U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, Illinois’ new Democratic chair, said Thursday the party needs to do a better job of candidate recruitment at the local level, particularly in heavily Republican Downstate areas, to preserve its hold on state politics.
Kelly, of Matteson, said a 60-member transition team looking at various aspects of party operations, fundraising and outreach will begin to cull through recommendations to guide the party’s future.
“We’re planning how we can build a stronger party. I know people say we’re a blue state, but there’s a lot of places where there’s still a lot of red, and Democrats feel like we need to do more,” Kelly said in a virtual meeting of the City Club of Chicago.
“Yes, we know we have some very red areas, but we still need to go into those areas and don’t want to go backward,” she said.
Kelly, who last month replaced embattled former House Speaker Michael Madigan as state party chairman, said there’s a need to challenge Republican candidates at the local level to leverage support from Democrats, independents and even moderate Republicans.
“We have to be more engaged. We have to be more active. And we have to get good people to step up” to run for offices such as local library and school boards, she said.
“We’re planning to see how we can grow the party, and not only grow the party but get more people registered and get more people voting,” Kelly said.
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Since 2013, Kelly has represented the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which covers a diverse area from the South Side and south suburbs to the exurbs and Kankakee. Before she was elected chairman in March, Madigan held the post for 23 years.
She said that in order to preserve Democratic control of the U.S. House and build on the party’s narrow control of the U.S. Senate in next year’s midterm elections, Democrats need to focus their message on their response to COVID-19 — the push for vaccines and testing as well as pandemic stimulus assistance for workers, businesses and schools.
“We need to get our message out that we passed the American Rescue Plan, that we didn’t have one Republican vote,” Kelly said. “We have to make sure that we are touching the people we need to touch and leave no stone unturned.”
Kelly acknowledged that efforts to achieve bipartisanship with Republicans on many issues have been strained by the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“We know that some of our (House) colleagues were involved in that. They were giving speeches to the people that later came into the Capitol carrying the Confederate flag. We saw who did not vote for President (Joe) Biden’s election to be certified. It’s very difficult to work with people like that who are just being negative to be negative,” she said.
“We can be bipartisan, but this country has been in such a crisis that we’re going to get things done. That’s just the bottom line. (Biden) hit the ground running and he’s come in a very tough time,” Kelly said.
A noted gun control advocate in Congress, Kelly applauded the executive orders on gun violence Biden issued Thursday and noted that the president nominated David Chipman to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Chipman, a former ATF special agent, has served as policy director for Giffords, the gun control organization founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was wounded in a 2011 assassination attempt.
Kelly said that last week she introduced an effort to make straw purchases of firearms a federal crime. Chicago authorities have said guns from neighboring states play a major role in the city’s gun violence problem.
“In Illinois we have strict gun laws to protect our residents, but unfortunately the states around us do not,” Kelly said.
“When I go to D.C., and especially if Chicago had a particularly high number (of shootings), you know they’ll say, ‘What is happening there?'” she said of her colleagues. “They’ll say Chicago has the toughest gun laws and I said, ‘Yeah, but no one else around us does.'”
