Bob Grogan, the new chairman of the Illinois Republican Party and former DuPage County auditor, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to discuss what he plans to do differently, how he thinks about the party’s chronic problems in the state, and what realistic goals look like with a statewide election six months away.
Grogan said he was approached by a number of people to consider the chairmanship and was personally looking for someone else to fill the role until he concluded he would do a better job than the names he was hearing. He said the party’s first and most fundamental need is an attitude adjustment, not an angry or combative one, but a posture of genuine risk-taking and consistent, visible engagement on the public policy issues that matter most to Illinois families, from public safety to economic vitality. He said the party has been largely absent from that conversation for a long time and that absence has cost it. He said Republicans have better answers than Democrats on essentially every issue a typical Illinois family cares about and have simply failed to say so loudly and clearly enough in the formats and on the platforms where people are actually paying attention.
He said the communication challenge has changed fundamentally from thirty years ago, when reaching voters meant the mailbox, television, and door-knocking. Now it requires presence across dozens of platforms in short-form formats that demand a very different kind of communicator. He said the party needs to be better at that, though he acknowledged his kids have to explain some of the apps to him.
On what is achievable between now and November, Grogan said he had to triage roughly twenty simultaneous priorities. His most immediate emphasis is on unity. He said fratricide is not a campaign strategy, that there are not enough Republicans in Illinois to survive being divided, and that fighting over the ten percent of issues on which Republicans disagree rather than focusing on defeating Democrats is a luxury the party cannot afford. He said the people already working at the precinct and ward levels have been doing so for years and decades, and that if the party can make each of those existing workers five percent more effective, the aggregate improvement looks a lot like a competitive operation.
On Jeannie Ives’s lawsuit challenging Illinois’s congressional map as the most gerrymandered in the country, Grogan said he appreciates what she is doing and believes courts should work through the process deliberately. He does not expect a remapping to produce practical benefits before November given how slowly the courts move, but said the long-term prize of competitive districts would fundamentally change the political landscape. He used the analogy of playing pickup basketball against a college-level opponent who insists on make-it-take-it rules, where whoever scores keeps the ball. That is what gerrymandering does, and getting back to maps drawn on principles of contiguousness, compactness, and respect for municipal boundaries would mean voters actually choose their representatives rather than the reverse.
On the decline in Republican primary turnout, down approximately 150,000 voters compared to 2022, Grogan said the statistics can be somewhat misleading because a primary that fails to generate excitement does not necessarily predict what a competitive general election will produce. He compared it to a World Series drawing great ratings even after uninteresting playoffs. He said the contrast between the Republican vision and what JB Pritzker and Brandon Johnson represent is stark enough to motivate voters who sat out the primary, particularly those who want to torpedo Pritzker’s rumored presidential ambitions.
On donor re-engagement, Grogan said donors are investors and investors show up when they see a good deal, even if they have been inactive. He said his background as an auditor and CPA gives him credibility on how donor money is actually spent, and that past practice of asking donors to give without inviting scrutiny of expenditures has cost the party trust. He said he intends to be transparent and judicious with donor funds and to demonstrate genuine return on investment rather than expecting continued generosity based on institutional loyalty alone.
Proft suggested a citizen journalism initiative modeled on investigative work being done in other states documenting government benefits fraud, tying it to the federal anti-fraud efforts being advanced by JD Vance’s task force and the broader national conversation about government waste. Grogan said he has thought along similar lines, envisioning ordinary voters showing up at polling places, documenting what they see, and turning cameras on anything that looks like fraud or irregularity. He said the best disinfectant for electoral and government fraud is light, and that mobilizing the wisdom of the masses, invoking William F. Buckley’s observation that the first four hundred people in the New York phone book are collectively wiser than the four hundred and thirty-five members of Congress, is a strategy that both generates engagement and produces results.
He said the party also needs to maintain institutional memory around the human cost of Illinois’s worst public policies, mentioning the Safety Act tragedies and specific victims like Bethany McGee on the CTA by name. He said no matter how much progressive indoctrination someone has received, they still do not want a violent repeat offender living next door, and that consistently connecting disastrous policy decisions to real people and real consequences is the most direct path to changing how center-right voters who have disengaged think about showing up.