MAKING A FALSE FIRST IMPRESSION?
GOP hopeful Sullivan takes to air with TV ad, but rival says spot implies he’s a veteran, which does a ‘disservice’ to voters
Gubernatorial candidate Jesse Sullivan will begin taking his message to the airwaves starting Saturday, making him the first Republican challenger to Gov. J.B. Pritzker to run TV commercials.
Sullivan’s 30-second biographical ad features his family, stops on the campaign trail and photos from his time in Afghanistan as a uniformed civilian assisting the U.S. military — images one GOP rival argued do “a disservice to the voters” by implying that Sullivan was a veteran.
The photos of Sullivan in uniform are part of the ad underscoring his “service,” one of his “core values.”
“Growing up in central Illinois, I learned these core values of faith, family, and service,” Sullivan says in the ad. “It’s where I want to raise my kids, and my grandkids. But Illinois is now known for three things: high taxes, corruption, and crime.”
In a statement accompanying the launch of the ads, Sullivan said Illinoisans are “sick of a governor who has raised taxes rather than addressed mismanagement of public funds, who has broken his promise to end partisan gerrymandering, and who has ignored the epidemic of violence plaguing our cities.”
A venture capitalist whose firm, Alter Global, is based in Illinois but has connections to California, Sullivan entered the race in early September with $10,780,000 in the bank, a sum raised from seven out-of-town supporters in just five days.
That drew the ire of two Republican candidates already in the race — state Sen. Darren Bailey, R-Xenia, and businessman Gary Rabine — who called Sullivan an ally of “Silicon Valley elites.”
Former state Sen. Paul Schimpf of Waterloo, who is also vying to be the Republican nominee for governor, has welcomed Sullivan’s entry into the race, but on Friday, he took issue with his opponent’s ad.
“Jesse Sullivan is not a veteran and a TV advertisement that implies he is does a disservice to the voters of Illinois, who deserve better,” Schimpf said in a statement.
Schimpf spent 20 years in the U.S. Marines, at one point serving as the nation’s top adviser to prosecutors trying Saddam Hussein.
Responding to Schimpf’s statement, Sullivan’s campaign said the candidate is “proud of his service as an Army civilian. That service has only deepened his respect for veterans and first responders who keep us safe at home and abroad.”
Since Sullivan entered the race, questions have swirled around his residency, that of his company as well as the time he spent overseas.
Sullivan was part of the Army’s Human Terrain System, a group of civilians with social science backgrounds tasked with helping military commanders understand the local populations. He does not have veteran status.
His campaign has acknowledged that Sullivan was a civilian serving on a small team that would “embed with a military unit.”
A spokesman for Bailey said Sullivan “can spend all the Silicon Valley liberal money he wants, but Illinois voters know that Darren Bailey is the fighter they need to take on JB Pritzker and put working families first.”
A spokesman for Rabine declined to comment.
Noah Sheinbaum, a spokesman for Sullivan’s campaign, said the ad will air statewide for five weeks on a “variety of cable networks and times of day,” as well as digital and streaming platforms in eight out of 10 designated market areas — those areas include Chicago, Springfield, Decatur, Rockford, Champaign.
Asked why the campaign is going on TV now, eight months before the June 2022 primary, Sheinbaum said as a “first time political candidate and outsider, we think it’s important that folks get to know who he is” and that there’s a “credible” alternative to Pritzker.