Jay Keeven

As Illinois Republican Party infighting intensifies, state Democrats have filed a formal objection to the candidacy of the one person most likely to flip a Democratic state House seat red in November.

Democrats have filed a formal objection with the Illinois State Board of Elections to the candidacy of Jay Keeven in the 112th House District. Keeven is one of 15 Republicans whose candidacies have been challenged at the ISBE. The vast majority are in solidly blue House and Senate districts with a nearly zero chance of flipping.

However, Keeven is not among the 14 candidates who have filed a lawsuit challenging a law that was filed and passed in just 36 hours in May that may well block him and others from the November ballot.

Republicans have disparagingly called that controversial law, Senate Billl 2412, the “Katie Stuart Protection Act,” claiming that it was passed primarily to protect Stuart’s 112^th state House seat.

Veteran Illinois political observer Rich Miller calls the 112th House District “a somewhat swingy district.”

It’s being targeted by Republicans despite Stuart’s 8.4 percent victory margin in 2022, in the belief they can make up her 3,216-vote winning margin.

However, one long-held tenant of political campaigning is that the surest way to guarantee a win is to not have an opponent. Democrats are ardent practitioners of that strategy.

Keeven was confident of being on the ballot in May, telling the Alton Telegraph, “I got my petition filed before the Senate passed that bill and the governor signed it, so I am on the ballot.”

However, Miller quoted Illinois State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich on the possibility of Keeven being excluded from the November ballot when the ISBE Board meets next month. Dietrich said Keeven filing petitions the day before Gov. JB Pritzker signed the bill into law “doesn’t matter.”

“The law says no one is eligible for the 2024 ballot for the General Assembly unless there was a primary candidate from that party,” Dietrich told Miller.

In fact, the text of SB 2412 states plainly that, “… if there was no candidate for the nomination of the party in the primary, no candidate of that party for that office may be listed on the ballot at the general election.”

“Keeven could still be objected to based on the new law,” Dietrich said, “and (the ISBE) could say, ‘OK, it’s the law.’”

Deepening discord among Illinois Republican Party leadership is only adding to the GOP’s challenges as they prepare for November. The Illinoize newsletter publisher Patrick Pfingsten reports that Republican State Central Committeewoman Rhonda Belford has expressed deep concern “with the direction of the state party,” as efforts have increased to oust both Illinois Republican Party Chair Don Tracy and Party Vice Chairman Mark Shaw.

Belford, who is also the newly elected GOP national committeewoman, told Pfingsten, “I’m concerned where we’re heading. We keep wanting to throw the baby out with the bath water. We have to get to the root of the problem.”

Three top Illinois State Central Committee members have run afoul of committee membership. Shaw, the 10th District Republican state committeeman, is seen by many Illinois Republican officials as not a true conservative and not sufficiently loyal to putative U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Vince Kolber, the GOP’s state party finance chairman, recently resigned in the wake of the Shaw controversy.

Tracy is facing calls for his resignation for his handling of the Shaw case specifically and for his leadership in general, which some have called “weak.”

Like Belford, Tracy is voicing concern over the ongoing Republican disunity. He told Pfingsten that Republican infighting “absolutely does distract” from the important tasks facing state GOP leadership. He called the effort to oust him a “coup attempt.”

“It impacts every aspect and every operation of the party,” Tracy told Pfingsten. “When you have these kinds of coup attempts, power struggles, disunity, retribution after an election, it does nothing, absolutely nothing, to advance the ball for party unity.”