PEORIA, Ill. — For the second and final time before next month’s general elections, Illinois voters were treated to a 60 minute slugging match between Illinois’ top two gubernatorial candidates, Democratic incumbent hotel billionaire Governor J.B. Pritzker and down-state Republican farmer and longtime state legislator Darren Bailey.
It was a debate, once again, broadcast statewide across Nexstar Media Group’s Illinois affiliates and other partner stations.
Each candidate traded shots with the other on crime, the economy, education and better state money management, even getting testy with one of Nexstar’s moderators. WGN Chicago TV anchor Micah Materre shushed the GOP frontrunner at one point and demanded the two men cease interrupting each other.
Playing on voters’ potential fears about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Pritzker cast doubt upon Bailey’s ability to lead effectively in a crisis, claiming “tens of thousands more people would have died” had Bailey been in the Governor’s office during the darkest early days of the global pandemic.
“It was Darren Bailey, when we had no vaccinations available, who was telling people…across the state not to wear masks,” said Pritzker.
Bailey blamed Pritzker for tragedies including the deadly COVID-19 outbreak that hit a LaSalle County veterans home, which an independent audit has blamed state-run offices for mishandling.
Bailey accused Pritzker of taking abortion rights too far by supporting the removal of parental rights provisions of state abortion law which required young girls to tell their parents if they were planning to have an abortion procedure. Pritzker slammed Bailey for organizing a religious school which purportedly espoused outdated concepts about women being inferior to men.
Meanwhile, Bailey also blamed Pritzker for pushing backward looking race and gender culture movements into kids’ classrooms in Illinois instead of pushing curriculum that helps kids’ pursue their futures.
“And that has to stop because it’s not helping us. Our children are not learning to read and write,” he said.
Pritzker fired back, saying Bailey is misrepresenting the issue, reminding voters how both families and schools themselves can accept or reject any state education standard.
Bailey also cast the city of Chicago as crime and blight ridden and that Pritzker and the Democrats are to blame for it.
During the debate, Pritzker noted his administration’s efforts to fund crime reduction, economic assistance and social programs for Illinois families.
Bailey, panning those efforts, derided Prtizker for “just throwing money at the problem”.
To wrap things up from the WGN-TV studios in Chicago, each candidate was asked to name on thing they admired about the other.
Bailey said he admires Governor Pritzker’s suits.
Pritzker, with a few more seconds to think on the question, noted his admiration for Bailey’s decades long marriage to his high school sweetheart.
Pritzker said it showed Bailey is a man willing to commit to things, which Pritzker said he believes the two men “have in common.”
