Exposing the Illinois GOP

THEY KEEP LOSING. SO WHY DO THEY KEEP RUNNING THE ILLINOIS REPUBLICAN PARTY?

Illinois Politics| Featured
November 11, 2026•15 min read

THEY KEEP LOSING. SO WHY DO THEY KEEP RUNNING THE PARTY?

BEHIND THE CLOSED DOORS, PART THREE: Thomas DeVore exposed the internal fight. Aaron Del Mar challenged the people in power. Kristina McCloy demanded change. Now the records reveal a Republican Party where a handful of insiders wield extraordinary influence while election victories remain painfully scarce.

By Staff Writer | FactsFirstus.com Investigation | November 11, 2026

Imagine running a business that keeps losing customers, losing money and losing market share. Every year, the results get worse. Yet the people making the decisions keep their positions, defend their performance and promise that better days are coming.

Eventually, somebody demands to see the books.

Welcome to the Illinois Republican Party.

For more than a decade, Republicans have watched their political influence disappear across Illinois. They have lost every statewide election since 2014. Their representation in the General Assembly has dwindled. Once-reliable Republican suburbs have turned Democratic.

The November election delivered another beating. Every statewide Republican candidate lost. At least eleven more legislative seats fell to Democrats, with two additional contests still unresolved as of November 10.

And what did Illinois Republican Chairman Bob Grogan have to say about the disaster?

He told reporters the election was a rejection of Republican politicians, not Republican policies.

That is quite an admission from the man responsible for leading the statewide party.

But the more revealing story began months before Election Day, when Republicans started exposing what was happening inside their own organization.

Thomas DeVore, the former Republican nominee for Illinois attorney general, began releasing information about the State Central Committee. Aaron Del Mar, Darren Bailey's running mate, confronted the party leadership over financial assistance. Internal emails surfaced. Campaign records revealed relationships that raised concerns about political loyalties.

And one of the party's most powerful officials reportedly acknowledged voting against additional financial assistance for the Republican statewide ticket.

Suddenly, the party's familiar election-night excuses were competing with something far more interesting.

The people who controlled the organization were being exposed by Republicans who had grown tired of losing.

The trail leads to seventeen individuals who govern the Illinois Republican Party through its State Central Committee.

Most Republican voters could not name them.

Yet those seventeen representatives help select the chairman, determine the organization's direction and exercise authority over decisions affecting Republican candidates throughout Illinois.

Ordinary Republican primary voters do not directly elect them. They are chosen through a process involving precinct committeepersons and county conventions.

And their votes are not equal.

According to voting weights published ahead of the committee's May leadership election, three members held a combined 42.6 percent of the committee's voting power.

Zach Emberton, representing the 15th Congressional District, held 16.5 percent.

Rhonda Belford, representing the 12th, held 15.9 percent.

Jim Rule, representing the 16th, held 10.2 percent.

Three people controlled nearly 43 percent of the voting weight. The other fourteen shared the rest.

Those numbers do not give the three an automatic majority. But they reveal how much influence can be concentrated in a handful of positions.

And one of those positions was occupied by the party's vice chairman.

Zach Emberton.

His name would become central to one of the most damaging internal controversies of the 2026 campaign.

It began with $150,000.

Darren Bailey and Aaron Del Mar had won the Republican primary for governor and lieutenant governor. They faced Governor JB Pritzker, whose campaign resources dwarfed their own.

The Republican statewide ticket needed help.

Del Mar went to the State Central Committee seeking additional financial assistance.

The proposal was rejected.

The reported weighted vote was approximately 65 percent against and 35 percent in favor.

Party officials objected that Del Mar had not provided a detailed spending plan. Del Mar acknowledged the plan was incomplete.

But the committee's decision opened a much larger fight.

Thomas DeVore began telling Republicans what he said had happened behind the closed doors.

He alleged that eleven committee members voted against the assistance and six voted for it.

Then he released a screenshot attributed to Emberton.

Someone had reportedly asked the Illinois GOP vice chairman whether he voted against providing additional money to the statewide ticket.

His reported response was devastatingly simple.

"Yeah, I was a big no on that."

Think about that.

The Republican Party's vice chairman, the man reportedly holding the largest individual share of the committee's voting power, was acknowledging that he opposed the proposed additional financial assistance to the candidates his own party had nominated.

Republican volunteers were knocking on doors. Candidates were traveling across Illinois. Supporters were being asked to contribute whatever they could.

And inside the governing committee, the party's most heavily weighted representative had opposed the funding proposal.

DeVore wanted Republicans to know who else voted against it.

The official individual roll call was not publicly released.

Then came an email that exposed another side of the controversy.

On August 28, Jeff Castle wrote to Grogan and members of the State Central Committee. He was upset that details of a confidential executive session had reached DeVore.

