(dramatic music) - Welcome to CapitolView where we discuss the latest in state government and politics.

I'm Hannah Meisel with NPR Illinois.

Joining us this week is Dave Dahl with Springfield Radio Station WTAX.

Thanks for being here, Dave.

- Thank you, Hannah.

- And also here is Peter Hancock of Capital News, Illinois.

Glad you're here, Peter.

- Hi, Hannah.

- Well, for midsummer it seemed like a pretty busy week in Illinois politics.

Governor JB Pritzker over the last week has signed some interesting new laws and I hope to get to that later in the program, but there's been something brewing here that I think we need to spend a lot of today's show talking about.

We're 11 months out, primary election next summer, and obviously we saw Governor Pritzker announced his reelection campaign last week.

On the Republican side, we have three amounts candidates for governor so far, though there are more likely more who will get into the race, possibly Congressman Rodney Davis as we've discussed before, but there could be others, but we are seeing something in this three-way primary that I think you could say is emblematic of a lot of the things that we've seen over the last year and a half during the pandemic, but also over the last, I don't know, several years as the information age has kind of sped up to the speed of light and, you know, disinformation has become such an issue in politics, especially.

And Peter, I want to start with you.

You know, our colleague Mark Maxwell this week has done some reporting on whether or not these gubernatorial candidates on the Republican side are vaccinated, what they think of vaccines, their messaging around vaccines.

And you know, it's been very interesting and illustrative to see their responses, whether they're vaccinated, whether they believe in vaccines.

So, Peter, can you just fill us in.

Who on the Republican side is vaccinated and who is not, and you know, what are their general messages about the code of vaccines?

- Well, I'm not sure we know who all of the Republican field is right now, but certainly you have Gary Rabine, I believe he's a Chicago businessman.

And then from Southern Illinois you have Darren Bailey and they've both been messaging a lot of skepticism about vaccines and a lot of antagonism toward it.

To me, it's really interesting.

I think back to the last time this country saw anything this widespread and this dangerous was maybe the polio epidemic, which lasted for 40 or 50 years in the first half of the 20th century.

And when Jonas Salk came out with his vaccine for polio, he didn't have to convince people to go get it.

They just did.

But that was in an age where the media, news media and communications were a lot more tightly controlled, you might say, and there are people now on the airwaves who, in the 1950s, never would have seen the business side of a television camera.

So there is a lot of misinformation out there and it's really very concerning.

- Right, our colleague Mark Maxwell, he had Gary Rabine on his show on WCIA this past weekend and Gary Rabine was, you know, peddling some misinformation, claiming that people had died from the vaccine, which we know is not true.

And you know, his spokesman, his campaign spokesman had to walk that back, but it seems that Gary Rabine is back to peddling that same lie, you know, and Darren Bailey, you know, like you said, he is skeptical of vaccines.

Neither of them are vaccinated.

The third declared candidate so far, a former state Senator from the Waterloo area, Paul Schimpf, he says he is vaccinated, he thinks that vaccines are effective for adults and he encourages other adults to get vaccinated.

But you know, this is all in a time where we are seeing, unfortunately, the return of COVID the Delta variant, which we know is, you know, 50% more contagious than the UK variant, which was 50% more contagious than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Unfortunately, we are seeing another spike, not just in Illinois, but nationwide.

It's at the same time that schools are getting ready to open back up for classes in the fall in just a few weeks here and there are fights about mask mandates or not.

We saw the CDC this week reverse its guidance for whether you should be masked indoors, whether or not you're vaccinated.

So, Dave, you know, this is at a very interesting turning point.

What do you think, what do you think comes next when we are already seeing, you know, vaccine uptake slow to an absolute crawl, return of COVID, and people being less willing to go into any other mitigations or anything like that, and at the same time, these folks who are running for this high profile office spreading misinformation about vaccines.

- Well, I don't know if it's, you know, the best gauge of Donald Trump being elected, but that coincided with a lot of people feeling enabled to say whatever they want, to say no.

