On party infighting, Illinois’ new GOP chair says ‘start calling those people out’

MILWAUKEE – In the parlance of Washington, D.C., Republican strategists, deep-blue Illinois is sometimes referred to as an “orphan” state – along with other Democratic strongholds like California, New York and Hawaii.

In both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump lost Illinois in the presidential election by 17 percentage points, while Republicans haven’t won a single statewide election in a decade. And thanks in part to electoral maps drawn by Democrats who control the General Assembly, Republicans are in the superminority in the state legislature and only hold three of Illinois’ 17 congressional seats.

But amid promises to “make Illinois red again,” the ILGOP’s chair-elect Kathy Salvi invoked the analogy of parenting the beleaguered party in a Wednesday speech to GOP delegates in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention.

“Remember, I’m the mother of six children,” Salvi said, reiterating a well-worn line from her unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate in 2022. “Seven now – the Illinois Republican Party.”

Salvi, who will officially assume the party chair role on Friday after the RNC wraps, was elected after outgoing chair Don Tracy last month announced his resignation citing Republican “infighting.”

Earlier this week, Tracy declined to elaborate on the party’s internal dynamics that led to his resignation – or how to fix them – and told Capitol News Illinois he’d let the letter “speak for itself.”

In the letter, he wrote: “In better days, Illinois Republicans came together after tough intra party elections. Now however, we have Republicans who would rather fight other Republicans than engage in the harder work of defeating incumbent Democrats by convincing swing voters to vote Republican.”

But Salvi referenced the fissures in her address to the party at its daily RNC breakfast meeting Wednesday, recalling how she’d settle squabbles between her children when they were young.

“If each one of us looks at what we’re accountable for in our words and our actions – I think all of us here need to start calling those people out,” she said of those who might let disagreements interfere with the party’s ultimate goals.

“Listen, I love this party because sometimes we air our dirty laundry with one another and it gets into the press of these fine people,” she added, referring to reporters in the room. “But we need to say, ‘You know, let’s give that person the benefit of a new fresh day.’ And that’s how we will win elections here in Illinois.”

Salvi was not the only Republican figure who likened the state party to kin on Wednesday.

“We are a family. I love you,” House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, told delegates as she addressed the breakfast. “Let’s not waste any more time debating our differences but concentrate on the Democrats where the[ir] policies are hurting Illinois.”

McCombie acknowledged Democrats will continue to outspend Republicans and said Illinois Democrats drew the “worst partisan gerrymandered map in the nation,” which makes GOP victories in the legislature an uphill battle. But she said she’s still optimistic Republicans can win five Illinois House seats in November.

And while McCombie has only been in her position as House minority leader since January 2023, she told delegates she called Salvi to offer some wisdom she’s picked up in that time.

“I said, ‘This is going to be so hard. And you need to put people around you that are going to tell you no,’” McCombie said with a laugh.

Illinois Republican National Committeeman Richard Porter got a head start on following Salvi’s directive to call out bad behavior within the party Tuesday night. He confronted U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on the convention floor in a moment that quickly went viral online.

In videos of the encounter, Gaetz appeared to be heckling former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he was giving a TV interview. Porter, who later told Capitol News Illinois that McCarthy is a longtime friend, told Gaetz to “shut up” and that he didn’t “have to be an asshole.” In response, Gaetz told Porter he didn’t know who he was.

“He was being a bully, you know? He was being a schoolyard bully,” Porter said of the moment a few hours later. “I just expressed myself to him that it was not the right kind of behavior. Especially at a time like this. This is all about unity.”

Porter, who will be term-limited out of his as Illinois Republican national committeeman post after 10 years on Thursday, also said he wasn’t surprised by Tracy’s resignation letter last month and said he was well aware of the party infighting that led to it.

But he also acknowledged that a certain group of voters have been attracted to the infighting and said that part of the electorate isn’t inherently a threat to be managed.

“That streak in the party tends to think that I’m not enough like Gaetz,” he said. “And that’s okay. I’ll be me. And Matt can be him.”

Salvi also indicated that she wasn’t outright condemning the politics of outrage, so long as it could be translated into winning elections for Republicans. She referred to stories told on the convention floor Tuesday evening, particularly of a mother who lost her children to fentanyl.

“These stories are real human stories ...This is the pathos that we all feel and it’s what’s going to drive a very angry electorate to elect Donald J. Trump our next president ...” she said. “But anger does not win the day. Hope does, folks. And it’s the hope that we will deliver by bridging our differences with one another – many of you sitting in this very room, okay?”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.