Membership Newsletter – December 2022

From The Chairman

Thank you to all of our candidates and volunteers who worked so hard during the November 2022 election cycle!  Although we’re disappointed in the overall results of the November 2022 election, we’re celebrating Kevin Schmidt’s victory in IL House District 114 and Erica Conway Harriss’s victory in IL Senate District 56 as well as the victories of Steve Reeb, Michael O’Donnell, Phil Henning, Ed Cockrell, Andy Bittle, Kevin Dawson, Robert Wilhelm, Matt Smallhear, and John Coers in their County Board races.  Please join me in congratulating all of the Republican candidates that won their races!

It’s clear that we have more work to do to convince our voters to get to the polls, whether it’s vote-by-mail (VBM), early voting, or voting at their designated polling place on Election Day.  As a Party, moving forward, we’re going to focus on Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts to ensure that our voters’ voices are heard.  We hope that you’ll join these efforts as we must have a strong ground game to compete with the financial resources available to Democrats.

In April 2023, County voters will go to the polls to select municipal leaders as well as board members for school districts, fire protection districts, library districts, water districts, and park districts.  Please consider running for one of these important roles in your community.  Petitions are available on the St. Clair County Clerk’s website:

https://www.co.st-clair.il.us/departments/county-clerk/elections/2023-election-resources

Happy Holidays!

Cheryl Mathews

IL Democrats Are Proposing Tyrannical Gun Control Measures That Would Abridge Our 2nd Amendment Rights

Illinois State Representative Bob Morgan (D-Deerfield) introduced House Bill 5855, dubbed the Protect Illinois Communities Act, last Thursday.  Here are some of the provisions of HB 5855:

•  Prohibits the manufacture, sale, purchase or possession of large capacity ammunition feeding devices of 10 or more rounds. In other words, a 10 round magazine or larger would become illegal if HB 5855 becomes law.
•  Manufacture, possession, delivery, sale, and purchase of semi-automatic pistols, rifles, and shotguns, and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, .50 caliber firearms, and switches that are designed to increase a gun’s rate of fire would also be illegal.
•  Only weapons personally owned before the effective date of the law would be exempt from these restrictions, and would be required to be registered with the Illinois State Police with a $25 dollar fee per weapon registered to be paid to the State.
•  Anyone under the age of 21 would be prohibited from obtaining a FOID card, meaning anyone under 21 that is not a member of the military or law enforcement would effectively be banned from legally owning a firearm.
•  Anyone under the age of 21 would also be prohibited from hunting unless they were accompanied by someone 21 or older that holds a valid FOID card.

Please reach out to your current IL Representatives (Katie Stuart, IL House District 112; Jay Hoffman, IL House District 113; and Latoya Greenwood, IL House District 114) and and let them know that you don’t support this attempt to abridge our 2nd Amendment rights.  In addition to contacting your elected representatives, you can fill out an Illinois 102nd General Assembly House Bill 5855 Witness Slip on-line at:

https://tinyurl.com/ynv8jefc

Please make your voices heard today as the bill is being considered as you’re reading this!

Our Party’s Statement In Response To The Belleville News Democrat’s Article On Kevin Schmidt’s Victory

The Belleville News Democrat published the following article questioning whether Kevin Schmidt could adequately represent Black voters in IL House District 114:

https://www.bnd.com/news/politics-government/election/article268934857.html

Our statement is as follows:

Please join us in congratulating Kevin Schmidt on his election to the IL House of Representatives for District 114!  He ran a strong campaign by focusing on the common sense, kitchen table concerns of the citizens of the District.  We’re very proud of his victory and look forward to the tireless work he’ll do for his constituents.  Kevin will be sworn into office in Springfield on Jan 11, 2023.  

Once again, please join us in congratulating Representative-elect Schmidt!

St. Clair County Republican Party Annual Holiday Party Was A Wonderful Event!

We had a wonderful time at our Annual Holiday Party at Far Oaks Golf Course on Thursday, December 1!  Our guest speaker was Glenn McCoy, noted local cartoonist and animationist.

The St. Clair County Republican Party Donates To The Catholic Urban Programs In East St. Louis

At our Annual Holiday Party, we collected diapers and donations to be given to the Catholic Urban Programs organization in East St. Louis.  This is a service organization which gives help to moms of young babies, older citizens, the homeless, students after school programs, and those in food crisis.  Their goal is to help those in need to learn to be self-sufficient.

On Tuesday, Dec 6th, IL House District 114 Representative-Elect Kevin Schmidt, St. Clair County Republican Party Chairman Cheryl Mathews, St. Clair County Republican Party Treasurer Steve Duff, and St. Clair County Republican Party Vice President of Events Becky McGrady delivered almost $850 in diapers and a $250 check to this wonderful organization.  Thank you to all who donated diapers and/or funds in support of Catholic Urban Programs!

New Dates For Our Central Committee Meetings In 2023

Starting in January 2023, our Central Committee Meetings will be held on the second Thursday of each month.  Our first Central Committee meeting in 2023 will be held on Thursday, January 12 at 7PM at the Shiloh Eagles Club.

