By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Esq.
IndyPolitics.org
October 7, 2026
This week I had a flashback, from the ghost of elections past.
In 2002, I was working for Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, who topped the Republican ticket as the nominee for governor. Also on that ballot was a suburban state representative named Jim Durkin, the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate against Dick Durbin. Back then, a moderate like Durkin was what a statewide Illinois Republican looked like.
On Monday, Durkin endorsed Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker over GOP nominee Darren Bailey. The same day in Indiana, former Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann endorsed Lincoln Party secretary of state candidate Greg Ballard.
That’s two longtime Republicans in two states with one message. I’m still in the party. I’m just not voting for its nominee.
Both said they haven’t left. Ellspermann still considers herself a Republican. Durkin says he’ll keep voting Republican this fall and after. They aren’t switching parties. They’re declining to follow theirs wherever it’s headed.
Durkin served two stints in the Illinois House across a quarter-century and led the GOP caucus for a decade. He never warmed to Donald Trump and never got along with Bailey. Asked at this summer’s state fair whether humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together, Bailey answered, “Were you there?” But that’s another column for another time. Durkin’s diagnosis is that the state party has spent ten years playing “the game of subtraction” on abortion, guns and LGBTQ rights. In his view, it chased primary voters while the suburbs walked out the door.
I taught at Ivy Tech while Ellspermann was its president, so I watched her work up close. She’s an industrial engineer by training and was Mike Pence’s running mate, not a natural rebel. That’s what makes this one notable. She broke with top state Republicans last year by opposing the Trump-backed redistricting plan. This time, she said she could have quietly voted for Ballard but wanted her support public.
So what does it tell us about this cycle?
First, nobody should buy their own press. Endorsements from former officeholders rarely move many votes. Pritzker was already comfortably ahead, with one recent poll putting him up 20. Durkin isn’t changing that race. He’s changing the argument about what Illinois Republicans do after it. Ballard sat at 5 percent in the latest public poll, and one former lieutenant governor won’t close that gap by herself. Her real audience is the Republican-leaning voter in the doughnut counties who’s uneasy with Max Engling but can’t bring herself to vote for a Bayh.
Second, watch how each party responds. Bailey said Monday he first ran for the House because Durkin had failed Republicans. His running mate called the endorsement “surrender dressed up as leadership.” In Indiana, the GOP’s first TV ad of this race was an all-out attack on Ballard’s record as the Republican mayor of Indianapolis. When a party’s answer to its own former leaders is to excommunicate them, it tends to confirm the critique.
There’s also an irony here. Durkin said he’s backing Pritzker because he doesn’t want to waste his vote on Bailey. That’s the same frame Indiana Republicans are using against Ballard. In Illinois, a prominent Republican now calls the GOP vote the wasted one. In Indiana, the party is betting voters still think it’s the third-party vote.
Either way, the 2026 fight isn’t only Republican versus Democrat. It’s also Republican versus what Republicans used to be. Sue and Jim said so on the record, and Nov. 3 will tell us how many voters agree. As for me, I keep thinking about that 2002 ballot and the party that was on it. Those are the ghosts that haunt me.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of IndyPolitics.org and an attorney licensed in Indiana and Illinois. He worked for Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan before coming to Indiana.
