SPRINGFIELD – Republicans will gather in Milwaukee next week for what promises to be a historic national convention.
Former President Donald Trump will be nominated for the third consecutive time as the party’s presidential nominee, the first major party candidate to win nomination that many times since Franklin Roosevelt.
And if he’s successful in the fall campaign, he’ll be the first American president since Grover Cleveland to serve two nonconsecutive terms.
But amid the speeches, the cheerleading, the flag-waving and balloons, the Illinois Republican Party hopes for an opportunity to send its own message to the nation.
“We want people to see a party that’s on the swing up,” Richard Porter, the state party’s national committeeman, told Capitol News Illinois during a podcast interview this week. “We’ve been in a long dry spell.”
This year will mark Porter’s third convention as national committeeman, a senior post within the state party and a post he has held since 2014. He and National Committeewoman Demetra DeMonte serve as the state party’s representatives to the Republican National Committee, as well as the RNC’s liaisons with state and local GOP organizations.
It can be a difficult job in a reliably Democratic state like Illinois, where no Republican presidential candidate has won since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
Democrats currently hold all statewide elected offices, both U.S. Senate seats, 13 of the state’s 17 seats in the U.S. House, and supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.
This year in particular, though, Porter said Illinois Republicans need to make a positive impression because just a few weeks after the GOP convention in Milwaukee, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker will play host to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“And so we’d like to show what the future of Illinois can be,” Porter said. “A future of freedom and renewal, where Illinois becomes a place where you want to raise a family again, build a business. Because right now people are leaving. And there’s no reason why that should be. Illinois is the heart of the country and has all sorts of natural advantages. It’s just not been governed well.”
This year’s convention, however, comes at a challenging time for the state party. On June 21, less than a month before the start of the convention, state party chairman Don Tracy announced his plans to resign from that job by the end of the convention due to “intra party power struggles, and local intra party animosities.”
“In better days, Illinois Republicans came together after tough intra party elections,” Tracy said in his announcement. “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.”
During a closed-door meeting Friday, party officials met and elected Kathy Salvi, of Mundelein, as the new chair beginning July 19, the day after the RNC concludes. Salvi, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate against Democrat Tammy Duckworth in 2022, was chosen over two other candidates for the job: state Rep. John Cabello, of Machesney Park; and Aaron Del Mar, of Palatine, a party activist who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor in 2022.
Tracy struck a different tone in a Friday statement, congratulating Salvi and saying the party is “united behind President Trump.”
“We will show in Milwaukee this week that we are unified in purpose – to make this state and this country great once again with a message of hope and prosperity for the future,” he said in the statement.
At the national level, meanwhile, Republicans also face a unique challenge with their nominee, who will be the first convicted felon to win a major party’s presidential nomination. Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony charges for paying hush money to cover up a prior affair with the adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Trump has also been indicted on other felony charges stemming from his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the mishandling of classified documents.
Much like Trump himself has done, however, Porter brushed aside those issues as politically motivated.
“I think they’re all seen as being part of a broader plan, which is to try to use the legal system to squelch political competition,” he said. “They recognize that Donald Trump has an enormous appeal, particularly with constituencies the Democrats used to (attract) such as labor, such as the Hispanic community, such as the Black community.”
Listen to the full interview with Richard Porter on Capitol Cast wherever you get your podcasts.
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.