Illinois GOP leadership teetering with RNC a month away

The decision by top Illinois Republican officials to dethrone the party’s vice chair could portend even bigger changes for the moribund organization, including renewed efforts to replace its Illinois GOP Chairman Don Tracy.

Mark Shaw, the former chairman of the GOP in Lake County, lost the title of state party vice chair and also was removed from the party’s fundraising committee during a special  meeting Monday of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee following controversies last month at the state GOP convention in Collinsville.

State GOP sources familiar with the inner workings of the state party said the events leading up to Shaw’s sanctioning also underscored long-standing concerns about the leadership of Tracy, a Springfield attorney who has headed up the party since February 2021. Tracy took no public position on whether Shaw should continue as state GOP vice chair and said he was powerless to force him to step down — a stance critics cited as weak. They also noted Tracy questioned whether Shaw was being fairly treated.

The party instability comes less than a month before the state’s 64-member delegation heads to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention’s nomination of former President Donald Trump. The entire delegation is pledged to Trump, including Shaw and Tracy. But conventions are typically designed to display party unity — an element lacking within the Illinois GOP leadership.

“His days are numbered. It’s just a matter of how it happens,” one Republican familiar with the intraparty discussions said of Tracy. The source asked that their name not be used to avoid intensifying the feuding.

Tracy was unavailable for comment, according to a party spokesman, who instead issued a statement confirming Shaw was no longer serving as state GOP vice chair.

At the state GOP convention last month Shaw, of Lake Forest, unsuccessfully sought to be named a committeeman to the Republican National Committee. He overwhelmingly lost two floor votes among delegates after having been recommended each time by a convention committee.

Shaw was then urged by another state central committeeman, Aaron Del Mar of Palatine, to withdraw and support the eventual winner, businessman Dean White of St. Charles. After that happened, Shaw, 63, has acknowledged he threatened to “kick his ass,” speaking about Del Mar, even though the 45-year-old has a previous history of being involved in mixed martial arts.

Shaw also displayed a floor delegate badge at the convention, enabling him to vote for himself as national committeeman, even though he was not chosen by Lake County GOP Chairman Keith Brin to serve as a delegate. Brin successfully became county GOP chairman in July 2022 amid concerns over growing Democratic victories in Lake County and Shaw withdrawing his bid for another term.

Shaw, who has been a paid adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign, also was criticized for distributing drink tickets promoting his national committeeman candidacy for a hospitality room that was paid for to promote Trump.

In a post-convention 10-page manifesto of grievances, Shaw said he did nothing wrong. He labeled GOP critics seeking his ouster as party vice chairman as “keyboard warriors,” “political hacks” and “uninformed lemmings” and attacked the “sheer ignorance knowingly perpetrated by my political enemies.”

On Monday, of the 14 members of the 17-member state central committee who met, 11 voted to take Shaw’s title away, though he remains a state central committeeman. Shaw did not appear, sending a lawyer in his place. Two others voted “present” and only one member voted to retain Shaw as vice chairman.

Efforts to sanction Shaw also include his symbolic censuring by the Lake County GOP and a potential “no confidence” vote by Republican committeemen in the 10th Congressional District that he represents on the state central committee.

Condemning Shaw has resulted in a unifying effect among often disparate Republican county chairs in the Chicago area. But it also has reopened the doors to a potential challenge of Tracy who survived a “no confidence” vote in May of last year. As was the case with Shaw, removing a state GOP officer requires a 60% majority of the weighted vote of ballots cast in the March Republican primary.

“Don is incredibly weak right now, because he doesn’t have any support. Nobody is standing up and saying, ‘We really want Don.’ But that’s not happening,” said another source active in the inner workings of the party.

The source said in the wake of the Shaw discipline, “I don’t think there’s an appetite right now. But I would say within a week or two there probably is.” But, the source said, there are questions of whether to mount a challenge to Tracy before next month’s GOP national convention or wait until August, when Republicans gather for their day at the Illinois State Fair.

“There’s a lot of different opinions, but there’s no one standing up and saying that we need to keep this guy,” the source said.

The first source said the party provides few resources to elect Republicans and instead money actually flows out to “consultants and staffers.”

That source said the GOP needs a leader “who’s actually in it to build a party organization” and doesn’t use the position with a personal agenda of boosting themselves or their allies as has been the case with past state chairs. The source noted Illinois is an economically and geographically diverse state and the party needs to reflect that.

“You need a leader who wants the state party to be successful above and beyond the success of any single individual,” the source said.

Among names being mentioned by Republicans in a possible challenge to Tracy’s post are Del Mar, a former Cook County GOP chair, and Jason Plummer, a state senator from Edwardsville who also serves on the GOP state central committee.