Republican Don Moffitt has represented Illinois' 74th House District for 23 years. He's stepping down this year, and the three candidates in Tuesday's GOP primary hope to keep the district red.
Those candidates are Mike DeSutter of Woodhull, Wayne Saline of Rio, and Dan Swanson of Alpha. The three share similar views: a desire to reform the pension and worker’s compensation systems, term limits for legislators, and support of the Independent MAP amendment for redistricting.
But they also have some differences.
DeSutter is the owner of DeSutter Farms. His farm experience also includes leading western Illinois farm services, and membership in the Illinois Corn and Soybean Growers Associations. He wants Illinois to operate like a business so that legislators work within a budget and the revenues that are available.
“Their job is not to run up debt and cause problems. Their job is to run the state efficiently, and that’s not being done,” DeSutter said.
DeSutter said he wants to see a budget passed before Moffitt's replacement takes office. He said that could even include a two-year budget plan for the state. He also supports letting parents decide where their children can attend school, creating incentives to keep students from leaving Illinois for colleges in other states, and developing programs to train kids for jobs at a younger age.
Saline, who heads the Knox County Republican Party, also names education as a priority. He said more funding and resources can be available to districts by eliminating unfunded mandates imposed on them.
“The state of Illinois, in their infinite wisdom, mostly from Chicago, comes up with good ideas, passes that, but doesn’t provide any revenue stream. And it’s just a killer for downstate schools and counties. Because they can’t find a revenue stream to do that because they have all these other programs to take care of,” Saline said.
Saline said districts and county governments that are free of the unfunded mandates could be debt free within 10 years. He said growing the state’s tax base through job growth is just as important as cutting the state’s budget, adding that the revenues created through new jobs would help pay the state’s backlog of bills.
Saline said he would look to business regulations in other states, compare them to Illinois’, and see which ones would work the best here.
Swanson, a retired member of the Illinois National Guard, would also work to reform regulations in the state. He also supports auditing Medicaid to find waste, consolidating governments, and eliminating agencies such as the Illinois State Board of Education.
Swanson said anything that any candidate is proposing will be for naught unless Republicans can look at the big picture.
“We need 20 additional Republicans to replace 20 Democrats there. We’ve got some neighbors in the 71st and 72nd (Districts) to possibly do that. So we really need to break that super-majority and take that control away from Madigan and his regime. Until we get that done, we can’t even bring any votes to the floor, to bring any legislation up, that helps the people of Illinois,” Swanson said.
The winner of the Republican primary will take on Bill Butts in the November election. Butts is a lawyer in Galesburg and he is the only Democrat who filed to run for the seat.
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