Darren Bailey is running for governor again despite his loss to JB Pritzker four years ago. He also has a new running mate, Aaron Del Mar. Del Mar is a businessman with experience in sports management. He also serves as chair of the Cook County Republican Party. Del Mar was born and raised in Palatine, Illinois. He has a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Indiana University.
He was member of the Palatine City Council for four years, committeeman for the Palatine Township Republicans, was briefly co-chair of the state Republican Party and is still a member of the State Central Committee. This is Del Mar’s second run for lieutenant governor. He ran in the 2022 primaries with businessman Gary Rabin, who did not win the nomination. Del Mar recently appeared on the 21st Show and discussed how he found similarities with Darren Bailey despite being from two different parts of the state, Democrats in Illinois, immigration policies, and Governor Pritzker’s relationship with President Trump.
Interview Highlights
On finding common ground with Darren Bailey
“The more that we spoke together, the more we understood that the same challenges that he has in southeast Illinois as a farmer are some of the same challenges I have in downtown Chicago, and while we might be four and a half, five hours apart, we still live or live in Illinois, and we live with a lot of the same challenges.”
On working with Democrats in Illinois
“The Democratic Party in Illinois is not a monolithic group. There are a lot of liberals, there are a lot of far left, but there’s also a lot of conservative Democrats that believe in some of the same principles that we do, like Fred Crespo, who’s in the suburban area, Cook. He challenged Chris Welch and JB Pritzker on their far liberal budget and was punished by that. There’s a lot of Democrats in Illinois that don’t care for having a gun held to their head by JB Pritzker that says, ‘if you don’t vote the way I want you to do, I’m going to drop $2 million in one of your opponents, and we’re going to primary from the left and take you out.”
On immigration challenges
“My dad came here in 1972 and he sat in the Philippines for a year and a half until there was a job, until he had, you know, housing, until he had the best thing, it was a sponsor. And if, when he came to United States, my uncle was a sponsor of anything happened, health insurance, health insurance, he got an accident. He, you know, whatever the problem was, the sponsor is financially responsible for them. Well, guess what? All 8 million residents of state of Illinois are now sponsors if they want to be or not and they didn’t choose to do that. My uncle chose to do that. And so I think that there’s a fiscal responsibility that we have to have, and I think there’s also humanistic approach we have to have to have to create an equilibrium on that.”
On Governor Pritzker’s criticism of President Trump
“Governor Pritzker blames Donald Trump for every time it rains, for every time there’s a wind storm or there’s a tornado or anything that happens negatively in Illinois. It’s Donald Trump’s fault. It’s Donald Trump’s fault, because he’s running for president United States, and he knows that Donald Trump Donald Trump has a 24% approval rating in the state of Illinois. Everybody does that does any polling, and so that’s his moniker. He hates Donald Trump more than he loves Illinois. And I think that’s a big problem, because the fact that matter is JB Pritzker should be concentrating on the problems in Illinois not running for president, and what he should be doing is working with the federal government when an opportunity arises.”