Former President Donald Trump is expected to hold a rally in support of Rep. Mary Miller next weekend, but he has yet to lend his support to any of the candidates currently running for Illinois governor.
According to Republican insiders, Trump is expected to appear in Quincy for a Miller campaign rally, as she looks to knock off fellow incumbent lawmaker Rep. Rodney Davis.
Trump already held a fundraiser for Miller at his home during this year’s election cycle, and Miller is campaigning hard in hopes of knocking off Davis and holding onto her redrawn seat in Congress.
According to Quincy Mayor Mike Troup, the former president is expected to appear at a rally on June 25, just days before the Illinois primary on June 28. The rally is expected to take place at the county fairgrounds, but no official announcement has been made.
Also unclear is whether any Republican candidates for governor will appear at the rally. Trump has not yet made an endorsement in the race, but several candidates, including State Sen. Darren Bailey, are still hopeful that they’ll be given the former president’s support.
“It’s a process, and when you get to that status, you wait,” Bailey said. “We’ve had amazing opportunities to have conversations with him, and to solicit that (support), and now we wait.”
While Bailey and other gubernatorial candidates have indicated they would welcome Trump’s support, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, considered to be Bailey’s main opponent in the election, has not indicated that he’s seeking that endorsement.
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“I’m running for governor of Illinois,” he said during a televised forum in May. “I’m looking for the endorsement of the voters of the state of Illinois.”
Some polls have shown Bailey leading Irvin in the gubernatorial primary race, including one recently conducted by the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. Of the Republicans surveyed in that poll, 67% say they did not believe that Trump lost the 2020 election, despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election of President Joe Biden.
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Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has run advertisements criticizing Irvin, and the Democratic Governors’ Association has also run ads criticizing Bailey’s campaign platform as being “too conservative” for Illinois voters.
When asked about Trump’s potential appearance in the state for a rally, Pritzker criticized the former president as being unpopular in Illinois.
“This state rejected him by 17 percentage points,” he said of the 2020 election. “If he wants to come here and thinks he’s going to be popular here, he’s got another thing coming.”
