Rep. Spain Launches COVID-19 Reopen PAC to Battle Pritzker

(Chicago) – A Peoria-area lawmaker has created a new COVID-19 political action committee as part of a political fight with Governor JB Pritzker over a group of central Illinois counties that plan to violate the Democratic governor’s stay-at-home executive order, seeking to open up their region ahead of Pritzker’s timeline.

State Rep. Ryan Spain (R-Peoria), who is opposed to Pritzker’s plan to reopen Illinois from the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, set up the Main Street Leadership PAC on Wednesday, May 13. And on Thursday, May 14, Spain donated $50,000 from his own sizeable campaign war chest to the new PAC.

Last week Spain telegraphed his planned political revolt against Pritzker.

“It doesn’t play in Peoria,” Rep. Spain said on May 6 in an interview with WCIA-TV reporter Mark Maxwell regarding the Pritzker plan. “It gives further incentive for communities to just ‘go it alone.”

“It doesn’t play in Peoria,” Rep. Ryan Spain says. “It gives further incentive for communities to just ‘go it alone,’” he says. Several local law enforcement departments or prosecutors are defying the Governor’s order and were unswayed by his plan yesterday. pic.twitter.com/2piQDnhQKo
— Mark Maxwell (@MarkMaxwellTV) May" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/MarkMaxwel... 6, 202

On May 13, Peoria County officials also unveiled on Wednesday their own COVID-19 reopening plan that breaks with Pritzker, seeking to split the Peoria region from the north-central Illinois area under the governor’s plan.

“Ryan sees the right-wing carnival barkers in the House GOP caucus, like Reps. Darren Baily and John Cabello getting lots a press attention for peddling their pandemic paranoia, and he wants some of that action,” said a Springfield insider. “It’s a shame he’s sacrificing his reputation, and willing to put his constituents’ lives at risk to pander to the party's wingnuts.”

Spain had $349,419 in his political bank account as of March 30.