The Democratic Party of Illinois has been useless, except to benefit Madigan. It’s a bit of a sad thing that it has taken a billionaire, JB Pritzger, to finally remedy this situation, in the form of grants to the County Chairs Association—but I welcome it. He’s got the right idea, bypassing Madigan to rebuild the party infrastructure from the bottom up, county by county. I look forward to voting for JB in the fall, not just to unseat Rainer but to see big changes in the way the Illinois Democratic Party works in the future.
As I’ve told you before, the Rock Island Democratic Party Chairman is Doug House, who also runs the Illinois Democratic County Chairs’ Association. Because state campaign finance laws allow unlimited contributions between county-level party organizations, the J.B. Pritzker campaign gave House’s Rock Island Democrats $1 million earlier this year as the first installment on its “Blue Wave Illinois 2018” program.
The idea is to finally try to build the party up at the local level after years of neglect by the top. The Democratic Party of Illinois, run by House Speaker Michael Madigan, has reported raising more than $80 million since 1999, but it has spent precious few dollars to help local parties. Basically, the only time DPI has bothered to work with local party organizations in the past is when they could be helpful with the handful of competitive state legislative races scattered here and there — particularly Speaker Madigan’s House races. And even then, the object wasn’t really to make local parties viable, but to extract whatever human and other resources they had in order to assist Madigan’s campaigns
Chairman House has, along with the Pritzker campaign, established a grant program. County party organizations can qualify for money by, for instance, opening an office. The local committees are also being strongly encouraged to hire a part-time or full-time administrator, depending on their size.
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