The New Illinois Republican Party. Fact or Fiction?

By Val Ojeda, Writer

August 25, 2024

The New Illinois Republican Party. Fact or Fiction

Writer, Val Ojeda

This month, the Illinois Republican Party voted to appoint a new Republican chairman. This move was important to all the Republicans in Illinois regardless of associations be it moderate, grassroots and of course the most important the supporters of President Donald Trump. 

As the applications were put in, the members of the State Central committee made their choice. For those that do not know how the Illinois Republican party works it operates as a board of directors. First it's the Chairman of the Republican Party with two members of the national party of the NRC advising the chairman. The newly appointed vice-chair then three co- Chairman representing the state for northern Illinois, Central and then south. The whole of the State Central committee is represented by an elected member of the State's 17 Congressional districts, which are only three Republican and fourteen Democrat members of Congress. 

These elected members of the committee also have vice chairs to represent them in their absence. They have the ultimate power to vote on Republican affairs, including elections of party leadership. 

The state's local GOP County and townships roll in next in the leadership pipeline including groups like the young Republicans.

This month, the party leadership appointed Kathy Salvi to be the new chairman of the Illinois GOP. I give her my congratulations and wish her the best on this new leadership appointment. The question now is what will happen next. 

Will this party be a repeat of the failed leadership of the former Chairman Don Tracy who turned his back on President Trump's RNC with many others or maybe a new vision towards the cause of electing the right Republicans to win races. Most important even to raise money to do just that. 

If you have investments in the market, you would want a return on your investment. In order for the party faithful including the millionaires to expect a return, they want a proper return.  This is where it failed under the poor leadership of Tracy who resigned in disgrace after his sweet potato the former Co-chair Mark Shaw of the party was voted out by the board for lying to get votes to replace Richard Porter who was a great RNC national committeeman in my opinion regardless of what people say. Porter is a friend and a great Republican who fought the Democrats for four decades in different positions of leadership for the party very successfully.

The Illinois Republican just planted a flag recently to run the party with a new plan and vision which includes the Grassroots Republicans. This should be the broader plan of the new party recognizing local candidates that are not good-looking, working manual labor jobs and maybe no money. But they have the heart and desire to win.

The normal blue collar guy or gal.

Let me give you an example of a piss poor campaign in major league baseball that won and became history to win.

If you haven't watched the movie “Moneyball” with Brad Pitt, I suggest you watch it if you're running for office. It's the true story of the General Manager of the Oakland A's Baseball Team in the Major Leagues that was at the time the poorest team in the league, with no star players or wins. The owners just refused to invest more in the team, recruiting any star players. Beane had to make do. However, he came upon a baseball strategist that knew numbers, and together they developed a system that would build an undefeated baseball club that smashed every team in the MLB, including the Yankees. And they did it with no money. Just strategic skill. They would recruit players no recruiter wanted because of looks, cage, or performance. But they could get on base and win games. Just like a political candidate. The Republican Party is too busy looking for stars versus people who can win elected office! 

Bean's strategy was simple. To get on base. No showboating or looking for home runs. No fancy stealing bases where you can be tapped out. Or passing to second when you should pass to first. You first recruit the right player. Not the right looking player and micromanaged plays. In politics, it's the same. Don't look for the richest or best-looking candidate. Especially a popular bragger. You pick the humble one that will work hard and will make a difference. The party is too busy “vetting” the appropriate candidates, meanwhile letting the good ones pass by. When that individual they finally find runs for office, they can run on a small budget and run against a candidate on pure skill and strategic thinking and win. No need to be good-looking or rich. Just the knowledge of how to win a race and to never give up!

Beane ran the Oakland A’s—and he’s known for taking a mathematical approach to assembling a competitive baseball team on a shoestring budget. (Michael Lewis coined it Moneyball.) When Beane started using math and data to design winning baseball teams, it was completely countercultural. At the time, scouts flew all over the country to identify fresh talent. That approach was both inefficient (it took a lot of time) and inaccurate (not every player who looked like a good player played well and vice versa). The same thing happens in politics: Candidates are judged on what’s seen—their resume, work experience, and how they do in interviews. But this surface-level insight is insufficient in making good politicians and leaders. Just like in baseball, great talent isn’t always seen with the naked eye. 

Here are some tips from Beane’s message you can apply to your politics:

Don’t be afraid to do something different.

