Dupage Policy Journal

GOP campaigner Val Ojeda decried the Illinois GOP’s lackluster support of local candidates in the April 4 election. 

Ojeda’s comments come as Illinois GOP Chair Don Tracy becomes increasingly embattled. 

“So the Democrats spent one million dollars to get Dems elected into a School and library Boards in Illinois. Including this dude!” Ojeda said on Facebook. “The Illinois GOP spent nothing. Zero to help candidates or play defense and we are left with this!”

Ojeda opined it could have been worse.

“The grassroots fought back with what we had to direct Conservatives to conservative candidates," he added. “THANK YOUR GOP CHAIRMAN DON TRACY AND YOUR STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEEMAN FOR LETTING THIS HAPPEN AND FOR LOSING 80% OF SCHOOL BOARD RACES. LOSERS!” 

Ojeda formerly was the CEO, president and founder of Illinois Parking Systems LLC which was based in Naperville. He is a campaigner for former President Donald Trump.

The Illinois Review released a bombshell report on Illinois GOP Chairman Don Tracy right before the April 4 elections. The state GOP was largely inactive during the April elections. 

“Tracy and the Republican Party of Illinois are an embarrassment to every Republican in Illinois and they are guilty of political malpractice for abandoning candidates in the upcoming school board elections,” Illinois Review wrote. “It’s no wonder why Republicans always lose in Illinois – and like Tracy, some are actually Democrats pretending to be Republicans.” 

In the report, Illinois Review revealed Tracy’s Democrat background. In 2002, the Illinois Republican chairman ran as a Democrat for the 50th State Senate District. 

“I thought I could be more independent as a Democrat in a county where the Democrat Party was weak,” Tracy told The State Journal-Register’s Bernard Schoenburg. 

Tracy has also provided campaign donations to Democrats in recent cycles. Dot Foods, owned by the Tracy family, donated to President Joe Biden. In 2020, Tracy donated personally to Democrat Judge Emily Sutton in her run for Circuit Court Judge in the 9th Judicial Circuit of Illinois, months prior to his election as chair of the state's GOP.

Meanwhile, after initially saying local school board races were non-partisan the Democrats and Gov. J.B. Pritzker invested heavily in local races. Pritzker gave $500,000 out of his own pocket for such races. 

“We are grateful for the generosity and support from all of our contributors and volunteers across the state and country, including Governor Pritzker, which promotes the election of Democrats in every corner of our state,” Democrat spokesperson Kiera Ellis said, Prairie State Wire reported.

Chicago’s Morning Answer radio host Dan Proft noted the GOP’s failure in the April 4 election. 

“Should the response be what it was this cycle? Which is abdication by the Republican Party such that it exists, no participation really” Proft said on the April 5 edition of Chicago’s Morning Answer. “To some extent at the local level but even that's limited because there's very few local Republican Party organizations left that matter that have any bandwidth, resources. And the donor class to Diana Hill for Paul Vallas, who spent most of the campaign distancing himself, if not outright denigrating anything right of BLM Brandon. Is that the play? That's the path to salvaging Chicago and Chicagoland and the state of Illinois, do you think? We focus on the race, we get the outcome, and that's the market feedback. And then we either celebrate. There's very few of us, I think.”

In early 2023, former House minority leader Jim Durkin, of Western Springs, turned his back on Republicans in his last days in office by voting for a sweeping gun ban, according to The State Journal-Register. That ban has since been ruled unconstitutional by lower courts and is awaiting an expedited appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. Before becoming the only Republican to vote for the measure, Durkin, formerly the party’s leader in the House and arguably the highest-ranking GOP leader in the state, oversaw a disastrous election campaign in 2022 spending big on campaign in-fighting that depleted GOP accounts prior to the general election.