GOP nominee for Illinois governor doubles down on Holocaust analogy
‘The Jewish community themselves have told me that I’m right,’ Darren Bailey, who is challenging Democratic incumbent J.B. Pritzker, said
Republican gubernatorial candidate, state Sen. Darren Bailey speaks at an election-night party on June 28, 2022. Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh August 9, 2022
Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for Illinois governor, doubled down in a campaign stop over the weekend on a previous statement that the Holocaust “doesn’t even compare” to abortion on the scale of human atrocities. He suggested that all the rabbis he met with backed his analogy.
In a clip of an interview published on Monday, Bailey said he doesn’t see the need to apologize for saying in a video – that was posted on Facebook in 2017 and first reported by the Forward earlier this month – that “the attempted extermination of the Jews of World War II doesn’t even compare on a shadow of the life that has been lost with abortion since its legalization.”
“The Jewish community themselves have told me that I’m right,” Bailey said. “All the people at the Chabads that we met with and the Jewish rabbis they said, ‘No, you’re actually right.’”
Rabbi Avraham Kagan, the director of government affairs for Lubavitch Chabad of Illinois, told the Forward, “We don’t know who he met with and his comments do not reflect our position.”
The Republican candidate is running against Democratic incumbent J.B. Pritzker, who is Jewish. Pritzker’s campaign immediately released a TV ad highlighting the Holocaust remark.
The Springfield Jewish Federation said in a statement, “Holocaust comparisons are always fraught, and inappropriate when used politically.”
In the interview, Bailey said the Pritzker ad was timed to come out a day before he had a scheduled meeting with local Jewish leaders. “Pritzker, you know, knew that,” he said “So the timeliness was no mistake.”
Bailey said the widespread condemnation of his remarks is frustrating “because anybody that would watch my message, the whole nine minutes of it, would understand exactly what I was saying and where I was going with this.”
Natalie Edelstein, a Pritzker campaign spokesperson, said Bailey’s comments “and his inability to apologize and take ownership of his words, are disqualifying.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
