It’s been over a month since the Illinois primary, but it appears that the Republicans finally have a nominee for governor, to go up against Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn.
The state today certified state Sen. Bill Brady as the winner of the February 2 Republican primary, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Brady won with 155,527 votes, defeating state Sen. Kirk Dillard, who had 155,334 votes. Each candidate only had slightly over 20% of the vote each, in a primary in which six candidates had significant levels of support.
Dillard, who was widely perceived as being the most moderate candidate in the GOP field, is scheduled to hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET. The Sun-Times reports that Dillard will concede the race to the more conservative Brady. Dillard had previously indicated that he would not seek a recount — for which his campaign would have had to pay $1 million — if the final tally had him trailing Brady by more than 100 votes.
In 2007, Dillard was featured in a campaign commercial for Barack Obama’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, at the same time as he was himself supporting John McCain, praising Obama’s bipartisanship.
A recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll for the general election put the Democrat Quinn, who succeeded to the office after the impeachment and removal of Dem Gov. Rod Blagojevich, ahead of Brady by 47%-32%. The same poll had Quinn ahead of Dillard by 46%-35%.