All Precinct Committeemen are expected to attend and participate in our Central Committee Meetings.  Please adjust your calendars accordingly.

The East St. Louis Election Commission

Here are some facts passed on to us by one of our Party members:

1.  The last full fiscal year budget posted on their web site is FY2016.  The subsequent years do not include a “line-item budget” for each department or budget category.  That is contrary to state law.  It is unlawful for villages and cities not to post their budget in a “public forum” which is on-line or available at city or village hall.
2.  In FY2016, East St. Louis had budgeted $364,593 for East St. Louis Election Commission.  The annual funds transfer from St Clair County was $112,000, which means East St. Louis Elections Commission operates on $476,593.  That means East St. Louis spends $31.78 per “registered voter.”
3.  For the 2022 General Election, East St. Louis reported 14,993 “registered voters” yet the 2020 US Census count gives ESL a population of 18,469 with 22% under the age of 18, giving the city an adult population count of 14,993.  Miraculously, this means 100% of all adults are registered to vote in East St Louis.  By comparison, St. Clair County has a count of 166,000 registered voters out of a 2020 population of 256,000.
4.  The Madison – St Clair Record reported it took East St. Louis 12 hours to count about 5,193 ballots.   It took St. Clair County nearly 4 hours to tabulate about 86,000 ballots on election eve (the polls closed at 7:00 p.m and the tabulation started).  In St Clair County, all same day voting ballots are tabulated at the Precincts, a count is conducted of the paper ballots by the Election Judges and the tabulator final count, and they must match.  The tabulator counter and the ballots are taken to the St. Clair County Courthouse by a Democrat and a Republican election judge and signed over in the basement of the building under watch by poll watchers and officials.

Based on this information, there are three questions which need to be answered:

1.  Why does East St. Louis have its own Election Commission?  It may have been necessary when their population was around 82,000 in 1960, but not for 14,993 registered voters.  Why do they have 25 polling places to manage 14,993 registered voters when in St. Clair Couty we average about the same registered voters per precinct?
2.  Why does St. Clair County provide over $100,000 annually to the East St. Louis Election Commission when it appears they have sufficient funds to manage 14,993 voters?
3.  Why does it take 12 hours to tabulate 5,193 votes?   Where do the ballots and the tabulator tapes go to?   Who is handling them and why do they wait until the St Clair County vote is in before reporting their count?

We’ve sent this information and the associated questions to the local press.  We’ll continue to follow-up until we get some answers.

Black Conservatism Post-2022 Midterms by Lewis Damian Jones

This article was written by Lewis Damian Jones, a member of the St. Clair County Republican Party.  It was originally published by America’s Future (https://americasfuture.org).

During the 2022 midterm season, there were many competing subplots through which pundits have sought to understand the electoral dynamics at play.  There was a significant discussion early on in the season about Peter Thiel’s influence through candidates like Blake Masters and J.D. Vance, and what this means for the New Right-wing of the conservative movement.  There was the Trump-candidate vs. non-Trump candidate hypothesis that posited that success rose or fell based on the weight of Trump’s fingers on the scale.  But of all of these, I think the most interesting is the conversation about increasing diversity in the GOP electorate and candidate class.

Some articles have done deep work on the GOP’s inroads within Hispanic communities broadly.  Other articles have broken out the details and disaggregated the broad term “Hispanic” to get specific on what kind of “Hispanic” communities (e.g. in South Florida).  Although the results of the midterm didn’t demonstrate an overwhelming tide shift on Hispanic voters everywhere, overall exit polling did indicate that Latina women moved 14 points toward the GOP compared to 2018 and Latino men moved 21 points toward the GOP compared to 2018.  Much less, however, has been written on the slowly growing ranks of African-American GOP voters.

That same exit polling indicated that Black women moved toward the GOP 7 points and Black men moved toward the GOP by 11 points since 2018.  Black voters are an important demographic for every political movement because they make up significant percentages of the eligible voter populations in key states like Georgia (33%), Louisiana (32%), and Virginia (21%).  Even while making up a sizeable amount of the electorate, Republicans have often felt that African-American voters were beyond their reach as a demographic.  That analysis does have evidence.  Even with those shifts toward the GOP in polling, NBC exit polling only had 13% of Black voters voting for the GOP.  While the number for Black men specifically was higher at 17%, chipping further into that 83% for Democrats still may seem like an insurmountable barrier.  However, underlying ideological shifts may bode well for the GOP continuing to increase its percentage amongst African-Americans.

In a poll done by Morning Consult examining the ideological shifts of Americans since 2017, they found that a large percentage of African-Americans between the ages of 18-34 have shifted from a majority (54%) identifying as “liberal” to only 32% agreeing with being “slightly liberal,” “liberal,” or “very liberal.”  Now a majority identify as either “moderate” (from 24% to 34%) or some form of conservative (from 15% to 18%).  Significantly, African-Americans 18-34 were more likely to call themselves moderate than any other population.  White voters identified as moderate at 24% and Hispanic at 26%.  What does all this say about how the GOP attracts more African-American voters?  Moderation.

