* Tribune…

State Rep. Elizabeth Hernandez was unanimously elected to lead the state Democratic Party on Saturday, a day after U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly dropped her bid for a full four-year term.

The vote by the Illinois Democratic State Central Committee at a plumbers union hall in Springfield took place quickly, but followed weeks of intense lobbying of the 34-member panel by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who backed Hernandez, and by allies of Kelly.

With Hernandez’s election as the party’s first Latina chair, the first-term governor gained control of the state party apparatus after being rebuffed a year earlier when Kelly was elected over his preferred candidate. […]

While the challenge to Kelly was motivated by her limited fundraising ability as a federal officeholder, race and ethnicity quickly came to play a role in the campaign.

Kelly, a five-term congresswoman from Matteson, was prohibited from raising money for state candidates — the bulk of the party’s activity — because as a member of Congress she is subject to federal campaign finance laws that are more restrictive than state law on how much money can be contributed and what entities are allowed to donate.

* Sun-Times…

Pritzker said that federal rules that bar Kelly from raising funds for state-level candidates have limited the party’s fund-raising potential.

“If you look over the last 16 months, you see it hasn’t worked,” Pritzker said.

Kelly quitting the contest ends a contentious battle by Pritzker and his team to take control of the party. Pritzker donated at least $350,000 to candidates running for party posts.

Last Friday, the Sun-Times reported that Hernandez was recruited by Anne Caprara, Pritzker’s chief of staff, and Pritzker campaign manager Mike Ollen, in a move supported by Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch, D-Hillside.

* Capitol News Illinois…

State Rep. Will Davis, a Hazel Crest Democrat and member of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, said he didn’t like how the race played out on racial lines, and how the governor worked so hard to sway support to oust Kelly, the party’s first Black woman chair.

“Of course I’m still concerned about where it takes the party, and I shared this with the new chair, that you know, there’s still some race issues that need to be addressed and she’s going to have to work hard and figure out how to mend those fences,” he said.

Pritzker’s camp maintained throughout the race that his opposition to Kelly’s re-election centered on the fact that she was a federal officeholder, which meant she wasn’t legally allowed to raise funds to directly support state candidates. […]

Davis accused the governor of “twisting arms,” saying that while “money and politics reared its ugly head,” Democrats now must work to unify to support candidates in November.

* NPR Illinois…

In the 23 years Madigan controlled the state party, the former speaker was a prolific fundraiser, leaning hard on core constituencies like labor unions and trial lawyers to build up campaign coffers he mostly used to maintain a Democratic majority in the House, which would, in turn, re-elect him speaker every other January. Except for two years in the 1990s when a GOP wave made the Democratic caucus a minority, Madigan retained speakership from 1983 to early 2021 — the longest-tenured legislative leader in U.S. history.

And while Illinois Democrats have largely been freed of an albatross that hung heaviest in the last few years before Madigan’s ouster, while the former speaker was under a cloud of suspicion as federal prosecutors inched ever-closer to his inner circle, the state party has not been able to match the fundraising in a post-Madigan era.

“It wasn’t anywhere close to what we need,” former Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) told NPR Illinois.

Kelly supporters touted the party’s embrace of small-dollar fundraising made possible by technology like ActBlue, a campaign tool Democrats in other states have used for several cycles now. 80 percent of donors to the party under Kelly’s leadership have been first-time donors. But Cullerton, who spent years engaging in serious fundraising for his Senate majority, said building up a party war chest requires a different — big-dollar — fundraising approach than for individual candidates.