-By Warner Todd Huston
In the first week of March I was in Washington DC at a party at the Breitbart embassy situated among the brownstone buildings just behind the U.S. Supreme Court building and I was talking to the National Review’s John Fund about the Illinois primaries. He asked me if Rauner was going to run away with it and I said that Dillard might surprise people and come much closer than anyone expected. Fund scoffed a bit. Turns out I was right.
State Senator Kirk Dillard did, indeed, get a surge in the last weeks of the election over taking the third and fourth place candidates by a long shot and coming within striking distance of Bruce Rauner. Dillard ended up at 38 percent to Rauner’s 40 percent of the vote.
In interviews after last night’s primary Dillard said that the reason he missed it by that much was “money, money, money.” It’s hard to dispute Senator Dillard on this as Rauner outspent all the other candidates due to the millions of his personal fortune he spent on this race.
One could fairly say that Rauner did buy this primary election. But the worrisome thing for Rauner has to be the fact that even with his millions spent he only beat Dillard by a few tiny percentage points. This is a warning note for the general election when he’ll face incumbent Democrat Governor Pat Quinn.
In any case, Rauner will have to define Pat Quinn’s negatives before Quinn defines Rauner’s.
Continue reading “
The Illinois Primary is Over, Now the Next Fight Begins”