McHenry Times

State Sen. Craig Wilcox (R-McHenry) will be among the Republican lawmakers in the Illinois Statehouse that will have their work cut out for them as Democrats maintain their strong majority in both chambers.

He shared some thoughts with the McHenry Times about the tactics he used in his successful campaign and about what the GOP needs to do if the party wants to have a bigger footprint in the state government.

“No doubt the work we put in was big, from walking the right neighborhoods to having the right message,” he said of his campaign strategy. "People understood what we stand for and we didn’t have to do negative campaigning to see our primary message of 'We've been fighting for you and if you send us back we will continue to do that' resonate with people.”

He said Republicans in the future can build upon that approach.

It’s really about the work and having a coherent message,” Wilcox said. “You’ve got to stand for something and you have to make sure people know that.” 

Democrats have controlled the Illinois Senate since 2003. Democrats have also controlled the Illinois House since 1997, according to Ballotpedia. 

Many of Illinois' counties are Republican, but election results tend to be dominated by Chicago and that city’s suburbs, which lean extremely Democratic, according to Fox News. 

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker was re-elected to serve a second term, giving the Democrats a stronghold on the executive and legislative branches.

"To the many Illinoisans who exercised their civic duty at the polls or by mail: thank you for believing in our democracy,” Pritzker said on Twitter. “I serve ALL the people of Illinois and I look forward to working for you these next four years.” 

Despite the challenge of being outnumbered in the legislature, Wilcox says he will continue to fight to modify the SAFE-T Act.

“The SAFE-T Act is number one,” he said when asked his priorities. “The Democrats are saying they want to work on it as well, but we’ve got to wait to see what that means. If they want to play around with something like that in Cook County and Chicago they can, but we can't allow them to go pushing that on the rest of the state.”

As for the election, he mentioned a couple of areas that need improvement.

“The takeaways are voting turnout is pretty good, but we’ve still got to convince voters that their vote counts,” Wilcox said. “And we’ve still got to figure out the best way of doing things. There’s no reason why we should still be waiting for results days after an election. It sends the wrong message about every vote really mattering.”