Dan Proft spoke with former Illinois state representative Tom Morrison about a new online training resource aimed at recruiting and preparing center-right candidates to run for local and state office in Illinois, called the Big Tent Coalition and hosted at candidatemasterclass.com. Morrison, a Palatine Republican who served twelve years in the Illinois General Assembly representing a district entirely within Cook County, said the program grew out of his own experience entering politics as a volunteer roughly two decades ago after growing frustrated with his local representative. He said he went on to unseat a twelve-year incumbent and later won reelection six times in a Cook County district, including a four-point victory in a district Donald Trump lost by twenty points, evidence he said shows conservative candidates can still win in areas often written off as unwinnable.
Morrison said the program is designed to address gaps he has observed in existing candidate training efforts, chief among them that most such trainings happen too infrequently and too close to an election to meaningfully prepare a first-time candidate for a competitive race. He said candidatemasterclass.com instead offers a self-paced online course, roughly ten hours of content broken into 85 videos ranging from five to fourteen minutes each, so prospective candidates can begin preparing years in advance and revisit material as it becomes relevant to their specific race. He said the program focuses specifically on the dynamics of suburban and local races, which he said differ meaningfully from statewide or congressional campaigns.
A central theme of the program, Morrison said, is coalition building beyond a candidate’s natural ideological base. He said that in his own successful campaigns, many supporters disagreed with him on issues like abortion or gun policy but backed him because of his record opposing teachers’ unions or other specific concerns, and argued that candidates need to identify those points of connection with voters well before an election, since that kind of credibility takes months or years to build rather than weeks. He also referenced comments from the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk about the tendency of national cable news coverage to distract people from engaging with politics closer to home, and said his goal is to reach listeners who may feel unable to affect national politics but could make a difference running for a school board, village board or state legislative seat.
On the practical concerns that discourage many potential candidates, including fundraising and the prospect of being outspent, Morrison said he experienced the same anxiety when he first considered running and encouraged listeners to focus instead on hard work and a clear understanding of the issues, arguing that most voters already agree with center-right positions on matters like taxes, school quality and public safety even if they do not follow conservative media directly. He said the task for candidates is less about persuading voters on ideology and more about demonstrating competence and building name recognition over time, describing it as the kind of credibility that develops only through sustained community involvement well before a candidate formally enters a race. Morrison closed by urging listeners considering a run for school board or other local office in the coming year, including the current cycle of Chicago mayoral contenders already positioning for a February primary, to begin building that foundation immediately rather than waiting until after the new year.