From the IL 10th Round-Up:
This Week’s Column
WRITTEN by Keith Brin
This week I’ve turned my column over to the Illinois GOP Chairman, Bob Grogan, to share some of his insights with you.
Bob Grogan is the Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, elected by the party’s State Central Committee in May 2026.
A lifelong resident of DuPage County, Grogan served three terms as DuPage County Auditor from 2008 to 2020. Bob is a CPA and longtime Republican.
He also ran for Illinois State Treasurer in the 2014 Republican primary.
He and his wife, Beth, live in Downers Grove.
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How We Move Forward
WRITTEN by Bob Grogan
We are coming down to the final stretch for the November 3, 2026 election.
The tasks before us are to promote our candidates and get out our vote.
Since taking on the Chairman’s job a couple months ago, I am reminded that these two major tasks are more than slogans and require some thoughtful approaches to be successful.
First, we need to break out of a comfort zone that has us thinking that talking only to like-minded folks will ever get us to a majority.
I like to say, “We always poll very well in our own echo chamber.”
It feels good talking to people who mostly agree with us.
We probably get into that habit fighting in primaries which makes us focus on only Republican households and, let’s face it, human nature’s algorithm steers us away from those who don’t share our vision of life.
But there is no way for us to win elections without talking to and converting our independent and soft democrat neighbors.
We would ideally like to convert them completely away from the dark side of the force, making them into straight Republican ballot voters, but winning them over should often be done incrementally.
The approach that I recommend is to take the race that you feel the most passionate about, that you find the starkest objective difference between our candidate and theirs’ and use that as your first sale.
The persuadables, are by definition, not sold on partisan appeals, rather they may see credentials as important.
Try, “You vote for the most qualified person, don’t you?”
Except for the most partisan of voters, folks will nod their head to this question, then make your pitch.
Just get that new voter to just vote for one of our great candidates.
The first time they vote for a Republican is much more of a hurdle than the second one will be.
If they are refugees from the Democrat policies in the City, you can explain that they have fled to safer streets, better schools, and better business environment built by Republicans.
They may have moved from a part of the City that never saw Republicans on the ballot (we are working to correct that problem too).
Be patient with them, it takes time to reverse decades of university and media indoctrination.
Our second task is we must unite behind our candidates.
We need to stop picking fights over minor differences.
Very often what separates us is our confusion between ideology and tactics.
We all want to promote family, freedom, and fiscal sanity.
One Republican thinks we should make the Dems exclusively own their bad legislation and another Republican may think that trading a GOP vote can get the Dems to make the bill less bad on our citizens.
This is not a betrayal; this is disagreement on tactics among allies.
As Reagan said, “Someone who agrees with me 80% of the time is not a 20% traitor.”
Sometimes we may even have ideological differences amongst Republicans, but all of ours are better than all of theirs.
We cannot grow the church by excommunicating all the sinners.
Our cause is not served by shrinking the size of our party.
Political success is an exercise in addition, not subtraction.
Our state or our country is either ruled by the liberal/moderate coalition or the conservative/moderate coalition.
We can never purge our way to 51%.
Our unity also suffers from petty intra-family bickering.
I think when you have been out of power for so long, you can lose sight of the fact that winning isn’t a fanciful abstraction, it is the fight to help real people.
We have been suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome, where we identify with our oppressors, preferring to squabble over the prisoner’s privileges as opposed fighting for our chances to govern.
Fratricide has never been a viable campaign strategy.
Identifying the toxic elements of our party is not the only part of your task.
It needs to be followed by confronting them head on.
Set aside the fear of being their next target and call them out for what they are.
You are all leaders in our Party, you don’t need a title to assert your authority.
If someone spends most of their time publicly criticizing Republicans, they are a Democrat. Shun them or shut them down.
Our team isn’t perfect.
I welcome, no I encourage, suggestions and constructive criticisms.
We can learn from all our collective wisdom, but it’s not best shared on a social media post.
Please pass your insights to your elected officials, candidates, precinct committeeman, and other party officials.
We didn’t get to minority status overnight, so our turnaround won’t happen overnight, but with toil, treasure, and tenacity we can and will turn this state around.
