CHICAGO — Republican primary voters on Tuesday cast ballots in a four-way race to decide the party’s Nov. 3 general election nominee to challenge Gov. JB Pritzker, who was unopposed in the Democratic primary in his bid for a third term as Illinois chief executive.

Darren Bailey, Ted Dabrowski, Rick Heidner and James Mendrick competed for the GOP nomination in what to the public has been a low-dollar, low-visibility contest for an office Republicans last held when one-term Gov. Bruce Rauner won in 2014, only to be defeated four years later by Pritzker.

Though all four pledged their fealty to Republican President Donald Trump, he did not endorse in the contest, as he had four years ago by backing Bailey.

Bailey, a downstate farmer and former state lawmaker, sought a rematch with Pritzker after his near 13 percentage point general election loss to the incumbent governor four years ago.

A charismatic evangelical Christian conservative from Xenia, Bailey downplayed the religious beliefs that had driven his previous campaign but turned off voters in the key Chicago suburbs. Lacking the money pumped into his win in a crowded primary field in 2022, Bailey this time counted on name recognition, chiefly among a solidly ruby red core of Republicans, to bolster his campaign.

While Bailey didn’t get Trump’s endorsement, the president encouraged him to make another run following the deaths of his son Zachary, daughter-in-law Kelsey and grandchildren Vada Rose, 12, and Samuel, 7, in a helicopter accident in southeastern Montana on Oct. 22. “I have no doubt that you will continue to Fight! Fight! Fight! for your beloved state in honor of your beautiful family.” Trump wrote Bailey in a letter of condolences.

Bailey, who lost a primary challenge to veteran U.S. Rep. Mike Bost of Murphysboro two years ago, mounted his second bid for governor with a “mea culpa” tour, apologizing for terming Chicago a “hellhole” in his initial run and saying he now had a better appreciation of the city’s and suburban voters.

Dabrowski of Wilmette, the former president of the Wirepoints conservative activist organization, was backed by some of the same people who supported Bailey’s 2022 run but deemed him unelectable this time. They included far-right radio talk show host and GOP political operative Dan Proft of Naples, Florida, and Jeanne Ives, a former state representative of Wheaton, who founded her own right-wing advocacy group.

Dabrowski, a former bank executive, said he could appeal to suburban voters because he and his running mate were “professionals,” an apparent reference to Bailey’s farming background. Proft, a paid Dabrowski consultant who has helped send countless past campaigns to defeat, used a social media post to question the intelligence of Bailey supporters.

“He is solely living off residual awareness from four years ago. His supporters come from two camps: (1) those who lack intellectual curiosity to investigate the race, and (2) those who are baffled by the plot twists in Jim Varney movies,” Proft posted.

That prompted Bailey to say on social media that Dabrowski’s camp “paying a single consultant $25,000 a month to call Illinois Republicans unintelligent and compare them to the Beverly Hillbillies is a window into how they really see this state.”

In his campaign, Dabrowski showed little charisma. Instead, he resembled a life insurance salesman touting actuarial tables, presenting the equivalent of PowerPoint presentations to potential voters, displaying number-filled charts and graphs about Illinois spending.

He vowed to declare a “safety” emergency and use gubernatorial executive orders to overturn state laws blocking local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents who lacked a judicial warrant and creating cashless bail for nonviolent offenders. But such a pledge was of dubious legal authority since past emergency declarations by governors dealt with medical reasons, such as the pandemic.

Heidner, of Barrington Hills, a real estate developer and video gambling firm operator, made a late entry into the race, ran a few TV commercials, and sought to convince voters that they needed a businessman to run the state. He offered taxpayer funded tax credits to attract business with a goal of lowering taxes.

But Heidner also had problems understanding how state government functions. And he came off as an aggrieved businessman after Pritzker blocked the sale of property in Tinley Park that Heidner proposed for a horseracing track and casino following a Tribune report about his past connections with reputed members of organized crime. “I have zero ties to organized crime,” he said at a recent debate.

Heidner also apologized for making past donations to Democratic politicians, including former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. He explained he saw the money he gave to Johnson as an entry into discussing bringing legalized video gambling into Chicago with the mayor — which Dabrowski said appeared to be “pay-to-play politics.”

Mendrick, the two-term DuPage County sheriff from Woodridge, was the first candidate to enter the GOP contest but gained little traction. Cash-limited to social media videos, he often sounded like he was on a grade-school field trip when he visited downstate locations and marveled that “you could travel seven hours and not leave Illinois.”

Avidly opposed to immigrants, Mendrick echoed the call of the widely debunked, white nationalist Great Replacement Theory, contending “we are being replaced” by an immigrant population. He also has shown support for another debunked theory involving “constitutional sheriffs” which wrongly holds that sheriffs are the pre-eminent constitutional authority in their jurisdiction, even above the court system.

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