New Illinois Republican Party chair hopes for ‘JB fatigue’ in tough midterm

New Illinois Republican Party Chair Bob Grogan has a challenge ahead of him.

It’s been more than a decade since Republicans won a statewide race and the party has seen its representation in both the General Assembly and Illinois’ congressional delegation shrink under unfavorable maps. Meanwhile, suburban voters have increasingly embraced Democrats and weak fundraising has made it even harder for Republicans to compete against Democrats.

The party has also seen its share of infighting, whether that’s on the State Central Committee, inside the House Republican Caucus, or generally among members about whether President Donald Trump helps or hurts the party in Illinois.

In an interview with Capitol News Illinois, Grogan, who was elected party chair in May, said he knows what bridges he needs to build for the party to find success in the 2026 midterms.

“We have to go back to the Reagan rule, where if somebody agrees with us 80% of the time, they’re not a 20% traitor,” Grogan said. “You know, they are actually part of our team, and that our entire Republican team is better than the entire Democratic team, and we need to pull together. We can’t purge our way to 51%” of the vote.

Grogan, of Downers Grove, has long been active in Republican politics in DuPage County and served several years as the elected county auditor in the 2010s. He’s also a certified accountant and fraud examiner.

He said his goal will be to build a party that can relate better to average voters and doesn’t silo itself into litmus tests by longing for the perfect politician.

“We are pickier often about our elected officials than we are about our spouse,” he said.

“We have to get back to listening to our neighbors, not lecturing them, and then actually communicating with them one conversation at a time,” Grogan said.

The Trump question

Previous party leaders differed on how much to embrace Trump. Don Tracy, now the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, largely avoided tying Illinois Republicans to Trump during his tenure. Kathy Salvi, who Grogan defeated in May’s party election, openly embraced Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, telling Capitol News Illinois last year it would be a key part of Republicans’ 2026 midterm message.

Grogan praised some of Trump’s legislative achievements, such as eliminating taxes on overtime and tips. But he described Trump as the “elephant in the china shop,” and argued “we have a lot of Illinois problems, and we need to have Illinois solutions.”

“The number one issues we face in the state of Illinois right now are property taxes,” Grogan said. “Donald Trump has zero to do with the current state of our property taxes, and he has zero ability to fix the property tax problem.”

The Chicago suburbs have increasingly sided with Democrats in recent election cycles, though Grogan argued that shift started during President Barack Obama’s presidency as suburban counties supported their home-state candidate.

Darren Bailey’s Republican campaign for governor is hoping to improve the party’s fortunes in the Chicago area. Grogan said he thinks Bailey has a chance to beat Gov. JB Pritzker but acknowledged Trump’s lame duck status creates a burden.

“He definitely has a path that he gets there,” Grogan said. “Now, is it a simple path? No, I mean, it is year six in the White House. That is traditionally a hard year.”

2026 races

Bailey and Tracy are the headlining statewide Republicans on the ballot this fall with little-known hopefuls seeking other statewide offices. Grogan said Bailey “excites a lot of people, and we need that kind of energy.”

While Republicans face their own natural headwinds as the incumbent party in charge in Washington, Grogan is also betting many Illinois voters will lose interest in Pritzker.

“There is a lot of JB fatigue,” Grogan said. “I mean, he’s also going for a third term. Third terms are not simple either. So, it’s not just about the White House. And I will tell you, just the average high school friend that’s not involved in politics, or the person in line at the Jewel, whereas they were giving Pritzker the benefit of the doubt four, six years ago, you mentioned his name and there’s a lot of grimaces.”

Pritzker’s campaign brushed off the criticism.

“The only thing Illinois voters are fatigued by is Illinois Republicans who pretend to care about working families while acting against their interests with every opportunity,” Pritzker spokesperson Alex Gough said in a statement. “The last time Republicans in this state had a chance to make life better for Illinoisians, they spent four years enabling an incompetent governor who shared their legacy of failure.”

Leading the party

Grogan said one of the GOP’s problems in Illinois “is we just think if we raise more money, then that will solve the problems. And we are not like one really smart consultant away from winning back the suburbs or getting out of the superminority.”

The party plans to continue making recruiting election judges a priority in 2026, Grogan said. But the party also has other broader goals, chiefly fundraising.

Republicans have routinely trailed Democrats in fundraising for years, as Pritzker and labor unions have helped boost Democrats’ coffers.

State Board of Elections records show the Republican Party had $822,688 on hand at the end of April and has reported $52,500 of donations of $1,000 or more since then. The Democratic Party of Illinois, on the other hand, had $887,899 at the end of April, but has raised $1.1 million from contributions of at least $1,000 since then. That includes $500,000 from Pritzker’s campaign.

“Don Tracy and Kathy Salvi drove the ILGOP to the brink of irrelevance,” the Democratic Party said in a statement when Grogan was elected. “We expect Bob Grogan, a Republican who has not spoken out against his Party’s abuses — revoking health care access, taxing Illinoisans through tariffs, inhumane immigration enforcement actions and more — to finish the job.”

Grogan said he knows fundraising won’t improve overnight.

“You have to prove yourself to some extent first,” Grogan said. “We’re going to show that we’re putting together strong teams with strong processes, and then I believe the funding will follow.”

One of Grogan’s goals is to excite more voters and continue building larger bases of support. That often starts with young voters, who he said he hopes stick around to eventually become donors.

The party has also been more dependent on smaller donors in recent years with few wealthy individuals contributing large sums of money.

“Big donors, if we excite them, that’s great. But I think that one of the weaknesses of the party has been an over-reliance on one or two check writers,” Grogan said.

He also has his eye on future elections and said he won’t be grading Republicans’ 2026 success based only on the number of wins and losses in November. He said he doesn’t expect the party to dig itself out of the superminority in the state legislature immediately.

“I think what we’re really doing is we’re building capacity towards 2028 and 30. We got people getting excited about the next presidential. Obviously it’s going to be an open presidential, and so there’s no one metric,” Grogan said. “From things that go wrong, we will learn. From things that go right, we will learn and celebrate. So, you cannot get yourself fixated on not winning every race, and you also can’t fixate on pointing fingers that it’s everybody else’s fault. It’s all of our fault and it’s all of our success.”

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.