It’s campaign season, and the misinformation from the Democrats is embedded in every campaign mail piece and commercial.
Their messaging is intentionally deceitful, and voters should read and listen carefully and then do their own analysis of what is said. They are hoping for a quick impression from their ads and that little thought is given to the actual message.
Don’t be fooled and don’t let your circle of friends and family be fooled either.
The Democrats are counting on voter stupidity. Let’s not forget what Jonathan Gruber said about passing Obamacare. From this CATO article:
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” academic economist Gruber said at a conference last year, singing like a canary about the Obamacare debate. “And basically — y’know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever — but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass.”
Let’s face it, if nationally the majority of Americans were fooled by the promises of Obamacare when there were lots of articles written about it, then one can expect it to be much easier to fool people in state and local races with slick messages.
So here are a few examples of what to look for as the mail now floods into your mailbox – most of it paid for by the unions and the Democrat machine, a fact which I have covered in other emails.
FIRST TACTIC: Democrats will take credit for voting for a bill that was hugely bipartisan, giving you the impression that they did something courageous for people.
I saw a cable tv commercial put out by Laura Ellman that highlighted her vote to cap the monthly cost of insulin. She is, of course, making it sound like the bill was a big Democrat initiative and that she was a huge supporter of the action.
The truth is that the bill passed both the Illinois House and Senate with no objections. In the Senate, every Republican voted for the bill. Three Democrats did not vote on the bill and Laura Ellman, who wants voters to believe this bill was a big deal, wasn’t even a co-sponsor of the bill.
Also important to note is that Ellman used this issue as a significant accomplishment. I guess she isn’t proud of her other big votes, such as voting for ever-increasing budgets, billions in new taxes, or assisted suicide.
She also didn’t run a commercial touting her vote for the “Amazon” tax. Do voters remember that bill? Of course not, but they should. Ellman wants you to forget that she voted for the bill to bail out the CTA with a $1.50 delivery charge on every single delivery that comes to your door. We did this graphic below at the time to illustrate the point.
Hey Ellman – where’s your commercial on this vote?
Here’s something else concerning – Ellman’s been in office for nearly eight years and completely misrepresented the pension funding during a League of Women Voters’ discussion.
That one-hour-long discussion can be viewed at this link; I start at the first question with this marker: https://youtu.be/iWwvs0agfu4?si=8uTWHT4bGNeFxru6&t=608
Ellman completely lies about Illinois funding the actuarial amount of our pension debt. Not true – the Democrats are only paying the statutory amount, and the difference is $5-6 billion every year. It’s a huge misstatement on her part.
Democrats Erica Bray-Parker, Ben McAdams, Amanda Zahorak
SECOND TACTIC– bringing an issue that is entirely something only the federal government can solve and trying to make it a local problem.
Democrat Amanda Zahorak is running against incumbent Republican Jennifer Sanalitro for Illinois House District 48. Since October 2nd, Democrats have poured $156,000 into Zahorak’s campaign and the American Federation of Teachers has put in $15,000.
Zahorak is pictured above with her fellow Democrats, including DSA-endorsed Democrat McAdams. She has a commercial out attacking Jennifer Sanilitro for opposing the release of the Epstein files.
Complete nonsense. As an Illinois state representative, Sanalitro has literally zero control over the release of any file from the federal government, and it was the Trump administration – not the Biden admin – that did release the files. Lies all around.
The Democrats are running the commercial based on a House resolution, HR 697, which “Calls for the release of all files related to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged accomplices with redactions limited solely to shielding the identities of survivors as outlined in the Epstein Transparency Act.”
Republicans weren’t playing their anti-Trump games on a meaningless resolution, so as a caucus, the Republicans all simply refused to vote on the bill. Now, Democrats are trying to use the vote against Sanalitro – making a federal issue a state campaign hit piece.
This isn’t new. In the past, Democrats have put out mail pieces in state races about Medicare and Social Security – federal programs. It’s dishonest, but they don’t care.
THIRD TACTIC: ignoring that their party has had complete control of the legislative body for over two decades and pretending they are going to Springfield to solve problems that their own party could have solved years ago.
Ben McAdams is running for state senate against Seth Lewis. His mail pieces talk about term limits for legislative leaders (already done), outlawing stock trades for legislators – an idea tackled at the federal level, but rejected by Democrats in the Congress and blocked by Chuck Schumer and his Democrats in the U.S. Senate, and healthcare affordability and access. The last item includes access to reproductive healthcare. Illinois is the top destination for out-of-state abortions, and it’s taxpayer-funded, so access and affordability on that isn’t an issue. So what does McAdams really want – as a DSA-endorsed candidate, he likely favors abolishing private healthcare, but he knows he can’t say that.
These mailers were paid for by the Democrat Party of Illinois. McAdams is proudly endorsed by the West Suburban Illinois Chapter of the Democrat Socialists of America.
This should be a warning to all – Democrats in Illinois are all in for socialism.
In contrast – here’s an example of a mail piece sent out by Republican Rob Vrankovich, who is running for state rep against Erica Bray-Parker in the 47th state representative district.
He attacks her record of voting for tax increases while serving on Wheaton City Council. He picks a topic that Illinois state legislators can directly influence through legislation and notes her actual votes on the issue of tax increases.
It is a completely fair hit on her record about an issue that she will influence if elected.
There’s a broader issue, though, related to Erica Bray-Parker and affordable living in Illinois.
Bray-Parker recently retired from teaching at Glenbard North High School, and it is her pension and that of her colleagues that will create increasing pressure on the state budget.
Right now the statutory amount paid in for state pensions is over $11 billion – most of that is for teacher pensions. That statutory amount will rise every year to a projected high of over $17 billion by 2044, at which point pensions should be 90% funded. Who is going to pay that increasing amount each year? Taxpayers.
State taxpayers pay most of the pension costs for teachers. For background read this report from Wirepoints.
While Tier II pension reform has helped alleviate some pressure, many in Springfield want to make that reform more generous.
If Bray-Parker is elected, will she vote against the teacher unions on this issue? Highly unlikely. Will she vote for desperately needed pension reform? Or will she vote to make things worse and move Tier II employees back to Tier I benefits? How about police and fire pension enhancements? She won’t leave her fellow union members behind regardless of whether taxpayers can’t afford it. And most likely she won’t vote to mandate all new hires have a 401k-style retirement plan with public safety having a hybrid system like the military does.
DuPage Policy Journal did the analysis on Bray-Parker’s retirement. She was an average teacher at a school where half the students weren’t at grade-level when they graduated.
Here’s the pension math from the article – and realize that there are thousands more retiring with these benefits that make living in Illinois unaffordable.
Her final salary was $172,376.08 in 2025-26, up 29.5 percent from $133,106 in 2020-21, according to Glenbard District 87 salary reports.
Her pay rose 6 percent in each of her last three years, a cumulative 19.1 percent, the reports show.
Under the Tier 1 pension formula, a teacher earns 2.2 percent of her final average salary for each year of service, capped at 75 percent.
Final average salary is the average of the four highest consecutive years in the last 10, which for Bray-Parker are her last four and average $158,284.85.
At 33 years of service, that works out to a starting pension of about $114,915 a year, or $9,576 a month.
Read the entire article at this LINK.