* More background is here if you need it. Tuesday night Tribune article…

The decision by top Illinois Republican officials to dethrone the party’s vice chair could portend even bigger changes for the moribund organization, including renewed efforts to replace its Illinois GOP Chairman Don Tracy.

Mark Shaw, the former chairman of the GOP in Lake County, lost the title of state party vice chair and also was removed from the party’s fundraising committee during a special meeting Monday of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee following controversies last month at the state GOP convention in Collinsville.

State GOP sources familiar with the inner workings of the state party said the events leading up to Shaw’s sanctioning also underscored long-standing concerns about the leadership of Tracy, a Springfield attorney who has headed up the party since February 2021. Tracy took no public position on whether Shaw should continue as state GOP vice chair and said he was powerless to force him to step down — a stance critics cited as weak. They also noted Tracy questioned whether Shaw was being fairly treated.

The party instability comes less than a month before the state’s 64-member delegation heads to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention’s nomination of former President Donald Trump. The entire delegation is pledged to Trump, including Shaw and Tracy. But conventions are typically designed to display party unity — an element lacking within the Illinois GOP leadership.

“His days are numbered. It’s just a matter of how it happens,” one Republican familiar with the intraparty discussions said of Tracy. The source asked that their name not be used to avoid intensifying the feuding.

* Wednesday resignation press release from Don Tracy…

For almost 3 1/2 years, I have had the honor of Chairing the Illinois Republican Party, and enjoyment of working closely with the great majority of you to rebuild the Illinois Republican Party. In that time, we have doubled State Party operational capabilities by better fundraising and building a bigger team through among other things activation of several new and old SCC Committees such as the Finance Committee and Election Integrity Committee.

When I took on this full-time volunteer job in February, 2021, I thought I would be spending most of my time fighting Democrats, helping elect Republicans, raising money to pay for more Party infrastructure, and advocating for Party unity. Unfortunately, however, I have had to spend far too much time dealing with intra party power struggles, and local intra party animosities that continued after primaries and County Chair elections.
In better days, Illinois Republicans came together after tough intra party elections. 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.

Like Vince Kolber, my friend and former Finance Committee Chair, I am also concerned about the current infatuation of some members of the SCC, few as they are, with certain individuals they call “grass roots” leaders. Recent events including the RNC Committeeman election, immediately followed by the retribution sacking of the losing candidate Vice-Chair Mark Shaw, a long time State Party leader and worker, without due process and without taking any step to disciplining others for alleged or admitted Convention misconduct, portends a direction of the State Party I am not comfortable with.

Accordingly, I hereby resign as Chair of the Illinois Republican Party effective upon the election of my successor preferably no later than July 19, 2024 at 5pm. Like Vince, I will continue to personally support many of our great Republican state, local and federal candidates, and our many great Republican County Chairs and other positive and productive Republican leaders.

I hereby appoint Jan Weber as Chair of a Search Committee and empower her to add two other members to that Committee as she sees fit.”

PS My resignation has nothing to do with today’s anonymously sourced Chicago Tribue article. I made my decision to resign early yesterday morning, communicated it to Matt Janes before our 10am staff call yesterday, and began drafting this notice yesterday shortly before or after the staff call. Also, no one from the Tribune called me about this article, which I did not learn of until this morning. And, I do not believe any SCC member talked to the Tribune about the article.

Don Tracy
Chairman
Illinois Republican Party

As I told subscribers, Tracy sent out word of his resignation before the Tribune story was published. The Republican National Convention ends July 18.

* Democratic Party of Illinois react…

Following the latest reports of Illinois GOP dysfunction and Chair Don Tracy’s sudden resignation, the Democratic Party of Illinois released the following statement:

“While the IL GOP finds itself in chaos, the Democratic Party of Illinois enters the 2024 general election as a united party standing for freedom and opportunity for all of Illinois’ working families. As a reminder, last cycle, Illinois Democrats defeated the IL GOP’s MAGA candidate for Governor, re-elected Senator Tammy Duckworth, protected supermajorities in the IL General Assembly, and expanded our representation in Congress. In contrast, the IL GOP has been defined by a litany of electoral disasters, constant infighting, meager fundraising, and a strict adherence to a losing set of anti-choice, anti-worker, pro-Trump policies.

While we don’t expect new leadership to change any of that, we do wish the best of luck to the inevitable MAGA extremist who will succeed Don Tracy as Chair.”

* Tribune follow-up story…

Tracy held the party chairmanship since February 2021. An attorney from Springfield and a co-owner of his family’s wealthy food distribution business, he was narrowly elected by a moderate coalition of the Republican State Central Committee over Shaw to replace then-GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner’s handpicked chairman, Tim Schneider, who Shaw helped push out.

Tracy was chosen as the first state Republican chairman from outside the Chicago area since 1988. Though previously an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor in 2014, he was viewed as coming from the donor class of the party rather than having a strong background in rank-and-file political organizing.

That image proved to be his downfall as the GOP suffered continued political losses that led Democrats to control all three branches of state government and saw its suburban base sharply eroded in the populous collar counties. Republicans have lost a sizable share of suburban residents as the party that once embraced fiscal conservatism and social moderation has shifted sharply to more social conservatism and moved the GOP’s geographic base to less-populated rural downstate Illinois.

Tracy failed to find ways to harness the rural populism that was an outgrowth of Trump’s dominance of the party. He also didn’t help party candidates distance themselves from Trump’s unpopularity in the suburbs, the region which has traditionally been the key for Republican success statewide.

* Illinois Review posts its grievance list…

During the 2022 Primary, conservative grassroots candidates were viciously attacked by IL GOP-endorsed candidates in mailers paid for by the Illinois Republican Party – falsely claiming that their conservative opponents were “fake” Republicans and “not one of us.”

And in the gubernatorial primary in 2022, the IL GOP-backed candidate Richard Irivn was receiving support from party leadership – and his campaign was even allowed to use the IL GOP postage discount. A perk not afforded to other conservative grassroots candidates for governor.

During the school board races in April of 2023, Tracy and the IL GOP were nowhere to be found – abandoning the grassroots base of the party while Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic Party of Illinois spent $800,000 to support their far-left school board candidates and attack their conservative opponents.

Just months before his election as chairman of the IL GOP, Tracy donated to a Democratic candidate endorsed by liberal US Sen. Dick Durbin and Democrat US Rep. Cherie Bustos, a friend and ally of former Democratic US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But this should come as no surprise because after all, during the 2002 Illinois Primary, Tracy ran as a Democrat. And in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Tracy’s family-owned business, Dot Foods, where he is an owner, donated to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

…Adding… The Tribune reported the other day that Aaron Del Mar was a frontrunner to replace Tracy. And now there’s a “Draft Del Mar” website…

The site ownership has been “Redacted for privacy.”