With less than two weeks until the primary election, Bruce Rauner will no longer be the only candidate airing self-promotional TV ads in Illinois. Now other candidates are airing campaign commercials of his own.
The commercials Bruce Rauner has been airing for months, thanks mostly to the more than $6 million dollars he's put into his campaign, have helped him surge ahead in polls for the GOP race for governor. But recent polls also show Senator Kirk Dillard, of Hinsdale, making gains.
That's why Steve Shearer, who started an independent PAC called the Republican Fund for Progress and Jobs, is pouring money into ads for Dillard, that will run in Chicago.
"We decided when we set up this organization to wait 'til after early voting started, to see which of the other three candidates was in the best position to beat Bruce Rauner and become the nominee, and that person is Kirk Dillard, so we are swinging behind him, very aggressively."
The Dillard campaign is also airing new commercials.
"Dillard's a conservative Republican who believes in traditional values."
A spokesman for State Senator Bill Brady of Bloomington says he'll spend $100,000 on statewide ads that'll run through election day.
Another Republican candidate for governor, Treasurer Dan Rutherford, briefly had TV ads, but pulled them after his campaign tumbled following a sexual harassment lawsuit.