There’s no love lost between Gov. JB Pritzker and any of the Republicans vying for a shot against the billionaire Democrat this November.

Downstate GOP firebrand Darren Bailey lost big to Pritzker four years ago. Video gambling magnate Rick Heidner lost a big chunk of his fortune in regulatory fights with Pritzker’s administration.

Conservative commentator Ted Dabrowski blames Pritzker for “destroying the quality of life in Illinois,” while DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick calls the progressive governor “a menace.”

The four candidates on the Republican primary ballot for governor all say they’re running to tackle familiar complaints against the state’s Democratic power structure — by lowering taxes, reducing crime and generating economic growth — but their campaigns are personal, too.

Darren Bailey, former state lawmaker

“Six months ago, if you would’ve asked me if I was running for governor, it was a hard no,” said Bailey, a farmer and former state legislator from Xenia in southern Illinois. “But there was just this welling up in our heart that set in, and I knew that we were being called to do this.”

He stuck to it despite immense personal tragedy in October when a helicopter crash claimed the lives of his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.

Leaning on his faith — and with encouragement from President Donald Trump, who endorsed Bailey’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign, but not his failed 2024 primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Mike Bost — he stayed in the race because “I’m fighting for my children and my grandchildren and a better future for everyone in Illinois.”

Bailey is focusing more on pocketbook issues than the social ones that dominated his 2022 campaign, including protecting gun ownership rights and restricting abortion rights — themes that Pritzker seized on in a backhanded effort to boost Bailey in that GOP primary with ads labeling him “too conservative.” It helped Bailey win in a landslide, only to get walloped by Pritzker in the general election by nearly 13 percentage points.

Bailey and this year’s primary opponents are against abortion in almost all cases — and quick to point out that they can’t do much about it in deep-blue Illinois, where Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly have passed numerous protections in the post-Roe v. Wade era.

Instead, Bailey focuses on a word that Democrats are also emphasizing nationwide heading into midterm elections: affordability.

“I don’t think that people realize the damage that Pritzker [has done] in the last three years, and he’s certainly done that, because affordability is front and center today,” Bailey said. “We’re hearing it all the time from business and residents, even up here in Chicago — the rents are skyrocketing because of property taxes.”

“Our approach will be actually doing something about it,” said Bailey, who has proposed a state-level government spending audit akin to the Elon Musk-led DOGE cost-cutting effort that roiled the federal workforce last year.

Bailey acknowledged he needs to do a better job appealing to voters in the city he famously branded a “hellhole.”

“I want to meet the people, especially in some of the areas where the crime’s higher,” he said. “We thought we were doing that in 2022, but we discovered later that we didn’t do it.”

As for the often-chaotic federal immigration enforcement campaign in Chicago, Bailey said he’d “create a climate where local state and federal law enforcement work together.”

He also said he’d be open to abating or freezing property taxes for a new football stadium. “We cannot lose the Chicago Bears.”

Bailey’s lieutenant governor candidate, Cook County Republican Party chair Aaron Del Mar, joined the ticket in an effort to court moderate suburban voters — but Dabrowski says that’s not enough to end Republicans’ eight-year drought from holding statewide office.

Ted Dabrowski, conservative pundit

“He lost by 35 percentage points up here,” Dabrowski said at his Glenview campaign office. “As much as I supported [Bailey], he couldn’t win.”

That’s one reason Dabrowski launched his first run for office after years of punditry with the conservative research and commentary website Wirepoints and the Illinois Policy Institute.

The son of immigrants from Ecuador and Poland, Dabrowski worked internationally for Citibank before starting a family in the north suburbs and becoming ensconced in the numbers surrounding his home state’s economy, cost of living, crime and population.

“Every time I looked at the statistics, it was like, ‘Wow, what’s wrong? Why are we at the bottom of the list on economic growth or population growth, or the other way, high property taxes, all that stuff,’ and I got engaged,” Dabrowski said. “I didn’t see the legislature actually taking seriously many of these issues, and so finally I said, ‘I can either keep complaining, keep exposing it, or get engaged and try to lead and see if we can change this amazing state back to where it should be.”

Dabrowski — who dismisses the eight credit-rating upgrades the state has received under Pritzker as the byproducts of massive federal pandemic relief funding — has amassed a well of support that includes conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein, who supported Bailey last time around.