Republicans had been contacting Castle to ask how he voted.

His concern was that information from the meeting had escaped.

"Confidentiality has to mean something, particularly when the Chair and legal counsel specifically request it."

There it was.

Republicans were demanding to know how their representatives voted on financial assistance for the statewide ticket.

Inside the committee, an official was complaining about the disclosure of confidential proceedings.

The party's candidates were fighting for votes.

The governing committee was fighting over information about its own vote.

And DeVore was making sure the dispute did not remain behind closed doors.

But the money controversy was only the beginning.

Because another set of records pointed directly toward the chairman's office.

Bob Grogan became Illinois Republican Party chairman in May 2026, after defeating incumbent Kathy Salvi in a contested leadership election.

By then, Republican primary voters had already chosen Darren Bailey over Ted Dabrowski for governor.

What makes Grogan's rise particularly interesting is his connection to the candidate Bailey defeated.

Grogan had served as treasurer of Ted Dabrowski's gubernatorial campaign committee.

State Senator Jason Plummer had served as the committee's chairman.

According to Illinois State Board of Elections organizational records, Grogan and Plummer remained listed in those positions until September 8.

Consider the sequence.

Bailey defeated Dabrowski in March.

Grogan became chairman of the Illinois Republican Party in May.

The State Central Committee rejected Del Mar's proposed additional financial assistance in August.

Grogan's recorded position with the Dabrowski campaign committee continued until September.

The party chairman had a documented political relationship with the campaign of Bailey's defeated primary opponent during the same period in which he was responsible for leading the statewide Republican organization.

That is precisely the kind of relationship Republican voters deserve to know about when examining the leadership's priorities.

And it became more significant after the election.

Capitol News Illinois reported that Dabrowski never publicly endorsed Bailey following the primary. In September, Dabrowski established a separate conservative advocacy organization called Fight for Illinois.

Meanwhile, Bailey and Del Mar were trying to raise money, organize supporters and compete against one of the wealthiest governors in the country.

The party's internal divisions were no longer merely rumors circulating among activists.

They were appearing in campaign records, public statements and disputes over financial assistance.

DeVore went further.

He accused some Republican insiders of allowing personal political ambitions and primary-election loyalties to interfere with their responsibilities to the nominees.

And Del Mar himself would eventually give voice to that concern.

Following the November election, Del Mar told Capitol News Illinois that some people with future political ambitions had acted selfishly and wanted to see the ticket lose because it might improve their own prospects.

He did not identify them.

But the accusation was extraordinary.

A Republican nominee for lieutenant governor was publicly suggesting that people within his own party had political reasons to welcome his defeat.

That is a serious indictment of the organization's internal culture.

And it was coming from someone who had served on its governing committee.

DeVore's disclosures also reached into the party's grassroots network.

He alleged that Grogan had pressured State Central Committee member Bob Kelsey to remove Kristina McCloy from a deputy committee position because she supported Bailey and Del Mar.

McCloy was the founder of Concerned Parents of Illinois, an organization focused on parental involvement and education issues.

According to DeVore, McCloy and Kelsey authorized him to make their account public.

The allegation introduced another troubling dimension to the internal conflict.

Republicans routinely talk about expanding grassroots involvement, recruiting volunteers and building relationships with organizations that can bring new voters into the party.

Yet DeVore was alleging that a grassroots leader's support for the Republican gubernatorial nominee had become a source of conflict with the chairman.

McCloy's name would soon return to the story.

This time, she would not be appearing through DeVore's disclosures.

She would be standing beside Del Mar, publicly demanding change.

But first came Election Day.

And the results were brutal.

Pritzker won approximately 60 percent of the gubernatorial vote, expanding his victory margin over Bailey compared with 2022.

Republicans lost every statewide contest.

They also lost six House seats and five Senate seats in races decided by November 10, with two contests still unresolved.

The losses were so severe that Republicans faced record Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly.

Even McHenry County, long associated with Republican strength, voted for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate for the first time since the nineteenth century.

The party had not simply failed to advance.

It had lost more ground.

And the financial picture was just as grim.

Axios reported that Bailey entered the final month of the campaign with approximately $432,000 available, compared with $44.4 million for Pritzker.

Longtime Republican donors were increasingly reluctant to finance another losing campaign.

The party's leadership had promised to rebuild fundraising, strengthen operations and improve its competitiveness.

Grogan had spoken in July about developing better teams and stronger processes.

He also emphasized building toward 2028 and 2030.

But for the candidates on the ballot in 2026, the election was not a rehearsal for the next cycle.

It was their election.

And they lost.

The same pattern reached the legislative caucuses.

House Republican Leader Tony McCombie faced opposition from members of her own caucus after Republicans lost additional seats.

