Lake County Gazette

Dan McConchie, who walked away with enough Illinois primary votes to win the Republican nomination in 26th Senate District, said though he currently is running unopposed in fall, he is optimistic that he is the best candidate to help the state with real structural reform.

McConchie recently told Lake County Gazette that primary's turnout was substantially higher than expected and he was able to win because so many came out to vote.

“I feel very good about the primary victory,” McConchie said. “We were expecting 23,000 to 24,000 people for the Republican ballot in the primary, and there were actually over 36,000 who did vote in this race.”

McConchie is confident that his message and desire to help the district is what won him the primary.

“It is indicative of how much homework the voters did and then (they) recognized (that) I was the best candidate to represent them in Springfield,” McConchie said.

The race looked tight at times, but McConchie believes he came out further ahead in the end because of early voting.

“We did really well with early voting and absentee, vote-by-mail people,” McConchie said. “These are people who tend to take their voting very seriously and make a special effort to vote; those folks overwhelmingly went in my direction in contrast to my opponents. We had thought we would do well with those people. I had no idea we would do that well. So when those numbers hit, it was very reassuring as far as our message. It really resonated with the voters who were plugged in and wanted to make sure they had good, solid leadership.”

McConchie said he currently does not have an opponent in the fall, but the Democrats have until June to slate someone to run, if they choose to do so.

“We will be preparing in the anticipation that we may have a general election,” McConchie said. “We ran a very good campaign against two known elected officials, one with a very famous last name. We were able to be successful and pull out almost a four-point victory, which I am very proud of. It will be important that we have a strong operation this fall if the Democrats do run someone against us.”

McConchie is preparing for a possible opponent by raising the money needed and getting the operations in place to repeat what was done in the primary, but on a larger scale. He also explained that he would like to help Gov. Bruce Rauner continue to advance the structural reforms that are vitally necessary to change the state.

“Speaker Mike Madigan has refused to even sit down to negotiate with the governor on these because he does not want any sort of structural reform,” McConchie said. “So we need to work to relax other reform-minded legislators across the state in order to really shift the power in the legislature away from Madigan and toward those people who are in favor of the fundamental change our state so desperately needs.”

McConchie is currently in line to replace Sen. Dan Duffy who will be stepping down on April 3, but he says there is a process to the appointment and he is patiently waiting and respecting the process.