As it does for many other areas, Florida’s gubernatorial race demonstrates a winning playbook for the GOP on winning non-white voters, especially African-American men.  Governor Ron DeSantis was one of, if not the only, candidate that overperformed the national average with Black men in exit polling with about 19% voting for the incumbent.  That’s notable considering the significant attention on Gov. DeSantis that has made him an even more polarizing national figure since his first election.  Although Gov. DeSantis did not shy away from any hot button social topics, he did present a more competent and conventional profile than some other GOP candidates running throughout the country.  Theoretically, with positions like banning “critical race theory” in education, conventional wisdom would assume that he would do much worse, not better, than the average.  In a piece for the Heritage Foundation, conservative commentator Delano Squires identifies a cadre of cultural forces, from establishment politicians to media outlets, as being some of the reasons why we don’t actually see more Black men voting for the GOP.  Squire believes that the story of America’s oppressive history is utilized to make the Democratic Party seem to be the only non-racist option for African-Americans.  Indeed, he goes on to note that the use of the term Jim Crow has expanded in recent years to encompass “James Crow, Esq.,” “Jim Eagle,” and “Jimmy Crow” as terms for the return of early 20th century racist oppression at the hands of Republicans.  Famously, Joe Biden told African-Americans that Mitt Romney, of all people, would put the entire African-American demographic “back in chains“.

Squires may be on to something.  A Pew Research study found that both Black Democrats and Black Republicans held an almost equally important view of their ancestry as being important, with Black Republicans actually ranking it slightly higher than Black Democrats (66% v. 65% respectively).  However, Black Republicans were much less likely to say that racial discrimination is the main reason that Black people can’t get ahead in the U.S. (44% to Black Democrats at 73%).  This indicates that Black Republicans don’t think history is any less important than Black Democrats, just that they may weigh the impact of racism on contemporary outcomes differently.  This may be in no small part to the messaging that Squires alluded to.  This year was a record for the number of Black Republican candidates running, and that may be part of the solution.  Historically, Black conservatives like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas spend considerable time addressing these exact concerns and Black GOP candidates like Wesley Hunt have done the same.  However, these candidates must be moderate, credible messengers to make the kinds of inroads necessary outside of already significantly red GOP strongholds.

The IL Democrat Party Has A Financial Advantage

In Illinois, the Democrat Party enjoys a financial advantage over the Republican Party.  This fact frustrates every Republican candidate and Republican voter during the election cycle.  In the near-term, there’s no way for the Republican Party to match the Democrats’ money.  This means, to win, the Republican Party needs to focus on grassroots education efforts and follow-up with strong Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts to get their voters to vote by mail (VBM), vote early, or to get to the polls on Election Day.  To successfully do this, Republican candidates and Republican voters must establish a strong ground game that doesn’t rely on TV, radio, and social media advertisements.

The largest example of this financial advantage is Democrat Governor JB Pritzker, who was born on 3rd base and believes he hit a triple.  He comes from one of the nation’s wealthiest families due to their ownership of the Hyatt Hotel chain.  Pritzker spent $171M of his own money in support of his 2018 campaign for governor.  In 2022, Pritzker also donated $16.5M to Democrat candidates up and down the ticket in Illinois.

Democrats, in general, have also become the party of the white, wealthy, college-educated elite in our nation.  While this does provide a financial advantage to the Democrats and their campaigns, it actually hurts their electoral opportunities as only 30% of Americans receive a college diploma.  In fact, their long-term coalition of the working class and minorities is fracturing as the progressive policies espoused by the white, wealthy, college-educated elite – focused on race, gender, climate, etc. – often fly in the face of the common sense, kitchen table issues that the other 70% of Americans actually care about.  This can be seen in the polls as Americans realize that almost everything the Democrats have done since 2020 has lowered their quality of life – inflation, lower real wages, higher food costs, higher energy costs, crushed 401ks, skyrocketing crime, and an open border with illegal immigrants and fentanyl streaming into our communities.

This disconnect with the majority of Americans is causing lots of consternation with Democrat Party strategists who realize that the Democrats cannot create a ruling majority with support from less than 50% of the American electorate.  Ruy Texiera, a long-time Democrat strategist, who coined the phrase “demographics is destiny,” meaning, as minority groups such as Hispanics grew as a percentage of the US population, Democrats would become the permanent majority, is one of those concerned Democrat strategists.  He recently has been telling the Democrat Party that their attempt to force minority groups to embrace their progressive dogma is a failure and has reversed the “demographics is destiny” trend (https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-common-sense-problem).

On top of donations from the wealthy, the IL government unions transfer millions of taxpayer dollars from the dues they collect from government employees back to Democrat candidates.  This can be seen in graphic below that shows the millions of dollars contributed by a subset of unions in 2019-2020 campaign – American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, etc.  When you compare the millions of dollars contributed by these unions to the hundreds of thousands of dollars contributed by businesses – Archer Daniels Midland, State Farm, Caterpillar, etc., you understand why Republican candidates are consistently outspent during their campaigns.

Do You Have Information That Is Of Interest To Our Members?

If so, please send it to us at marketing@scilgop.com so that can publish it in an upcoming issue of the St. Clair County Republican Party Membership Newsletter (https://stclaircountyrepublicans.com/index.php/newsletter)