Politics
Illinois Republicans Urged to Take Their Message to Democrats – and Take Advantage of Early Voting Laws They’ve Decried
Video: The WTTW News Spotlight Politics team and Northwestern University professor Erik Nisbet on the day’s top stories. (Produced by Eunice Alpasan and Blair Paddock)
The Illinois delegation to the RNC got a message they might not have been expecting at their daily breakfast on Tuesday – early voting and mail-in ballots are your friends.
That was the guidance from former U.S. Rep Lee Zeldin (R-NY), the day’s guest speaker, who said if laws expanding voting access are on the books, Republicans ought to take advantage of them.
“I believe that every state in the country should have voter ID,” Zeldin said to a round of applause. “Ballot harvesting should not be legal in any state. Universal mail-in balloting should not be legal in any state. But when the Democrats change an election law in a particular state and it is the law for that election, I believe that we should be leaning into that law instead of boycotting that law.”
He blamed a rare snowfall in Reno in 2022 as driving down turnout and narrowly costing Republicans a U.S. Senate seat, a fate they might have been spared if they’d voted early.
Zeldin, who unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022, told attendees about his time campaigning in solidly blue districts with a large number of Black, Latino and Asian voters.
“I was told when I was first elected, don’t go there. Don’t waste your time. You will not get their vote,” Zeldin said. “It somehow made me think that that’s exactly where we need to be. If the political consultant is saying, ‘don’t go there, it’s not worth your time,’ … maybe no one in either party is going there.”
Zeldin said Republicans ought to spend more time with diverse voters talking about conservative plans for education reform.
“When you talk to that longtime Democratic Black voter who cares about their kids’ education above all else – about why we don’t want their kids trapped in multigenerational poverty, stuck in a poor performing public school, and we want to give them access to school choice and a better education – they’re listening,” Zeldin said.
His message echoed that of U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) who spoke during last night’s convention about his mother pulling him out of a public school that she saw as failing him.
Zeldin also said Republicans have to draw a sharp contrast with President Joe Biden and other Democratic politicians in order to draw in undecideds – or even flip votes.
“The people who are out there who might have voted the wrong way in ‘16 and ‘20, many of them have spoken up in the last few days,” Zeldin said. “They are willing to give our message a fresh listen.”
That sentiment aligned with another of last night’s speakers, Linda Fornos. She told RNC attendees about her experience immigrating legally from Nicaragua and how her sons are working multiple jobs to stay afloat.
Fornos admitted to the room that she voted for Biden in 2020 and now regrets it, imploring fellow Latinos to “wake up and smell the cafecito.”
Another group Republicans have been making overtures to, or at least softening their stance on – labor unions. Monday’s RNC featured a keynote from Teamsters union leader Sean O’Brien, who’s also asked to speak at the Democratic National Convention.
Asked about O’Brien’s pro-worker message, Illinois state Sen. Terri Bryan (R-Murphysboro) said some of his comments were “really refreshing” to hear, especially since she’s a retired member of the Laborers’ union.
“For a long time, we have needed to get our message out better that we are pro-labor,” Bryant said. “Often I think that that message gets lost somehow.”
During a press conference after Tuesday’s speeches, another Chicago-centric concern came up – Trump’s vice presidential pick, U.S. Senator JD Vance, holding up the nomination of April Perry to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
“Just because somebody is a prosecutor in the city of Chicago and has an appointment, and that appointment was not certified to the U.S. Senate, doesn’t mean that anybody – that they should just get a free pass,” said delegate Aaron Del Mar, a former candidate for lieutenant governor. “Sen. Vance had strong concerns regarding that appointment and chose to hold it up. You should speak to Sen. Vance regarding why he did it.”
Contact Nick Blumberg: [email protected] | (773) 509-5434 | @ndblumberg