Polio was meant, I mean, that was when I, that was before I was born, but I get the idea there was a lot more unity in the country, a lot more shared experience and this vaccine is gonna be good for us and it's gonna, you know, wipe out polio because we don't want polio.

And now in 2021, you've got, you know, just for example, some people running for governor say (tongue spit vibrating) and you know, it wasn't that long ago that I couldn't say (tongue spit vibrating) on TV, but I just did and what are you gonna do about it?

And so I think that's an attitude which people are able to express out loud and you know, now it is okay to do that where, you know, some years ago you absolutely wouldn't do that.

So it's probably going to more and more fracture the nation and to that extent our state.

- And Peter, you, prior to coming to Illinois, you covered Kansas politics for a really long time.

Did you, before you left Kansas, you know, you saw things like your Governor Sam Brownback embrace a very low income tax that in fact put state funding, especially for schools, so much at risk that, you know, they had to go back and reverse that.

And, you know, I think it's really interesting that Republicans here in Illinois have been playing kind of a catch-up game for a long time.

Republicans, Illinois, they felt as if they were kind of shielded from what was going on in the larger context of the GOP in Washington and in other parts of the country.

But you know, a lot of the Republican establishment here and now, they are looking around and they are wondering what to do with candidates who go rogue or elected officials who get elected to office and then go rogue.

And, you know, it's hard for them to control the message.

So what did you see in Kansas?

How'd you see that evolution play out and how have you, do you think that it's a, cautionary tale for Republicans here in Illinois?

- I think it is and for the benefit of viewers, Governor Sam Brownback was very much out of the same cloth as Governor Bruce Rauner here in Illinois.

He was very ideological in his approach and in some ways you saw a lot of the same denial of facts.

You know, he put in this very controversial tax plan, which it's too complicated to get into, but state revenues just plummeted.

And of course he said, you know, tried to shift the blame for that on to other things in the economy, but it was happening at a time when the U.S. economy wasn't doing all that bad.

It was just, you know, the idea was that if you cut taxes for businesses and entrepreneurs, then they will reinvest that and hire more people and you'll see economic growth and these tax cuts would pay for themselves.

And of course they didn't.

It's very seldom the tax cuts ever pay for themselves.

You cut taxes, you cut revenue.

And so it was, you also have a political culture there that allows for rogue candidates.

Political parties really have very little control over their own candidates, their own office holders.

People are kind of pretty much out there on their own.

There's a lot more influence, especially among Republicans, from outside groups.

The anti-abortion movement groups like Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, groups that are funded by, used to be primarily funded by Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, which is based in Wichita, Kansas.

So, you know, in some ways I get a little concerned.

I mean, we've been seeing this denial of facts and denial of science building for some time.

In the 1960s, there was pushback against seatbelt mandates.

And then in the 1970s, there was pushback against environmental regulation.

More recently, there's been incredible pushback against climate science.

And it politicized when political groups don't like the responses that science calls for and therefore they deny the science.

And I think that's part of what you're seeing here with vaccines and with mask mandates.

People don't like being told what to do.

They don't like being told that you have to wear these silly masks over your face that make it hard to breathe and they feel like their freedom is being threatened by this and so they basically deny the science that calls for it.

And now you have a media environment that just feeds off of this with cable news channels, with internet websites, Facebook and Twitter, you know, it's like a very fertile garden for that kind of misinformation.

And it's not just in Illinois, it's not just in Kansas, this is happening on really a global scale right now.

- I want to be perfectly clear.

It's not just the far right who is guilty of misinformation.

You see elements of the far left, who, you know, have just as powerful, almost, you know, Facebook pages, Facebook groups who also push disinformation.

You also have, you know, the anti-vax movement, you know, you could argue some started with folks on the left.

You could call them, you know, crunchy granola types.

San Francisco, you know, folks who want to live quote, unquote naturally, but it is demonstrably true, there is a lot of data on this that the pages on social media that have the most reach are far right and, you know, you see this over and over, the outrage cycles that begin and end.

