* I told subscribers last week that House Republican Leader Jim Durkin had taken the highly unusual step of endorsing Sen. Win Stoller’s Republican primary opponent Brett Nicklaus. Durkin followed up with a check. Here’s Politico…

Intra-party politics and dysfunction are playing out in the Illinois Republican Party.

House Minority Leader Jim Durkin just gave $25,000 to Republican Brett Nicklaus, who’s challenging incumbent Win Stoller — a fellow Republican — for the 37th District state Senate seat.

You read that right. The House Republican leader is meddling in a state Senate GOP primary, doling out cash that might otherwise help Republican candidates fight off Democrats in the upcoming General Election. Republicans are a minority in Springfield, after all.

“It’s absolutely unheard of,” a GOP insider told Playbook.

Durkin’s move is retribution because Stoller donated to Republican Travis Weaver, who’s challenging House Rep. Mark Luft (who you might know for his other job as the mayor of Pekin).

There was a reason for Stoller’s move. He and Weaver are family friends. In fact, Weaver’s father is former state Sen. Chuck Weaver — who hand-picked Stoller to succeed him in the Senate. […]

And Rep. Toni McCombie is endorsing Nicklaus over Stoller, too. She gave Nicklaus $16,000. McCombie at one point had considered running against Stoller but was persuaded by leadership to stay in the House. That cleared the lane for Stoller to run without a primary. But his support for Travis Weaver changed that.

And for doing Stoller and the Senate Republicans that favor, Durkin wound up with an expensive primary race against one of his freshmen.