Here are the National Review editors making their endorsement for Illinois governor:
Voters in Illinois will head to the polls this Tuesday. They should vote for Jeanne Ives in the Republican gubernatorial primary over the thoroughly disappointing incumbent governor Bruce Rauner, who has forfeited any claim on his party’s nod.
Rauner, a businessman with no prior experience in politics, vowed in 2014 to take on longtime House speaker Mike “Boss” Madigan and shepherd much-needed free-market reforms through the Democratic state legislature. With the exception of education reform, he has failed to deliver on his promises even after Republicans picked up enough seats in 2016 to sustain a veto. Rauner said he would cut the state income tax; after a long budget impasse, Republican and Democratic legislators overrode him to pass an income-tax hike. He said he would reform the pension system; he bailed it out under pressure, only to see the state’s credit rating downgraded anyway. He signed a bill into law that weakens immigration enforcement. Rauner inherited a bad situation, but since taking office he has mostly made it worse.
Failing to pass the fiscal reforms he promised wouldn’t alone justify his ouster in the primary. But Rauner’s duplicity on the issue of abortion should be disqualifying to conservatives. During the election, Rauner — who is pro-choice, had once donated to Planned Parenthood, and whose wife is an abortion-rights activist — insisted that he was merely running to fix the state’s coffers. He had, he said, “no social agenda.” When a bill to guarantee abortion as a right if the Supreme Court ever overturned Roe v. Wade and provide public money for abortions through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy began circulating in the state legislature, Rauner said he would veto it. In September, he signed it into law. Pro-lifers who voted for Rauner put their trust in a man who is now forcing them to underwrite third-trimester abortions. His record is not just dreadful, but features a glaring lie.
Read more: National Review
