Across the country during this campaign cycle, Republican candidates have demonized Democrats on crime. But crime rates, and the trends behind them, often hinge on circumstances that defy political control.
J. B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, was standing on a suburban sidewalk, chatting with Terra Costa Howard, a state legislator, when a passing Honda S.U.V., windows down, slowed to a crawl. “Boo, J. B.! Boo! You’re a tyrant!” the driver called out. He said something about “the trans agenda” and sped away. Pritzker brushed it off.
It is a repeat of an old Republican gambit: when in doubt, scare people, particularly white people. At the heart of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy was his effort to brand himself as the “law and order” candidate, a title that Trump later adopted for himself. Alongside images of urban riots and protests against the Vietnam War, Nixon declared, in the voice-over to a 1968 campaign ad, that freedom from violence is “the first civil right of every American.” Twenty years later, George H. W.
This line of attack—that crime soars under Democrats—suggests to voters that Republicans would swiftly clean it up. Since 2016, Trump has often told one of his “” stories about Chicago’s crime, in which a police officer, “a tough guy,” tells him that law enforcement could stop hundreds of murders each year, if only officers were given the chance. “How long do you think it would take you to fix this killing problem in Chicago?” Trump claims to have asked the unidentified man.
Pritzker is hardly shy about messaging—or spending, having contributed a hundred and fifty-two million dollars to his own campaign. In the first debate, he accused Bailey of lyingabout his record on policing, criminal justice, and the Illinois budget. A few weeks ago, at a rally for Latino voters in Joliet, Pritzker was followed onstage by Susana Mendoza, the Illinois comptroller. During her speech, she lamented the challenge of winning votes from people deluged with bad information.