They just feed on each other and it's folks who, if you trace it back, which people smarter than me have done, you know, it's too sometimes content farms and people who profit off of this stuff and make it into an industry.

But Dave, you know, what do you think.

You've covered Illinois politics for a long time.

What are the changes that you've seen in recent years for how messages are won, how candidates can go rogue from either party?

- Well, I think to answer that question and to tie in what Peter and I have just said, you know, if you've got an iPhone and a Facebook or YouTube account, you're the media and it used to be that, you know, at 5:30 at night you'd sit down to watch the network news.

You know, now about all that's good for is to watch the commercials and see what prescription meds I oughta be on.

And you used to have one or two newspapers arrive at your doorstep and now, you know, almost anybody out there can be on the same plane as the, you know, the opinions shapers, the news gatekeepers of years ago.

And so you can have a candidate put on their own blog, their own YouTube, et cetera, and speak directly to the voter, the potential voter, it's not just an Illinois phenomenon, But if I want to go to, you know, Hannah Meisel for DogCatcher.com, I can get your message directly to me not filtered by the media because, you know, as if all of the media have a daily meeting to decide what the media is going to say.

But the other thing, ideologically, you know, you look at somebody like, you know, and I'm not the first to say this, Jim Edgar.

I mean, would Republicans even nominate him today?

It seems like to get yourself heard you oughta be, you know, farther to the right.

And you mentioned Rodney Davis.

I mean, if he gets into the race, you know, he's going to have Darren Bailey following him around, calling him a pinko or something because he's not conservative enough.

And so I think people who want to be, you know, in the middle are gonna find it a little problematic.

On the other hand, if you're on the right in Illinois, the farther right, how many votes are there out there for you really to count on?

So I think it's, you know, highly layered and nuanced and you see that the strategy of the Republicans, at least in statewide politics, hasn't worked all that well in the numbers.

They're a super minority in State House and in the State Senate and in the U.S. House and the Republicans have none of the statewide races now.

So, you know, it'll be interesting to see what kind of gains they can make and where they think the potential is.

And, you know, I'm not saying that to espouse a particular point other than, you know, look who the math is working for.

You can't deny math.

- Sure.

You know, I wanna, pause Jim, like we mentioned before, former state Senator, who is also in this race, you know, he, it's interesting because he is not getting on the outreach train at least nearly as much as Darren Bailey or Gary Rabine, but he's just not garnering a whole ton of support right now.

Like we said, it is early days.

We still have 11 more months of this, but, you know, fundraising numbers don't seem to show a lot of, you know, enthusiasm behind his campaign.

Obviously we haven't seen the big GOP donors weigh in yet, but, you know, for folks like him, you know, is he getting left behind because the party has bought into, you know, folks who are, you know, the fire and brimstone folks.

And it's the same thing in the Democratic Party too, I would say, you know, former House Speaker Mike Madigan, both as House Speaker and as Chair of the Democratic Party, he did a lot to protect moderate Democrats.

You know, there were a lot of folks who are, you know, up until several years ago, you could say there were a lot of pro-life Democrats still in the Illinois Democratic Party serving in public office.

But you know, in this social media era, being moderate, being polite, you know, folding your hands and, you know, kind of taking your lumps, it's just not the thing that voters want.

And so, you know, Peter, where does, do you see that this has any sort of natural end for both parties to, because again, we've seen it in Washington, we've seen the two parties play a part, but Illinois has been, you know, kind of 10 years behind that trend maybe.

Do you see any natural end for this in Illinois specifically?

- Well, that's hard to say.

I think we do live in an age where good television is good and politics and the more outrageous you can be, the more flamboyant, the more showy you can be, that's what gets gets you attention.

I will say that in Illinois, if you look back at recent high-profile statewide races, whether it's for a governor, for president, for U.S. Senate, any given Democratic nominee goes in with a presumed eight to 10 point advantage.

You get 45, 55, 45, maybe 53, 47, something like that.