“We need big change,” said Dabrowski, whose running mate is emergency physician Carrie Mendoza.

Dabrowski said he’d work to repeal sanctuary policies limiting Illinois law enforcement cooperation with immigration enforcement, accusing Pritzker of “incentivizing these people to go out in the streets and oppose ICE, and that’s creating the kind of problems we’re seeing.”

Like Pritzker, Dabrowski says he’s open to state dollars going into infrastructure to help support a new Bears stadium, but opposed to most other potential subsidies.

Uihlein has put $250,000 behind Dabrowski, who has put $250,000 of his own money into his run and entered the year with the biggest campaign fund in the race with $1.2 million on hand.

Dabrowski has raised more than $286,000 since October, outpacing the $185,000-plus that Bailey amassed over the same period, while the downstate farmer was burning through much of that war chest. Bailey entered 2026 with about $35,000 on hand.

Rick Heidner, the slot machine mogul

Vaulting himself near Dabrowski in fundraising is Heidner, the slot machine mogul and real estate entrepreneur who made a late entry into the race last fall with a $1 million campaign contribution.

It’s Heidner’s first run for office, but he’s no stranger to politics — or contentious relationships with the government.

Heidner has given more than $1.4 million to a slew of political candidates and causes over the past three decades, including to many of the Democrats he now is quick to denigrate: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle — and a $2,500 donation to former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx that he calls “the most regrettable money I’ve ever spent in my life.”

“I’ve worked through the last 50 years with both sides,” Heidner said. “Every single village, every single town, every [ward] that I’ve gone to in Chicago, everywhere throughout the state, I’ve always been able to work with everybody, and I have friends on both sides.”

His business empire includes the Ricky Rockets Fuel Center chain and Gold Rush Gaming, Illinois’ third-largest operator of slot machines outside casinos.

Heidner said he jumped in the race because none of the other GOP hopefuls “had any chance at all” against Pritzker, who’s unopposed in the March 17 Democratic primary and has pumped a cool $25 million into his reelection campaign.

Heidner said he’s running to address crime, lower taxes and push for term limits — and that it’s not a personal vendetta against Pritzker, whose administration pulled the plug on a racetrack/casino project that Heidner backed after the Gold Rush founder’s name emerged in federal search warrants tied to a sprawling political corruption scandal.

Heidner, who has never been charged with a crime, said the ordeal cost “about half my wealth,” but “I’m over it.”

Instead, Heidner rails against crime and legislation signed by Pritzker that eliminated cash bail.

“I just couldn’t stand anymore seeing all the people that are being hurt,” said Heidner, whose running mate is Homer Glen Mayor Christina Neitzke-Troike.

He claims the state “could have gotten rid of probably 90% of the worst people” if Pritzker had cooperated with federal immigration authorities, and that a new Bears stadium “would be half-built” by now if he were governor.

Heidner has hosted fundraisers at his Barrington Hills home for Donald Trump Jr., and he shares President Trump’s baseless claims that mail-ballot voter fraud swayed the 2020 presidential election. Asked if President Joe Biden won: “Absolutely not,” Heidner said. “It was insane to me. I couldn’t believe it.”

Experts have found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud.

James Mendrick, DuPage County’s top cop

Mendrick, in his second term as sheriff of Illinois’ second largest county, says he’s “not just a police chief.”

“I run a $70 million operation. I’ve never been a dollar over budget,” while Pritzker “has taxed us into the Stone Age,” said Mendrick, who refused to enforce the assault weapon ban the governor signed in 2023.

“I’m about law and order. I disagreed with JB Pritzker on all of his stances that he had with COVID, with [the Second Amendment], the SAFE-T Act, the sanctuary state [policies]. The guy, to me, is a menace. I’m his next-door neighbor, and I’ve had to deal with the repercussions of the big mistakes that JB Pritzker’s made in DuPage County,” Mendrick said.

He supports coordinating “with ICE to remove criminal migrants from jails before they are released,” and he told the Daily Herald he wouldn’t support state help for a Bears stadium without the team first “laying out a comprehensive plan.”

Mendrick’s, running with author and Army veteran Robert Renteria, entered the year with about $33,000 in his campaign fund.

“I know how to maneuver through government,” Mendrick said. “Public safety touches every facet of government, so I already know all the players, I’ve been in all the tangles for all the years — JB Pritzker got elected at the same time as I did.”