When Beane started using the Moneyball methodology to pick players, people thought he was crazy. Why fix what’s not broken? But Beane and his partner-in-crime, Paul DePodesta, knew that something was broken. DePodesta ran the numbers and discovered massive inefficiencies in the drafting process. So, they took a different approach. The moral of the story? Just because there’s “a way things have always been done,” that doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do things. Takeaway: Just like Beane broke the mold in baseball, you can break the mold in politics by leveraging people's data to make informed decisions about your talent. “Making a decision without data and information is like running through a room in the dark, not knowing where the furniture is.” – Billy Beane

Look at the data—not what you see in front of you.

This goes for voter demographics and voter turnout in elections. As Beane said in his keynote, “Your eyes and your gut will fail you.” A lot of what matters isn’t visible. At the time, the industry was paying for skills that didn’t have a correlation with winning. They were looking for people who never struck out. But the data showed the No. 1 skill for baseball players was actually the skill scouts ranked eighth in importance: the ability to get on base. This understanding allowed Beane to nab Matt Stairs—a player who didn’t look the part. He didn’t pass the scouts’ “eye test”—the visual assessment scouts gave players. Stairs went on to hit more than 35 home runs in a season—and currently holds the all-time MLB record for most pinch-hit home runs: 23. Takeaway: Don’t miss out on your own version of Stairs. Collect and use people's data to make better hiring and management decisions. Use election data to forecast a win. Find out what the previous contender did wrong and avoid what he or she did, and develop a plan on winning by political intelligence.

Talent optimization is Moneyball for politics.

Want to take a more data-driven approach to your talent? The discipline of talent optimization is where you want to start. Therefore, Billy Beane decides to set an unconventional strategy in order to be able to compete with other wealthy teams “out there”. His goal setting is based on the strategy he sets for his game in what he calls “an unfair game”. Beane knows that decreasing cost is the main concern of the top executives of his team. The main shareholders and stakeholders have set their goals based on their conservative approaches. To be more specific, the top manager of Oakland Athletics is not willing to take any risk in order to pay more money to win.

This logic should be applied to Illinois politics, especially the Illinois GOP.

Yesterday I received a call from a former candidate for Attorney General Tom Devore who is a dear friend. In the course of the last year, we have worked together to bring accountability to the Illinois GOP elections. 

Our conversation was about the new leadership and their next moves. He explained that he spoke to the new Chairwoman Kathy Salvi and he made some requests and not demands. If you know Tom, he's a good ole boy farmer and attorney from southern Illinois. He is also the leader of a Grassroots movement of hundreds of thousands. 

A testimony of this man's leadership is the challenge he gave JB Pritzker during the COVID shutdowns and the fight to protect our children and 2md Amendment rights. He is among many others like Darren Bailey, Arron Del Mar, Terry Newsome and many more. 

In his request he made, he explained he wanted fairness in these present elections and beyond. Gracefully, Kathy took his request under consideration. 

Below is the graphic provided to me by Tom to take the necessary steps for a greater and better relationship for the Grassroots and the leadership to work together. 

I do believe it can be done. It's now in the GOP leader's court now. Act or ignore is what I say. 

This Sunday, I spoke to Kathy personally in person, and we have spoken on the phone a few times including yesterday. 

Like Tom, I made my requests...... not demands to offer the Illinois GOP leadership to find a plan to utilize local candidates and not royalty that have no chance in hell to win a race. Money is the root of all evil. Time and time I have seen “popular” handpicked country club Republicans run just to lose. No personality and pure laziness. Complacent to their own political races. If they owned a funeral home, no one would die.

Let me remind the leaders of the Illinois GOP in the General Assembly, House Minority Leader Tony McCombie and the Senate Minority Leader John Curran who sold out to the Democrats accepting dirty teachers money to support AMENDMENT ONE and not going to bat for our kids, let me remind you there is a table of organization. These two have no power to tell the Illinois GOP what to do. It's the opposite. Yes, the Illinois GOP has that right and if you don't like it resign and become a Democrat. You practically are or prove yourselves justified 

So let us see what our leadership presents us. Tom, myself, and hundreds of thousands of others will be watching and waiting.  The Grassroots.

I wish Kathy and the new leadership good luck but you will be held accountable, and we are watching, but more important I'll be watching.

In the meantime, I wish Kathy and her new team the best. 

God bless!