Darren Bailey enters Illinois governor’s race, pledging new approach to Chicago area

Former Republican State Sen. Darren Bailey speaks to supporters at a rally in Bloomington to open his 2026 campaign for governor on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. Bailey named Cook County Republican Party Chair Aaron Del Mar, right, as his running mate. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Ben Szalinski)

BLOOMINGTON — Darren Bailey’s second campaign for governor will take a different approach to Chicago and its suburbs following his unsuccessful 2022 bid, the downstate farmer and former Republican state lawmaker told supporters Thursday.

“This journey is going to look different than it did four years ago,” Bailey said at the second leg of a three-stop campaign kickoff tour in Bloomington. “We’re out to win. We’re on a mission.”

Bailey began the campaign in downstate Carterville before taking a helicopter owned and piloted by his son to Bloomington, then departing for his opening rally in Oak Brook later in the evening.

Bailey, who called Chicago a “hellhole” four years ago, is emphasizing that his campaign will focus more on the city and its suburbs than in 2022. He chose Cook County Republican Party Chair Aaron Del Mar is his running mate, and his campaign logo now includes the skyline of Chicago. Bailey told reporters he believes voters in the Chicago area are more dissatisfied with Gov. JB Pritzker than in 2022.

“The people in Cook County, in Chicago are affected much more, I believe, than they were, you know, four years ago,” Bailey told reporters. “So staying on, you know, the message is really pretty simple and pretty obvious. I mean, taxes are too high. Opportunity doesn’t exist. Our children are moving out of the state, and people just simply can’t afford to be able to live and work here.”

Bailey argued he and Del Mar can relate more to an average person’s economic struggles than Pritzker — their billionaire opponent if they win the March 17 primary. They said affordability will be their top issue.

Bailey pointed to a poll last month by a conservative policy organization that showed Pritzker’s approval rating below 50% for the first time. He said he believes there’s growing momentum for a Republican candidate, despite Pritzker winning the past two elections by double digits.

“The climate here in Illinois is a lot more obvious and conducive than it was three and four years ago,” he said. “People have woke up and they’ve realized that, ‘wow, why did we just go through these last three years?’ And that they’re tired of it.”

After losing to Pritzker, Bailey lost a congressional primary in 2024. Democrats didn’t show any disappointment in seeing him on the ticket again. Illinois Democratic County Chairs’ Association President Mark Guethle said in a statement Bailey’s decision to run again is “fine by us!”

A new running mate

Bailey said he had not been planning to run for governor until a few weeks ago. Friends encouraged him to consider picking Del Mar as his running mate, he said, despite the pair’s history of disagreements. They met earlier this month to iron out their differences.

“We put it aside; we let the bygones be bygones,” Del Mar said. “And we came out and we said we’re going to run together as a team. We’re going to bring everybody from the southern area, from the country. We’re going to bring everybody from the north.”

Del Mar has long been active in suburban Republican politics and was McHenry County businessman Gary Rabine’s running mate in the 2022 GOP primary for governor. He told Bailey’s supporters on Thursday that he had been planning to run for governor himself.

Bailey’s 2022 running mate was Stephanie Trussell, a DuPage County resident and conservative radio host.

Who is Darren Bailey

Bailey owns and operates a more than 12,000-acre farm in Clay County south of Effingham. He’s made the farmer lifestyle a pillar of his statewide campaigns as he often discusses learning the values of hard work and family from the farm. In 2022, Bailey ran a TV ad about building his business by working with his hands. It drew a contrast to Pritzker who inherited wealth, though Pritzker also had a long philanthropic and business career before becoming governor.

He was first elected to the Illinois House in 2018, but his political profile exploded in 2020 after he filed lawsuits challenging Illinois’ stay-at-home and mask orders in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuits helped lionize Bailey among Illinois conservatives who believed the public health restrictions were illegal for the governor to impose.

Bailey won a race for Illinois Senate in 2020 and then launched his 2022 campaign for governor hoping to capitalize on his growing reputation as the most vocal opponent to pandemic mitigations in the legislature.

Bailey’s past results

Bailey cruised to victory in the 2022 Republican primary with 57% of the vote in a field of six candidates. He trounced the favored candidate of establishment Republicans, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who also had a fundraising advantage over Bailey.

But Irvin struggled to articulate his positions on issues while Bailey appealed to conservative voters. Some of that appeal came with the help of Pritzker’s campaign, who, along with the Democratic Governors Association, ran TV ads attacking Bailey during the primary as “too conservative” for Illinois. The ads boosted Bailey’s conservative credentials in the partisan contest, helping Bailey win 100 of 102 counties.

He struggled to gain traction in the general election against Pritzker, though.  Bailey’s tough-on-crime message failed to land with voters and Pritzker cruised to a 13-point victory that was called within minutes of the polls closing. Bailey won 42% of the vote, including just 24% of Cook County voters.

Bailey came back to the campaign trail in 2024 and billed himself as a more conservative alternative to Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost in the 12^th Congressional District across southern Illinois. Bost was an ally of President Donald Trump, who endorsed Bost over Bailey, despite endorsing Bailey’s candidacy for governor. Bailey came up about 2,700 votes short.

Bailey told reporters on Thursday he has not spoken with Trump but would consider seeking his endorsement.

Bailey joins the Republican primary field of DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, conservative researcher Ted Dabrowski and Lake Forest businessman Joe Severino.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

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