criticize Kolber all they want, but he’s a serious man. The one time I talked to him by phone, a week or so before the State Convention, I told him he hasn’t seen the state party regular Republicans see. Staff and consultants suck-up to and flatter him because he’s their meal ticket. I told him he’s been deliberately sheltered from reality.

I certainly can’t speak for Vince Kolber, but I do suspect he got a taste at the State Convention of that reality. In any case, he won’t be telling people to contribute to the state GOP anymore. And that’s responsible.

In addition to ceasing fundraising for the state party, all 17 SCC members should tell us when they are going to Wisconsin to volunteer for Donald Trump. That’s where I’ll be going.

And that’s where Democrat volunteers from Illinois will be going to help Joe Biden. Wisconsin is one of only 6 battleground states likely to decide this election. The Illinois GOP has done nothing but help Biden’s chances in Wisconsin and that’s a disgrace. It may cost Trump the White House.

As long as the Illinois Republican Party’s main priority is keeping its own voters disenfranchised in their own state party, it’s silly for principled Republicans to waste their time playing pretend in this state.

More to come.