In order for the Republicans to reverse that, they need to get six or seven percentage points away from Governor Pritzker and move it over to their column.

That's anywhere from, depending on turnout, you know, a quarter million to 300,000 votes.

I don't think you're gonna do that, get that many Democrats to move away from Pritzker and toward Republican with those politics of outrage, the outrage train that you were talking about.

By and large, I mean, you know, you're going to have, that kind of politics isn't going to work.

I think, you know, if you have a more moderate candidate who can appeal across lines, maybe somebody like Rodney Davis, he would definitely be a heavy hitter.

I don't know what Adam Kinzinger's plans are right now.

It would have to be somebody like that to really make a dent in the lead, the natural lead Democrats already have.

- Well, what would the state party buy into that, Peter?

Would they give, you know, their blessing?

Now you mentioned the fundraising and all that.

I think some of the big Republican donors just maybe, you know, waiting it out to see who really gets into the race and who the contenders really are.

The other thing that's kind of a wild card in here is we're having a first and last time only late June primary.

What's that gonna do to turn out?

- That's hard to say.

We've never, you know, Illinois has never had this.

I can tell you that, you know, back in Kansas, their primaries are in early August so they have a very short general election cycle.

Some people there say it's still too long, but their primaries are notoriously low turnout.

People are on vacation.

And as far as moderate Republicans go, I had a friend who used to kind of joke that they better not hold primary on the same day they're having a sale at Nordstrom's because the moderate Republicans wouldn't turn out.

So it's gonna be interesting.

I think political scientists all over the state will be watching this to see what kind of an impact this change in the calendar has on voter turnout.

- Well, and the Republicans running against how awful Pritzker is and how he's mishandled the whole pandemic.

What Venn diagram shows overlap between, for example, Pritzker and Bailey?

Who's going to say, "You know, I voted for Pritzker, but now he's really let me down, he's just satisfied me and so I really think I'm voting for Bailey."

I mean, how many people are there who would say that?

- Not very many, you know, I think Darren Bailey is somebody who is probably not recognized very far north of I-72 or maybe even I-64.

He's very much a Southern Illinois person.

So the people that are going to vote for Darren Bailey are people who would never vote for JB Pritzker to begin with.

So he's not taking anything away from Pritzker.

I think if I were in Pritzker's seat, I would be much more worried about a moderate Republican candidate, someone who's not quite as edgy, someone who's got a little more charm and personality and somebody who can raise an awful lot of money because Republicans not only have to compete against the inherent advantage that Democrats have, but they have to compete against a man who can spend $150 million out of his own pocket and not even feel it.

- There are people on the ground all over the state.

That's what it's gonna take.

- That is true.

I think one of the things that politicians, I mean, we saw the Governor lose the fair tax back in November.

And you know, some of the postmortems I've seen, just the lack of on-the-ground campaigning, the door-to-door campaigning.

Obviously it was COVID, but you know, there were other factors at play too.

I think a lot of political strategists maybe got caught up in, you know, spending on advertisements that maybe there weren't actually a lot of eyeballs that, you know, didn't work, but we're almost out of time.

Today's conversation was kind of experiment.

Social media isn't everything, obviously, we should say.

It's July 2021, most voters are not paying attention to, you know, the gubernatorial primary that's gonna happen literally 11 months from now.

But I do think that it's a conversation worth having because it is something that we're seeing brewing that, you know, we could have to look back on later and, you know, these are the seeds of, you know, possibly even more division, if you can believe that.

You know, again, Illinois, Republicans and Democrats have kind of viewed themselves as a special kind of case where we're more inflated from national politics, but, you know, with leaders, especially, you know, the new Democratic House Speaker, Chris Welch, especially he has really stepped up the rhetoric against Republicans and I think that's gonna be really interesting to see going forward.

Will Illinois no longer be this kind of a place of collegial, you know, across the aisle, you know, at least making steps toward that.

But also we're out of time.

I wanna thank our guests, Dave Dahl an Peter Hancock.

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