LeAlan Jones: Why Illinois Republicans Are Dangerous Yet Impotent

The African-American political and social perspective while observing the Illinois GOP in its current state of celebrating intractable mediocrity.

If the Illinois GOP had to have an annual doctor's visit, the diagnosis would say it has terminal cancer, and this would be the last holiday to be festive with family and friends. There would be no need for hospice care.

Facebook ILGOP leader round table

Irrespective of the resounding mandate election of President-Elect Donald Trump, the state of Illinois for Republicans is one where you kiss the resplendent blue sapphire of Democrats with glee and deference. The lack of any Illinois Republican being asked to serve in the Trump Cabinet is no clearer example of what MAGA thinks Illinois represents on a national level. The swamp might drain in DC while a cesspool evolves in Springfield. Why?

IlGOP Co-Chair Joan Lasonde (left), Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin (center), ILGOP finances committee member Lynn O’Brien (right)

Illinois would be a different place if more of the state's population growth happened outside of Chicago. Galena, IL, had more people in the early 1800s than the prairie lands not yet named Chicago by 1837. After the great fire in 1871, Chicago became a blank canvas for urban planners of that time period. Its population growth accelerated a disjointed civic and political coalition that has endured beyond its present-day functionality.

Had industry not attracted so many people to Chicago, the Illinois Republican party would have had parity with Democrats like the red states that surround us. In the same period, it became hyper-liberal, but it could have maintained core conservative values. Since that didn't happen, urbanization has been the true demise of Republican values, having a sustainable audience with urban voters to maintain consistent influence in Illinois state politics.

The remedy to this conflict isn't difficult if there were a legitimate healthy forward thinking approach from Illinois Republicans. This process has yet to emerge beyond patronizing diversity initiatives, which attracts a minority of African-American political and social outliers who engage in low output political campaigns, absent any non-election initiatives with Illinois Republican Leaders.

Facebook / ILGOP Chair Kathy Salvi disingenuously pandering

Because Illinois Republican leadership lacks a more uniform framework to influence reliable African American swing voters at scale for multiple election cycles and comes off as racist and disingenuous. However, when you truly observe it, Illinois Republican Leadership is gullible at being inauthentic in thoroughly assessing African American political talent beyond glad-handing.

ILGOP Co Chair Joan Lasonde (left) with ILGOP favorite Pastor Corey Brooks (right)

A forward-thinking approach from Illinois Republicans should focus on better articulating a message that fits with conservative values that take into account the tricky white liberalism and its institutional control of African Americans that have been urbanized over four generations.

If Democrats have been valiant in having African American voters actively participate in their own political victimization. Republicans have a low barrier of entry to raise and deliver on reframing what democracy can be when it's unburdened by what has traditionally been. If it's about RealPolitik, the political racism-dog whistle of the tricky white liberal will garner no response in 2026 from marginalized voters in Illinois.

Conservative values start with individual liberties, which have to be degraded once you become urbanized. Communal housing, schooling, and health are all more expensive once they become urbanized because it's an industry that is most profitable when mismanaged. The state of Illinois needs a population shift that depopulates Chicago, Illinois Republicans should be the party that administers it. How?

Taking political power at the Cook County government and the Illinois governors offices needs to be the priority for the IL GOP in the 2026 election cycle. The city of Chicago is in a debt spiral it can't recover from and the social challenges it's attempting to manage are the cancer that will grow. Nonetheless, the Unions who control the urbanization of Chicago will enjoy their public policy cancer until they can't. This doesn't mean Cook County or the state of Illinois should.

Facebook / JB Pritzker

Chicago Public Schools with an elected school board will still offer an inferior product for the families in the city of Chicago–this is a danger for the region. It's simply too big to succeed beyond its duplicitousness of serving families while picking their pockets.

The public school system has been little more than a mechanism for maintaining living wage jobs at the expense of being a well-funded, dysfunctional public institution. Urbanization makes everything more expensive because it drains public resources and never generates a surplus of intellectual talent. If it did, why would the highest wage earners be immigrating to Chicago to fund failed urbanization and the expensive social administrators who mismanage it?

Chicago is where red states in the Midwest send their college graduates to pay high taxes for a significant amount of those Chicago Public School students to require and demand more public subsidies. This is a result of being underdeveloped to compete in the labor market from the local to the global economy. Ostensibly, Chicago's public institution's goals in public policy are centered around a model that can best be articulated as poverty-based economics. This is financed by over-taxing growth industries and entrepreneurs.

This requires significant public resources no matter the overall economy. Increasing public employees translates to Labor Unions. Labor Unions are a byproduct of urbanization which makes everything more expensive and dysfunctional because the individual gives away personal liberty for collective social administration goals being achieved. Social administration isn't cheap if the goal is to never reach one.

The Illinois Republican Party needs to embrace confronting tricky white liberalism with authentic conservative values that begin with articulating what personal freedom is and how urbanization has been weaponized to ensure you never want the experience. African Americans in Illinois who have been impacted and stagnated by urbanization at their political and social expense can be flipped from the blue-sapphire Democrats in 2026 when Illinois Republicans present the liberty ruby they can own.