Thirteen lawmakers signed a letter seeking to delay leadership elections.

Representative Adam Niemerg warned that retaining McCombie could produce a deeply divided caucus.

Senate Republican Leader John Curran was expected to remain in his position despite the Senate losses.

Different leaders. Different responsibilities. The same shrinking Republican representation.

The election had exposed a crisis that extended beyond one chairman.

Then, less than a week after the losses, Del Mar and McCloy stood together and delivered a message to the Republican establishment.

Enough.

On November 9, they called for a statewide Republican convention in March 2027 to rebuild the party's governing structure, revise its rules, establish a stronger platform and develop a permanent operation for recruiting candidates and reaching voters.

Del Mar described an organization that had been losing ground, financial support and the confidence of the people it was supposed to represent.

He wanted Republican primary voters to have a more direct role in choosing the State Central Committee.

He wanted an organization that worked throughout Illinois rather than concentrating its attention on a limited number of political strongholds.

And he wanted change immediately.

"Replacing one chairman with another while leaving the same broken structure in place is not reform."

Del Mar compared such a change to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Then he delivered the line that should make every Illinois Republican official uncomfortable.

"I'm clearly not interested in another two years of excuses disguised as leadership."

McCloy stood beside him and directed attention toward the people the party had failed to mobilize.

"Hard-working, commonsense Illinoisans simply aren't voting in the numbers they should."

Her message was about building an organization that could bring those voters to the polls.

The contrast was striking.

Inside the State Central Committee, Republicans had fought over financial assistance and the confidentiality of internal votes.

Outside that committee, a statewide nominee and a grassroots leader were calling for a fundamental overhaul.

And Thomas DeVore had spent months publishing allegations and information that helped bring those internal conflicts into public view.

Three different voices had arrived at the same larger concern.

The party's problems were not going to be solved by changing a campaign slogan.

They were challenging the people and the system responsible for governing the organization.

That is where the investigation leads.

Back to the seventeen members of the State Central Committee.

Back to the three representatives reportedly holding 42.6 percent of its voting power.

Back to Vice Chairman Emberton's reported admission that he opposed additional financial assistance.

Back to Grogan's documented relationship with the Dabrowski campaign.

Back to Castle's email complaining about the disclosure of internal voting information.

And back to the Republican candidates who entered November facing overwhelming financial disadvantages while their own party was divided over how to help them.

These are not abstract disagreements about party philosophy.

They concern actual decisions, identifiable officials, documented relationships and measurable election results.

The people who govern the Illinois Republican Party hold positions of influence.

They help determine who leads the organization.

They influence its priorities.

They participate in decisions affecting campaign resources and operations.

And their positions give them access to the political relationships, fundraising networks and organizational authority that come with party leadership.

Those are valuable forms of political power.

But political power is supposed to produce something for the organization that grants it.

For a political party, that means building the capacity to compete, supporting candidates, expanding representation and winning elections.

Illinois Republicans have watched those results move in the opposite direction for years.

And now the people who worked inside the system are publicly challenging it.

The current leadership did not create every problem the party inherited. But its members are responsible for the decisions made during their own tenure and for demonstrating what their organization accomplished.

That is the standard voters, contributors and volunteers are entitled to apply.

Grogan can explain the organization's financial and political priorities.

Emberton and the other committee representatives can account for their votes.

The party can release the complete August roll call and show precisely what assistance it provided to the statewide ticket.

And the officials who have exercised influence over multiple election cycles can explain what they have done to reverse the party's decline.

Because after years of defeats, promises alone are no longer much of an answer.

Thomas DeVore has exposed a fight over internal decisions and political loyalties.

Aaron Del Mar has publicly accused unnamed Republicans of putting future ambitions ahead of the ticket.

Kristina McCloy has joined the demand for a different organization.

And the November election has supplied another unmistakable measure of how far Illinois Republicans remain from statewide competitiveness.

The argument is no longer confined to a closed committee meeting.

It is taking place in public.

The candidates have faced the voters.

The volunteers have given their time.

The donors have supplied their money.

And once again, Republicans have watched the Democrats celebrate.

The people governing the Illinois Republican Party now face a different test.

Not whether they can explain another defeat.

Not whether they can blame the political environment, the opposition's money or the candidates.

But whether they can show that their decisions have built an organization capable of winning.

Illinois Republicans keep changing the people on the ballot. Perhaps it is time they took a much closer look at the people behind it.

OFFICIAL SOURCES

SECONDARY SOURCES AND INVESTIGATIVE MATERIAL

Illinois Republican Party LeadershipIllinois GOP State Central CommitteeBob Grogan and Illinois GOP Power StruggleThomas DeVore GOP InvestigationAaron Del Mar and Republican Party ReformIllinois GOP Election Losses and Accountability
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