(CAPITOL CITY NOW) – The four Republicans who want to be governor participated in a forum Monday night in East Dundee. The runner-up in 2022, former state lawmaker Darren Bailey, is back.

“Four years ago, when I ran, when we won that primary, everybody else picked up the ball and went home,” Bailey told the audience. “Only 43 percent of all Illinoisans showed up to vote. That is something we must unite and coalesce, because when we win in November, it is going to send shock waves across this nation, when we stop JB Pritzker dead in his tracks.”

DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick said society’s going downhill, with public education leading the way.

“‘I want Johnny to come in and call himself Julie for the day, and we are not going to tell Mom and Dad.’ That stuff has to stop! That has to completely stop! Sexualization of our children is the Number One decay of our society. You know what Number Two and Three is? Scrubbing God out of our society and killing the nuclear family.”

You’re going to have to figure out who here has the best chance of beating Pritzker,” said former Wirepoints CEO Ted Dabrowski, “and I am going to be a little biased and say it’s me. I live in Cook County, my running mate’s from Cook County as well. We know how to work Cook County and the suburbs. That’s Number One. Number Two, I mentioned (that I am) half Polish, half Latino. That allows me to speak to the Hispanic crowd in the Spanish churches.”

Real estate entrepreneur Rick Heidler talked crime and taxes. “They arrest somebody and four days later, they arrest the same person. I mean, it makes me so sick. It makes me so ill, and then I see what’s happening with my businesses and the taxation! The constant taxation!”

The primary is March 17.